Every year we are asked to do more with less. But is there a limit to productivity? Yes, there is. But this limit is not about the skills, it is about human’s capacity.
By tracking employees hours you can learn the capacity and the limit for the productivity of your staff, so you don’t go over it.
What is employee productivity in general?
Employee productivity is a many-sided phenomenon. You can’t create a single formula or definition of employee productivity and its’ limit that would work for all businesses.
E.g., in manufacturing productivity, depends on the amount of produced items and the limit is easy to count. If it’s a restaurant business, then it is a number of visitors served and the quality of service, the limit is how many tables a single waiter can serve.
But if your employees work at the computers the whole day, the determination of their efficiency becomes blurred and more difficult. That’s where tracking employee hours can come to help.
What data does tracking employee hours reveal?
Using a time tracking software you can get a clear understanding of how the employees use their time when working at the computer and away from it.
E.g., Yaware.TimeTracker is a software that enables both options.
a) You can assess employee productivity by analysing the Internet and software use. Yaware.TimeTracker automatically categorizes all websites and applications that employees use during the day into:
- productive (used daily. work related)
- unproductive (distracting)
- neutral (neutral or uncategorised)
According to that you will see a visual report like this one:
Using it you can quickly evaluate the productivity of the employee.
b) See how employees spend their time offline. It also matters when you’re trying to determine the productivity of staff.
By tracking employee hours you can see that maybe some employees take very few breaks, that’s why they are likely to burn out quickly. Or maybe your staff spends way too much time on meetings.
c) Additionally time tracking helps to reveal overloaded employees.
Frequent overloads hurt employee productivity and creativity, so it’s important to keep them under control.
What is the limit then?
For employees who spend most of the time at the computer, the limit is a number of hours worked.
So, don’t require 8 hours of plain productivity, because:
- a) that will make your staff burn out quickly;
- b) being productive for 8 hours straight is impossible.
Conclusion
There is a limit of employee productivity in terms of capacity. And tracking employee hours can both help you to determine its current level and predict the possible limit.
