Beyond Productivity: How Businesses Can Measure And Act On What Matters

I’m always on the lookout for articles about leadership. Here are a few snippets:

The technology industry’s love of buzzwords is no secret. The pursuit of the “next big thing” means that every year a new spat of words enters the lexicon. Big data. The internet of things. Digital transformation. Artificial intelligence. Of course, none of those terms really mean much on their own. Their ambiguity and vastness is part of the point. With terms so vague, any company can fit itself into them.

Unfortunately, before our very eyes, one of the most used (and over-used) words in business and technology has become just as vapid: productivity.

Flash forward to 2024. Beyond the ethical issues of employee monitoring and aggressive efficiency KPIs, employees are also making one thing clear: Many are not happy about the state of work (especially tech workers). As these sources explain, there are many reasons for this; however, I've also seen many bright minds toiling away, doing low-level, mundane tasks in order to meet imaginary quotas and appear “busy.” Employee satisfaction and retention can suffer when this happens.

The root of the issue is clear to me: Productivity in and of itself is superficial. It carries no inherent value or meaning. It simply implies you are doing. But doing what, doing how, doing why, and doing to what effect? Those qualifiers often aren’t part of the equation.

It’s time for leaders and employees to rethink how they measure their work completely. It’s time to shift to something more meaningful—from productivity to progress and from efficiency to purpose.

We can create a new era of measuring business and employee performance.

Moving past empty productivity metrics will be a significant shift for most businesses. Here are pieces of advice to kickstart this process.

1. Give employees something bigger to ladder up to.

As a first step toward measuring work more meaningfully, leadership teams should formalize their business goals and relay them to their employee base. Transparency is key. Too often, the C-suite operates behind a veil, but employees need to know where the business is headed, how it performs, what the goals are, and how their work ladders to those metrics. This information will help employees ensure they’re working on projects and tasks directly relevant to serving the business.

2. Measure organisational efficiency, not personal productivity.

Organisational and personal productivity are certainly linked; however, focusing on organisational metrics can help assess institutional health as opposed to any single employee. Openly discuss outcomes or team-based metrics, such as customer support tickets avoided or department gross margin, that can indicate operational efficiency. Compare these metrics with similar companies to understand how your company or team benchmarks against peers.

Want to know more? Head on over to the full article here for more ideas and perspectives. Afterwards, why not drop me an email to share your thoughts at [email protected] ; or call me on 0467 749 378.

Thanks,

Robert