Productivity Optimization Part Two - How It Can Be Measured

Last week, we aimed our laser focus on productivity and how it can be defined for your organization. Now, we would like to examine how you can measure productivity for your business. Let’s discuss how you can track your productivity.

A Refresher: How Productivity is Measured

It Boils Down to Input and Output

As we covered last time, the following equation can be used to calculate productivity:

Productivity = Output/Input

If you compare how much you are investing to the returns you get from that investment, you’ll have an idea of productivity. It’s a straightforward and scalable formula that can be used pretty easily. However, there are other options you might consider, and they have to do with personal metrics and business metrics.

Your Specific Key Performance Indicators

You probably already have some KPIs to keep track of various metrics for your organization. Basically, they can give you an idea of how productive your organization is by looking at certain trends and information, supplementing those trends with various data points like customer satisfaction or otherwise.

Employee Productivity

This might look like the number of tasks completed by your employees versus the time they spend on them. This is a fairly simple method of looking at productivity, and while it’s useful to a degree, it is not always indicative of productivity (or lack thereof).

Performance-Based Metrics

Productivity can also be quantified by how well your various efforts are performing. For example, you might look at the results of a major project and compare it to the amount of time spent on it and the resources dedicated to it.

Your means of measuring how productive you are—or aren’t—is basically only limited by your creativity and the metrics you have access to.

Next time, we’ll cover some ways that productivity can actually be prevented and how you might avoid running into them. Until then, you can always reach out to us at 630-549-6199 to find out how your business can use technology to maximize productivity.