Best practices to measure employee productivity

Measure employee productivity

Undoubtedly, employees are the lifeblood of all successful organizations. And for a company to have continuous growth, productivity measurement is vital in order to achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness in each of its processes.

However, given the current economic context, marked by competitive markets and the intense evolution of the digital workplace, doing more in less time is essential. If you are a manager concerned with your team’s performance, you have certainly asked yourself – How to measure results and outline improvement actions?

No worries! There are a variety of ways to enable productivity measurement. In this article, we will discuss in-depth what productivity is and how to measure employee productivity.

What is employee productivity?

Productivity definition – It is the ability to get a job done in less time while maintaining high quality.

Measuring employee productivity refers to the amount of work an employee completes in a specific period. It is essential for every business to measure because the company’s success and overall growth depend on its employees’ productivity.

In today’s first faced world, monitoring each employee’s performance manually, executing complex tasks, managing mundane technical tasks, and improving workplace efficiencies can be a bit challenging. To succeed in this competitive marketplace, managers/leaders must find ways to activate and maintain a high level of team performance. But how to measure employee productivity?

By incorporating partnership among people, processes, and data, the leaders can streamline the processes and allow the companies to thrive and improve employee productivity.

People, Process and Data

The people, process, data (PPD) methodology mainly focuses on the relationship between an organization’s three key elements and how it drives organizational transformation while improving employee performance and productivity.

  1. People – The most crucial part of organizations. They are the professionals who make things happen by leveraging technology and optimizing the process to complete the assigned tasks.
  2. Process – To produce a specific outcome or achieve a goal, it is essential to put the right processes in place. People cannot optimize and scale their work without a unique set of defined systems and processes.
  3. Data – As the world of business has entered the age of data, there is a massive amount of data scattered here and there. So, becoming a data-centric organization is not an option anymore; it is a necessity. By implementing the right technology, people can harness it and drive more data-driven decisions for business growth.

Thus, when it comes to the PPD methodology, none of its elements – people, process, data – can be treated individually. There should always be a proper balance and partnership among people, process, and data to drive organizational growth. At Amoga, a low code development platform, we provide customized tools catered to your organization’s specific needs and ensure that people, process, and data are aligned in the same direction to increase your overall productivity by 10x.

How to measure employee productivity

Let’s look at some of the most effective approaches to productivity measurement:

  1. Simplify WorkManaging complex tasks and monitoring work progress for the same can be overwhelming for both leaders and employees at times. Thus, to avoid stress and procrastination, break down the larger complex tasks into atomic tasks (simple and measurable) and make work more manageable and less intimidating.With smaller and precise sub-tasks, presented in easy-to-use work boards, progress on work is automatically updated in real-time. It provides for the necessary transparency, and without micro-management.

    Further, breaking down a long task into sub-tasks allows you to look at the bigger picture logically and enables you to collect essential data for planning future projects. Thus, with standardisation and simplification of work, you can track the work in-efficiencies and leakages and improve your processes.

  2. Establish baseline metrics‍  – Understanding and measuring employee productivity is one of the most critical aspects of work management. It enables an organization to make informed decisions based on data and align individual growth towards organizational goals. Therefore, establishing a baseline metric is the first and foremost step in measuring employee productivity.A clear baseline metric allows employers to create a reference point and easily measure employee productivity. So, the typical metric variances to include while establishing baseline metrics are – Output metric, and Outcome metric.

