Measuring Employee Productivity

Employee expectations to maintain:

• Displaying a positive and respectful attitude
• Working with honesty and integrity
• Performing their work to a reasonable standard 

Employees expectations;

• Proper training, support and leadership from management and access to resources
• Timely and accurate payment of wages
• Safe working environments
• Explanation of responsibilities, company policies and procedures
• Regular feedback from supervisors or managers.

Team expectations refer to the behaviors that occur while working together on tasks. 

• Respect and courtesy to everyone.
• Be accountable for your work.
• Be reasonably flexible about task assignments.
• Be willing to lend a helping hand.
• Ask for help when needed.
• Work safely together.
• Be open to constructive feedback.
• Be self-motivated and reliable.
• Share ideas for improvement.
• Be cheerful, positive and encouraging to other team members.

• Short breaks between learning or working, and working for brief periods with small breaks in-between can lead to a higher-quality output. This is known as the Pomodoro Technique.

• Games at work make employees form a bond with their co-workers, establishing friendships that lead to better teamwork and improved communication among team members.

It is a general notion at an office that gaming activities at work are counterproductive, however, games can be an amazing tool to create a better work environment, increasing employee satisfaction and productivity.

Gaming at work bridges the gap between work and relaxation, making work feel more enjoyable and fun, making employees see their working hours in a positive, joyful way.

In a fundamental sense, workplace happiness comes when:

• We enjoy doing the tasks assigned to us
• We feel right about the people we are working with
• We are happy with the financial benefits we get from the job
• We have the scope of improving our existing skills
• We feel respected and acknowledged at work

Happy employees are compulsory for a growing business.

A study on organizational success revealed that employees who feel happy in the workplace are 65% more energetic than employees who don’t. They are two times more productive and are more likely to sustain their jobs over a long period of time.

The structure of most working environments punishes people for efficiency and rewards them for looking busy. We need to shift our focus from the number of hours spent on something to the quality generated.

To make a 3-hour workday feasible, design the right environment to make it possible.

• Behavior is the result of environment. If you have many apps open, you’ll be more likely to be distracted.
• Eliminate the need for willpower. Think of willpower like a bank balance. For every decision you make, you spend a unit. Design the right environment, so you avoid depleting all of your willpower.

• Recognize the Shift in Global Understanding of D&I.  Diverse thinkers come from a variety of different backgrounds.
• Build an Inclusive Environment. All people are encouraged to draw upon their unique experiences, perspectives and backgrounds to advance business goals.
• Use Multiple Practices and Measures.  Have solutions in place to monitor and retain a talented and diverse workforce.
• Ensure Leaders Model Diversity and Inclusion. It sets the tone for the rest of the organization to follow suit.

• Recognize the Connection Between Innovation and D&I. Diversity and inclusion increase innovation and reduce business risk.

The concept of cognitive diversity focuses on diversity of thinking and is composed of four dimensions:

• Perspectives. People represent situations in different ways
• Interpretations. Through diverse interpretations, teams can discover multiple resolutions.
• Heuristics. People resolve issues in different ways.
• Predictive models. Some analyze, and others look for a story. Both are useful for discovering workplace solutions.

Even high-performing employees can face a decline in job performance and engagement when working remotely. This can be due to:

• Lack of face-to-face supervision, which leads to a two-way communication gap and even mistrust.
• There is a delay in the procurement of information as remote workers aren’t able to sense the atmosphere and real-time events at the workplace, leading to a lack of ‘mutual knowledge’.
• A sense of isolation among remote workers, leading to a feeling of less belongingness within the organization.
• Distractions at home due to unplanned work-from-home transition, with employees balancing childcare and many other responsibilities along with work.

A few specific, research-backed steps that can be taken to improve the engagement and productivity of remote employees:

• Establishing Structured Daily check-ins, by establishing a daily call or touchpoint.
• Providing several different communication technology options, using virtual communication tools like Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams etc., and making use of video conferencing.
• Establishing clear rules of engagement for communicating with the coworkers or the managers, according to the levels of urgency.
• Providing opportunities for remote social interaction by talking about non-work activities, thereby reducing the feeling of isolation among remote workers.
• Offering encouragement and emotional support by listening to the workers, acknowledging their stress, and keeping their needs and issues in focus.

For clarity, stability and better mental health, meditation (or mindfulness) is a universally recognized training activity.

Breaks and time-outs lead to better productivity, as they allow the mind to form connections and help in creativity and even relationships.

Organizations know how to measure vocational skills. They know how to measure typing skills for example. However, they are less able to measure passion or commitment.

Organizations hire and fire based on vocational skill output. But, getting rid of a negative thinker or a bully is much more difficult. An employee that demoralizes an entire team is hampering productivity.

If you've got the vocational skills, you're of little help without the human skills. The soft skills, or rather real skills, can't replace vocational skills, but amplify the things you've already been measuring.

For instance, a team member with all the traditional vocational skills is the baseline. Add to that perceptive, charismatic, driven, focused, goal-setting, inspiring, motivated, deep listener, and you have a team member that will benefit the organization in exponential ways.

The turn toward financial statistics means that instead of considering how economic developments could meet our needs, it instead is to determine whether individuals are meeting the demand of the economy.

Until the 1850s, social measurement in 19th-century America was a collection of social indicators known as "moral statistics," which focused on the physical, social, spiritual, and mental conditions of the people. Human beings were at the center, not dollars and cents.

What led to the pricing of progress in the mid-19th century was capitalism.

Capitalism is not just the existence of markets. It is also capitalised investment, where elements of society and life - including natural resources, technological discoveries, works of art, urban spaces, educational institutions, and people - are changed or "capitalised" into income-generating assets that are valued by their ability to make money and yield future returns.