{"id":46273,"date":"2024-12-09T00:02:26","date_gmt":"2024-12-09T06:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trainingmag.com\/?p=46273"},"modified":"2024-12-04T22:35:05","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T04:35:05","slug":"employee-effectiveness-vs-productivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trainingmag.com\/employee-effectiveness-vs-productivity\/","title":{"rendered":"Employee Effectiveness vs. Productivity"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent headline in Inc. magazine<\/em> sought to explain \u201cWhy Productivity Will Rule the Workplace in 2024.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

That begs the question, what is productivity?<\/p>\n

For me, it\u2019s always meant the number of articles I could write or edit, or the number of social media postings I could do, or the number of digital tasks I could complete per week on whatever Website I worked on.<\/p>\n

The interesting thing is that for many job roles, productivity can\u2019t be measured in deliverables.<\/p>\n

What do you do when you have some employees who have productivity that is measured in concrete deliverables and other employees whose productivity is more nebulous?<\/p>\n

When Your Employees Can Be Measured by Deliverables<\/h2>\n

These employees and their managers can self-report about the number of whatever tasks are completed per day, per month and per year. That alone, however, would not make a productivity measure meaningful.<\/p>\n

What if they do, indeed, finish an impressive amount of work on a regular basis, but the work doesn\u2019t accomplish what you hoped it would? They are working hard and \u201cproductively,\u201d you might say, but to what end?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say you have an employee in my field, publishing. The employee writes\/edits and posts an impressive amount of content to the company\u2019s Website. However, the readership of the site is low, and, consequently, the site\u2019s advertising sales are down. Does the employee deserve the \u201cproductive\u201d label?<\/p>\n

A Better Measure Is Effectiveness<\/h2>\n

Managers can obsess and pat themselves on the back about the number of hours an employee spends in the office or the number of tasks an employee completes, but if the ultimate result is not higher profitability, is there a point? The same can be said for a nonprofit organization with employees who complete a tremendous amount of work but have little to show for the number of people or animals who were helped as a result of that work.<\/p>\n

Rewards for Less Work But Greater Impact?<\/h2>\n

In effect, you have to ask yourself whether you want to reward employees for working smarter rather than harder. I would say that you do. If an employee is able to do less than another employee but makes the work they do have tremendous impact, then they are the more valuable employee.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re worried about them \u201cgetting away with\u201d and being rewarded for doing less work than other employees, you\u2019re missing the point. Looking at it one way, the employee has freed up their time to do other things. Unlike less effective employees, the majority of their time is not tied up doing just a small number of tasks. Their work portfolio can be expanded, and they can take on new projects.<\/p>\n

They also can be promoted to direct the harder working, albeit less effective, employees. It\u2019s not your hardest workers but your most efficient and effective workers you want directing others.<\/p>\n

Determining Who Gets Promoted<\/h2>\n

What if, instead of focusing on how many tasks each employee completes, you look solely at which employees in the exact same job roles most contributed to profitability or whatever your desired end result is? The question becomes: Regardless of how much this person got done last year, how much profitability or help for our charity\u2019s beneficiaries did this person accomplish, for example?<\/p>\n

They may get to the office later or take more vacation time and get less done than other employees, but what they do accomplish is really great and makes a huge difference to the organization.<\/p>\n

When you look at productivity through the lens of ultimate benefit of the work instead of the short-term thinking of volume of tasks completed, you get a true sense for each employee\u2019s value to your company.<\/p>\n

Do you measure productivity in your organization? If so, how do you do it so the measures you use give you an accurate reading of which employees are most essential?<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why the hardest workers are not always the most valuable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-46273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blog"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEmployee Effectiveness vs. Productivity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Why the hardest workers are not always the most valuable.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/trainingmag.com\/employee-effectiveness-vs-productivity\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Employee 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