    • Output Metric The outputs are the daily actions or daily efforts each employee contributes to achieving an outcome. Output metrics help to measure employees’ daily activities. They allow you to prioritize your daily activities and stay focused on the things you can control – writing a blog on a trending topic, publishing a new blog twice a week, making 5 qualified-sales calls daily, etc.This essential metric allows everyone on the team to view the performance and think, “What was my output today?” Via Amoga’s scorecard, managers or leaders can look at the employees’ daily or weekly progress and measure productivity. Moreover, through the scorecard, the employee themselves will know the number of daily tasks that need to be completed to meet the desired outcome.‍
    • Outcome Metrics Just tracking the daily activities is not enough. It is also essential to track the impact of these daily activities. As outcomes are the result a business is looking to achieve. This is what the outcome metric does! The outcome metrics measure the impact of your outputs and gauge the business’s success. These metrics are the ones that are shared with stakeholders such as bosses, clients, and investors.To simply say – they are great indicators of performance. For instance, “the number of leads generated through the blog post” is an obvious outcome metric for your manager to track the performance. And the output here is “publishing new blog posts.” It directly measures the impact of your daily activity “blog posts published goal.”
  3. Count on work management system – Count on technology! It is increasingly crucial to modernize the organization and rely on technology to carry out the tasks, thus making it possible to obtain better results. When it comes to monitoring team productivity, it is no different.By using a work management system, you can keep all your employees on the same page and view who is working on what without nudging. Assign tasks to individuals, organize tasks, track their work progress, and receive real-time notifications on every activity.By monitoring the work progress efficiently, you can measure employee productivity effectively and identify top performers. You can sort each employee by the productivity obtained if multiple people are working on similar tasks.

    Amoga, an all-in-one work platform lets you visualize activities and track progress effortlessly. The structured task planning feature enables managers to organize all necessary tasks for each employee. Some added benefits of Amoga’s work management software are:

    • Brings transparency and accountability to the team.
    • Saves your time by automating trivial repetitive activities.
    • Effortlessly integrates with the existing ecosystem.
    • Provides multiple board views (List, Table (Excel, and Kanban) to view work differently.
  4. Use dashboards to measure employee performance – One of the significant challenges for leaders is to create transparent communication with their teams that promotes employee engagement and drives employee performance. And, for that, accurate data is needed. But, maintaining the data points and work distribution in the excel sheet is more prone to data loss and human error. It also does not contribute all the information regarding different teams and departments.

    In this context, nothing is better than the business dashboard that enables real-time transparency.Dashboard, as a tool, manages all business information from a single access point. It helps managers and employees track KPIs for business and uses business intelligence to help companies make data-driven decisions.Let’s take an analogy to explain this notion further: Having a sales dashboard gives you a perfect overview of the progress of the sales department by focusing on various sales KPIs: sales growth, sales targets, average unit revenue, customer acquisition cost, and customer lifetime value.Once companies get regular insights into their KPIs, they see deeper into their data and generate actionable insights. Immediately, sales managers can view how the team is performing and whether or not the team is meeting its individual goals. Managers can also see individual employee performance and give real-time feedback to solve the issue pre-emptively.

    With Amoga’s dashboard solutions, get real-time insights about teams’ work and track the employee performance across multiple KPIs in one place. Let’s you visualize real-time data in the form of charts, pie and graphs to monitor your employee’s work progress and eliminate doubts ranging from responsibilities to work progress and performance.‍

  5. Provide real-time feedback – “You did a great job this week; keep it up!” – That’s a phrase everyone loves to hear. It motivates employees because they know that the top management recognizes and appreciates their efforts.In the traditional working environment, employee performance reviews used to happen once a year and assess past performance. But, with the transition to a remote/ hybrid working mode (future of work), it has become more crucial than ever for companies to have continuous discussions with employees about their performance and create a growth-mindset culture.

    Continuous feedback and positive employee experience drives performance and engagement. Real-time transparency of output-outcome, and a clear communication channel between managers and employees help them bond over work-related conversations. This way, you can identify problematic areas and act before they escalate. Amoga’s shared space feature allows you to orchestrate reviews and provide relevant talking points for effective feedback sessions.

    Furthermore, continuous feedback culture also helps foster an interpersonal bond and trust between team members and managers, effectively building trust through the reporting line.

Measuring employee productivity is a way of improving business results and optimizing the relationship with employees who feel more valued by the company and produce more and better.

By measuring the team’s productivity, it becomes possible to build the roadmap, set more challenging goals, and have a current view of the business. In an increasingly competitive market, these factors are essential to remain competitive and stand out from the competition.