How Can You Measure & Improve Staff Productivity?

Staff productivity is the lifeblood of your business, determining how much work you can create, keeping clients happy, and the money rolling in. But how can you measure productivity? Productivity metrics can be tricky to generate and understand, especially if you have several departments completing different tasks. How do you measure employee productivity when one is answering calls and the other is writing articles? Luckily for you, that is where we come in! Our guide shows you different methods of measuring productivity and how you can use this information to improve workforce productivity levels to get the most out of your team!

 

Why Is It Important To Measure & Improve Staff Productivity?

Measuring employee productivity allows you to track the amount of work being done across your teams and identify any areas where productivity could be improved. It helps you not only address those who should be doing more work but also recognise and reward those who are hitting their targets and deadlines. When measuring employee productivity, you can also see if there are any unbalanced workloads, allowing you to make changes and avoid any burnout or exhaustion across your employees. We think measuring productivity allows you to better understand your company and your employees, understanding their roles and whether their workload is feasible or not.

Improving staff productivity is also very important. Not only does it help you to increase the output of work at your company, but it can improve the company culture too. When employees have a manageable workload, clear goals, and feedback to help them complete their tasks, they are happier to work and more likely to increase their productivity. When you have understood the productivity across your employees, you should look at how you can utilise productivity-improving techniques to enhance your employee's lives and your business.

 

How To Measure Staff Productivity

There are a few ways you can measure staff productivity, depending on your business and the roles of your team. You need to find the perfect way to measure and track productivity, ensuring that it is fair across every department and easy for you to read. We have some guidance and options that you should consider when deciding how best to measure your staff's productivity.

 

Define Productivity

Before you begin, you need to define productivity. You will likely need several definitions, depending on the roles and departments in your company. For example, you could define productivity for salespeople based on how many sales calls they complete or their sales record, whereas writers could be measured based on the number of words they write. When defining productivity for each department, consider also how you can compare across departments.

Once you have defined productivity, you should set clear goals that allow you to monitor productivity. This could be a productivity formula that relates to the hours worked to help determine how many calls or tasks an employee should complete. You should take into account any distractions that could impact this, like company meetings, and adjust the formula correctly. You should share this information with your employees so they know how their productivity is being measured.

 

Use Productivity Measurement Software

The fastest and simplest way to measure productivity is to use productivity management software. There are several tools you can use to do this, where your employees will input their completed tasks or call logs to assess how much work they are completing.

Productivity measurement software is great for analysing across teams and departments, allowing you to see how much time employees are spending on different activities. We like how these allow you to see how much work is completed as an individual and team, allowing you to look for any patterns across teams where productivity is higher and lower than others.

 

Manually Track Productivity

Another option is to manually track productivity, which is ideal if you don't want to spend money on any more software. You can track productivity using your favourite spreadsheet and use a productivity analysis method. Some of the most popular options include:

Basic Productivity Formula

This involves dividing the output (your team has produced) by input (what team members did to achieve the output). For example, if it took 100 hours for your customer service team to answer 80 queries, you would divide 100 by 80, giving you an output time of 1.25 hours per query.

Planned-To-Done Ratio

For this method, you will measure the amount of work completed and compare it to the amount originally assigned to your team.

Cycle Time Metric

For the cycle time metric, you will need to measure the time it takes your team to complete a project from start to finish. You can use this to measure their productivity when future tasks are completed.

These manual productivity formulas offer a baseline for team productivity, but you won't see the full picture as to why some tasks took longer to complete than anticipated. We recommend incorporating other methods with this to better understand your teams' productivity.

 

Use Surveys And 360 Degree Feedback

Surveys and 360-degree feedback involve asking team members to rate each other and their productivity. This will show you if employees respect one another, understand team goals, and if they motivate one another. You should conduct regular surveys to see the answers and if there are any improvements once changes are implemented.

This can be a good method, but the data is often limited. Personal preferences play a role and team members might mark employees they work closely with high scores and rate those lower if they haven't collaborated together.

 

Work Towards Team Goals

A great way to measure productivity is to create goals that your team can work towards. Providing goals with timelines can help you see which team members are performing well and others are not meeting the demands. You can use objectives and how much your team has achieved to create a percentage to assess productivity.

For example, if a team is tasked to create 10 articles and they complete 9 by the end of the month, they have hit 90% of their productivity target. Team goals are an excellent method to pair with surveys and 360-degree feedback, as you can see how team dynamics impact results. These methods also allow you to make changes when needed, like if a team continues to not meet goals or you notice a pattern of unbalanced workloads that impacts productivity.

 

Look At Focus And Distractions

Another option is to look at how your team members spend their time. While collaboration is an excellent way to complete work, it can cause distractions, and many employees can work better on their own.

You can calculate how much time your team spends in meetings and how many of them are necessary or ineffective to see if they are wasting time that could be better spent working towards their goals. You can use productivity measurement software to help you track this and implement any changes.

 

How To Improve Staff Productivity

When you have measured productivity in your team, you can look at how you can use this to improve staff productivity. We have several ways you can improve employee productivity, which we have listed below for you.

 

Set Clear Goals

First, you want to set clear goals for every department and employee so they know what they are working towards. Many employees can waste time on tasks, not knowing what they should prioritise and work towards. These goals should be simple and achievable, with flexibility, so they can prioritise tasks and measure their own success.

For you to successfully set these goals, you need to understand the role of every department in your business and what goals they need to achieve weekly or every quarter. By better understanding and making the goals clear for everyone, you can reduce confusion and improve employee productivity.

 

Provide Regular Feedback

Alongside creating goals, employees should expect regular feedback. This can come from yourself or their supervisor, depending on how your departments are structured. Constructive feedback allows your employees to learn from ther performance and where they can improve, increasing their productivity.

This feedback should be a two-way conversation, where your employee can discuss their goals with you, create plans to achieve their goals, and discuss their workload. You cannot expect excellent results if your employees are overworked, so make sure you listen to your employees if they tell you they have too much work to successfully complete.

 

Offer Incentives

An excellent way to boost productivity is to offer incentives. These could be additional leave for hitting targets, bonuses, or competitions that can get your employees excited about work and encourage them to be more productive. You should also recognise regularly employees who are working hard and hitting their goals, increasing their mood and attitude towards work. All of this helps to create a positive culture that can improve productivity.

 

Encourage Self Care

An employee can only be productive for so long; they are human and not robots, so you need to encourage and prioritise self-care throughout your company. The more rested and happy your employee is, the more likely they will show up to work and hit their goals.

How you encourage self-care will vary depending on your company, but you could look to include health and well-being benefits, increase employees' downtime, or impose restrictions on contacting employees outside of working hours so they have time to switch off and relax.

 

Measuring And Improving Staff Productivity

Measuring and improving productivity levels can help to improve your business, increase job satisfaction across your employees, and even improve company culture.