What Is Productivity in the Workplace?

Most employees want to be productive. There’s a sense of accomplishment when one’s work is done quickly and efficiently. Employees are further rewarded when they learn how impactful their roles are in helping the company reach its goals.

To help employees achieve high levels of productivity, management teams can analyze data points around speed, efficiency, customer satisfaction, competitive standing, and a plethora of other workforce productivity measurements. Workforce analytics software can help with this productivity management.

What Happens When Productivity Isn’t Measured?

Management teams without a system in place for productivity monitoring can see negative impacts throughout their operational and overhead costs. Poor productivity management doesn’t just affect one part of an organization’s operations. Instead, it ripples out through all of its facets. This can make diagnosing problems and improving workforce productivity challenging.

When an organization’s operations suffer from low productivity, costs of labor and supplies often increase, as more time and resources are depleted to complete work. Losing progress on quarterly goals can lead to a loss in employee morale and, ultimately, a loss in an organization’s competitiveness in the marketplace. Absenteeism and losing sight of objectives can also occur, further harming overall productivity.

What should a company look for when monitoring and measuring productivity? In short, the entire life cycle of a project can be broken down into measurable metrics to quantify productivity with workforce analytics software. These metrics can then uncover workflow bottlenecks in anything from employee training modules to service, sales, and customer support. In short, organizational leaders will have visibility into how work is getting done, including what’s working and what’s not.

Start From the Beginning: Measure Employee Productivity During Training

Most modern organizations use training modules or another type of training program to ramp up employees for success in their roles. The training module may provide an inside view into how well an employee understands the material, but most training modules stop there. Management teams also need to understand when and how the new knowledge can be applied on the job. They need insight into how quickly the training is progressing and any parts of the process where employees are experiencing unnecessary downtime or difficulty.

Is the loss in productivity due to the difficulty of the material, or are employees working too long without breaks? Perhaps they lose interest in the material and are distracted by browsing on other apps. Workforce analytics software provides data points on how employees engage with their training, including insights into which sections are ineffective, inefficient, or need the most improvement.

Focus on Strategy Over Management: Measure Employee Productivity Without Micromanaging

Simply put, a management style that is too strict can stifle how and when work is done. One of the biggest challenges in productivity management is knowing when and where to course-correct without slowing employees down with too many interruptions and distractions.

With workforce analytics and productivity management software, management teams will be able to pinpoint where most issues occur in workflows and why. Managers can then do what they do best: create and implement strategies that can be tested over time. ActivTrak is built with in-depth reporting features that break data into days, weeks, months, and years to easily measure and compare productivity changes.

Productivity Management Across the Whole Organization: Measure the Productivity of All Employees

Most modern organizations are composed of a variety of team structures. Remote workers and small, specialized teams are growing increasingly popular, due to the fact that they grant access to expansive talent pools and expertise. However, juggling varying work schedules and styles and holding all team members to the same standards can be challenging. How can an organization ensure that time and resources are being used effectively when team structures are diverse?

Workforce analytics and productivity management software like ActivTrak works by recording data in the background and itemizing workflows into productivity measurement scorecards for teams. With the right productivity data and tools, managers will be able to pinpoint top-performing employees and study the behaviors and workflows that are key to their success. They can then coach other employees to replicate the same levels of productivity.

Organizations with workforce analytics software in place can expect their employees to consistently perform their tasks efficiently and in a timely manner. Not only does ActivTrak measure productivity, but it also contextualizes data using reports that allow for better-informed strategies and clearer accountability. Learn more about how ActivTrak can help your organization better track employee productivity patterns and optimize workflows, or sign up for your free account to try it for yourself.

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