Team productivity is an essential element for the success of a company. To know that your employees are productive, you can measure their output and compare them to those of other teams. This can help you determine whether they are working efficiently or not so that you can provide them with better training and tools.
To ensure that your team is productive, here are eight ways to measure productivity.
1. Use a Time Tracking Tool
You can use technology to determine your team’s productivity levels. This may include a time tracking tool that shows how long it takes each employee on average to complete their daily tasks. This ensures that you’re paying your employees based on their efficiency and not just the hours they stay in the office.
When looking for a time-tracking tool, you should look for software that offers features like the useful timesheet templates at Float. With these templates, employees don’t need to keep creating their own. This saves time and energy and avoids errors in the process.
Some programs offer timesheets, reports, and payroll options. Finding one that delivers these may help you get more out of your time-tracking program. With the right tool, you can manage employees’ work schedules accurately.
2. Get the Right Metrics
Key performance indicators (KPIs) can help you determine how well your team is performing and what areas need improvement. In addition, they can help you create a culture of accountability and transparency.
So, one way of measuring your team’s productivity is to get the right metrics. These allow you to track performance and make adjustments as needed so that you can get the most out of your team.
Below are examples of KPIs that you can track to evaluate the level of productivity of your team.
Projects Completed
If you want to know the number of projects completed in a week, you can use this metric. This shows you how many tasks are being done by the team and at what pace.
You can calculate this by multiplying the number of active projects by their current status and adding them together. After that, compare this figure with last week’s figure to gain insights into weekly statistics.
Revenue Per Worker
This metric shows how much each employee generates per hour worked. This can be used as a benchmark to measure the effectiveness of training strategies and productivity improvements.
To calculate profit per employee, multiply the hours worked by their hourly rate. Then divide that figure by the total number of employees to get an average profit per worker.
Errors Per Hour
It shows how efficient your team is at fixing bugs, which in turn shows how efficient you are at finding and fixing bugs. You can use this metric as a basis for determining whether or not it’s time to hire more people.
If your team has a high rate of errors per hour, they aren’t making enough progress on their tasks and need to hire more people. If their rate is low, they should improve their process to increase productivity and find more bugs faster.
Leads Generated Per Month
This KPI measures how many lead records have been tracked through your customer relationship management system automation processes. This can be used to indicate how well your sales team is performing and whether they are hitting their targets.
Your salespeople are doing a great job if they generate more than the target leads. If not, consider providing them with more sales training for lead generation or improve your sales process by hiring new reps with a proven track record. This way, you can find out where there are flaws in your current system and improve it accordingly.
Employee Attendance Rate
You can use this metric to monitor your team’s engagement with their work. This may also indicate that your employees aren’t satisfied with their working environment, which can cause them to slack off.
High employee absenteeism signals that your team does not feel appreciated at work or that their managers are overworking them with multiple tasks. On the other hand, if your employees are always eager to come to work, they feel that the management prioritizes them and respects their time.
Why are KPIs useful?
Assessing KPIs can help you understand your team’s performance based on specific work-related insights. You can also use KPIs to measure progress, which is essential for keeping an eye on your team’s productivity.
3. Look at Project Completion Duration
Another way to assess employee productivity is by looking at how long it takes them to complete a project. After that, compare the results with other teams in the same industry. This way, you can see whether or not your team is delivering on time and under budget.
If your team is falling behind schedule, it may be because they need to work more slowly. For instance, if one of your employees takes ten hours to complete a project and another takes only five hours, then it’s safe to assume that the first employee is more productive than the second. Based on this information, you can assign the tasks of the second employee to someone else who works faster and delivers high-quality results at an earlier stage of the project lifecycle.
4. Assess Planned-to-Done Ratio
The planned-to-done ratio is a useful measure of productivity because it measures how much progress a team has made toward completing its tasks. It’s calculated by dividing the number of planned items in your project by the number you completed.
This metric tells whether the team is on track to complete its work. They may need to fine-tune their processes or seek help from external resources. This way, you can ensure that your team has what they need to succeed and get things done.
5. Check for Missed Deadlines
Missed deadlines may also indicate the productivity level of your workers. This means they cannot meet their given time frame, which can lead to severe problems for your business, such as missed sales targets and customer service commitments. You can lose sales, which is a significant indicator of poor productivity if it happens frequently.
In this case, you must check if there’s a specific reason for the delay or whether it is due to the employee’s inability. You can ask them for an explanation. They may cite an issue with the office computer, which can cause delays in submitting reports and other work-related tasks.
Your team member may also say there’s a lack of communication in the department. If that’s the case, you may provide them with tools like video chat or instant messaging platforms. These will help them share project information in real time so that everyone knows the latest instructions and developments.
6. Track Time Spent in Meetings
Meetings are vital when brainstorming ideas and monitoring the progress of projects. However, most supervisors frequently call for an appointment that eats up the time of their teammates. This causes them to lose productivity since they’re always meeting up with one another but not producing anything.
You can avoid this by ensuring that your team meetings are always productive. You may record all meeting minutes and keep them organized. File them according to fitting categories, such as tasks, goals, and ideas. Moreover, keep track of how much time each member spends on meetings and what type of meetings they attend.
7. Monitor Customer Satisfaction
Another way to tell if your team is productive is by looking at the satisfaction levels of your customers. This is helpful if you’re measuring the productivity of your sales, marketing, customer service, and production departments. The figures can show that you are on track or need to improve a specific area of your business, such as identifying concerns that may arise when interacting with customers.
You can do this by collecting feedback from your clients through surveys. You can ask them if they are satisfied with their interaction with your company and how it compares with competitors. You may learn that they’re not happy with their experience with you or feel like they’re treated poorly during a transaction.
After gaining these insights, you can determine what you can do for your team to provide a better customer experience. This is an effective measure of productivity because it allows continuous improvement over time.
8. Regularly Collect Feedback from Employees
Aside from gathering customer feedback, you should collect insights from your team. You may be surprised by the answers. You may learn that the team leaders aren’t doing enough to ensure their employees are happy and productive. Or some team members don’t seem as engaged in the process as others.
When collecting feedback from your employees, ask them to complete an employee engagement survey or fill out an anonymous form. You can also ask them to provide feedback through email, text messages, or social media posts. The idea is to get honest, candid feedback on how they feel about their job and whether they think it’s getting done right.
Once you have collected this information, it will give you a better idea of how to improve your team’s productivity. This also ensures that everyone on your team feels included in decision-making processes, which may encourage them to be more productive and stay in your company.
Conclusion
Running a company involves ensuring that your workforce focuses on productivity and efficiency. If your employees don’t prioritize their work, you’re only wasting money paying salaries to people who can’t help your business grow. Moreover, unproductive workers may create team issues, such as project delays and conflicts with other members.
You should closely monitor your team’s productivity so that you can identify these problems early on. You can use KPIs to determine which areas of your company create the most issues with your employees. This allows you to help them improve or eliminate them before they affect your business in the long run.
You may use these metrics above to determine the top performers in your organization and promote them to higher positions. Knowing that their efforts are recognized can boost employee morale and inspire others to reach their full potential.
