In today’s world of AI and data analytics taking over most work place jobs and tools ,”Are we measuring work productivity in the right way.”(Gear up for some Lengthy reading☺️)
I used to have a colleague at work who used to come half an hour late to work, then spend some time making her tea trying to catch up with everybody at work. Have a bit of office networking in the morning and then settle down to do her work at around 11:30 when our work day/ hours start at 8:30am while the rest of the colleagues have already contributed three hours into work .She would start her P.C ,read through her emails, she would then decide to start doing her work for an hour and break for lunch with the others by 1pm and the second round after lunch with the rest of the team have already reached their peak and still looking to complete their work by 4:30 pm which is our closing time ,she would then decide to take up an activity/some work project that would need her clear focus and used to stay back after work.
Unsure whether it would be for half an hour after work or over an hour after work because none of our colleagues had ever stayed back and seen as to how long she was staying back after work and our management used to appreciate her because she always stayed back or worked extra hours and also she was super proud of herself and being in senior position she also used to make us feel guilty for trying to finish work on time which made me wonder is this the right way to measure productivity ?Just because she was staying back and working extra hours is she productive ? Where as in reality the rest of the the team members have come on time done the complete 8 hours of work and left home on time compared to someone who’s had a very relaxed day and then decided to stay back just an hour ignoring the fact that she came late in the morning is given the best employee award / always appreciated.
I definitely think this is just not my personal experience, but most of you would have had a similar employee or a friend or a team member who works the same way as my colleague used to do .I started looking at productivity tools to measure employee productivity either in healthcare sector or in the IT industry I’ve come across a few tools and recommendations, but are these the best? And do they actually intend to measure what they’re supposed to?
Let us consider feedback or customer feedback : How good are they? I currently work in healthcare sector where we are advised to take patient feedback which may sometimes be influenced by how they were treated in the hospital ,hours of waiting times,how someone greeted them, how someone make them felt when they were sick, or admitted with some illness on which health health care professionals sometimes may not have control over .A nurse would have had a long day at work or an irate patient relative speaking rudely to her because of long waiting times they had in A&E which would then affect her emotions, interaction with other patients and her performance for the rest of the day and someone working in customer service or sales would have experienced similar issues.
When I was working for a Test Prep Consultancy with the team of counsellors and I used to observe them making telephone calls to students to try and convert them into admissions for foreign universities.One counsellor’s calls would just require a brief talk like giving them the basic details and ask them to come and see the counsellor in the office where as some counsellors used to really take time, talk to the student to know their interests ,the time that suits them , the budget that works for them ,what type of university they are looking for …then come up with some alternatives and used to offer advice and get the student to come to office to discuss this information.In suchcases if you’re measuring productivity just from the number of calls they are making is that really a good way of measuring ?
When I compare a counsellor who would has done hundred calls in a week would and convinced two students for admission whereas a counsellor who would have done just 15 calls and still converted two students has put some real time research and efforts into place compared to the other in my opinion has a good conversion rate but again she was not be appreciated enough because her call numbers were less.
Data(Numbers) or work hours, may not always bethe right way of measuring employee productivity.When I’ve done my research online about the work hours, I see that most of most of the organisations internationally especially in the west recommend 40 hours work week or even less ,Most of the Indian organisations still have 48 hour work week and the recent debates about 70 hour and 90 hour work week made me think of how many hours can a human brain focus straight ?The answer is 6 to 8 hours and that is with minimal distractions and not to forget that our attention span is for 90 minutes and the hours of brain focus is different for different individuals and varies with factors like age.
When I was looking at work tools used to measure productivity online. I’ve come across few tools like 360° feedback ,customer feedbacks ,performance appraisals, KPIs .However all these tools to my knowledge to some extent rely on data and numbers . Should not there be a human factor or an emotional component that should be taken into consideration .We are not robots after all?
P.S:Please share your thoughts on this, and what tools do you use for measuring employee productivity in your teams.
SVADHYAY 