Productivity Measures

Simple, Clear Systems for Tracking & Posting Productivity

		The Best of: Hints for tracking productivity

What if you had a simple, concentrated snapshot of what your company or departmental productivity measures were and how you stacked up against them?

Like a dashboard, you need constant feedback on performance and progress to adequately judge direction and degree.

Let's Define Productivity

Simply put, productivity is output. Whatever you generate. Who defines what you generate? Well, YOU do.

Examples:

Widgets per month Accidents this year Calls made per hour Tests run per week New orders per day

What is the difference between productivity and performance?

Compare these productivity measures to the previous list:

Customer ratings Process improvements Cycle time reductions Product quality Product capabilities Employee development

About productivity:  you can probably crank out products at an unreasonable rate, for a short amount of time. But can you sustain that?  Will your employees burn out? Will your mechanisms fail? Will the stress level translate into a downfall in courteous customer service?

Performance gets to the heart of how we look to sustain. Sometimes not so visible, it ensures enduring productivity.               

Your decision … How to select the vital few that will tell the story of a good dashboard measure. Not too many, not too few - an offering of output measures balanced with performance measures that illustrate the internal workings.

What the visible dashboard might look like:

Before you overthink this one, consider something as simple as a well-located bulletin board. Do you have video monitors mounted in an entry way? If so, you can offer scrolling charts. Or, what about a screen pop-up at an employee's morning computer wake-up?

If you have a graphics department, use their talents in creating a simple set of charts or graphs that tell a story quickly. Perhaps 3-5 charts. Once the employees are familiar with the formats, they will be able to interpret snapshots of productivity in a heartbeat. Simple is better. Color is good.

pssst - if you have an example that you would be willing to share, send it along to me! We can adapt it for the website and send some karma back into the world.