Productivity, Employees and Lean Processes

How do you measure productivity of employees not in Direct Labor roles producing widgets??Leaders know they need to get results from employees but vary widely in how they measure this.?Some firms tend to focus on quantity of work produced while others focus on quality and still others find a way to measure both in a more balanced way.?This is important because employees “notice” how they are measured and rewarded, (or penalized) according to the way the Boss prioritizes results. Where performance is below expectation, the issue is more often about the process and less about the employee.

APQC, American Productivity & Quality Center recently did a survey on this topic.?You can download this from the public resources link here; https://bit.ly/33G2MFy ?

The meat of this shows up in a couple of ways that are important to understand.?High EFFECTIVENESS comes in at 75% of employee’s primary focus.?Efficiency comes in second at 65% saying this is within the top three priorities for their work.?There is a problem here that most firms suffer from, to varying degrees and in this survey, inefficient processes account for a large amount of lost time.?The survey reports that 6 hours per person per week are lost to bad processes.

1.?????2.1 hours per week lost to broken processes requiring creating workarounds.

2.?????2.0 hours per week performing “busy work” that has little or no direct relation to stated objectives, no ultimate purpose.

3.?????1.9 hours per week lost to re-creating work processes for how stuff gets done.

For a firm of 100 employees, this adds up quickly.?100 people x 6 hours a week x 50 weeks a year is roughly 650 hours lost time.?If you factor in a number for compensation at, say $100/hr all in, then you have lost $65,000 in productivity per year.?Obviously some will be less and other will be more.

Further detail shows.

57%??????My productivity at work is hurt by ad ho. r inefficient processes.

51%??????A lot of the processes I use to do my job are only in my head

50%??????If I left my job tomorrow, my organization would have to "relearn" how to certain tasks or processes

43%??????Challenges with ad hoc or inefficient processes have increased since the onset of Covid-19

Knowledge Workers lose time in several ways that often includes waste.

1.?????3.6 hours per week managing internal communication, collaboration

2.?????2.8 hours seeking information

3.?????2.0 hours recreating information or work that already exists

4.?????1.7 hours seeking out the right resource with needed information

5.?????1.7 hours providing duplicate information, answers/updates

Interestingly, all these things can be corrected, and drastically reduced.

When I work with clients on business process improvements, it typically comes down to waste in processes.?We find elements of poor process definition, poor or non-existent metrics, and lack of focus on the way a process works compared to how it should perform.?I am talking about process workflow in either Manufacturing, or Non-manufacturing work.?Creating a sales quote, entering a sales order or purchase order, planning a schedule, doing an engineering change document, testing a production operation on product, fabricating a part, building an assembly or handling a customer claim.?All these are processes with a workflow that can be detailed to find the waste.?Too often there is significant waste in the process.

Then the question is why do we have so much waste??Well, human nature tends to focus on the short game first.?Getting work done at all costs, shipping the orders today, finishing that report by Friday, turning in the numbers to meet financial objectives.?We tend to do what gets measured first.?Some firms have learned they need to play the long game to drive competitive advantage, to outperform.?This means they work ON the Business, not just IN the business.

To do this well, we need to invest in employees, and process, to raise the bar, to train to a higher level of performance.?This exposes the waste and from that, the opportunities to implement improvement.?In Supply Chain Management I call this reaching a degree of capability where supply chain management has become a CORE COMPETENCY.? This requires a focus on skills to identify opportunities, prioritize and attack the waste.?Of course, this means we must become comfortable with change and learn to measure results differently.? We want to be more effective by reducing the poor processing.?One of the key tools in my toolbox is Value Stream Mapping. ?Using this approach helps everyone “see” the waste in real terms.?Then we can focus on how to improve it. ?As an example, I offer this Youtube video showing the difference of a before and after condition that is amazing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRy_73ivcms

After watching this video, I have one question for you.?If you were the pit boss of the 1950’s crew and you told your crew you needed them to be able to perform a 1.6 second pit stop, your crew would probably laugh at you and tell you it’s not possible.?But we know it is, if we dissect the workflow, we find the waste and implement improvements.?The next thing to work on is employee skills and growing employees value!? After that, you would work on Process and finally add in Technology. And in the end, the productivity would increase quickly.

Let me know what you are doing in your work to drive process improvements.?

Bob Forshay, SupplyChainPro2Know.com??