Useful formula to calculate productivity

Computing is looking for the best metrics to measure the contribution of today's IT to workflow and the bottom line.

Working hard? You're in good company, and it seems to be paying off not just for your employer but for you too.

Productivity has increased in 78 per cent of companies. In an Optimise study of 300 business technology executives, 59 per cent say their companies' level of productivity is somewhat higher than a year ago, while nearly one fifth believe productivity is significantly higher.

Some three quarters of the businesses surveyed also reward their workers for productivity gains. Some 51 per cent say they have formal incentives for workers to increase output or productivity and 24 per cent have informal incentives.

Some 62 per cent of the sites monitoring productivity say managers in their companies apply a formula to calculate worker output.

Of these, 44 per cent say the formula was created in-house, three per cent say they rely upon a third-party formula, and 15 per cent use a combination of in-house and third-party formulas to track productivity.

Of the various metrics that companies employ to measure worker output, the most popular entail counting the hours that employees are on the job on a per-day or per-week basis.

It's a method that's applied at 68 sites, while 63 per cent use revenue or sales per employee, 56 per cent use customer retention, and 54 per cent rely on return-on-investment metrics.

Other metrics include customer transactions per day or per hour and net profit per employee.

There are plenty of non-technology steps that managers can take to rally their employees effectively. Fostering a team environment is key for 80 per cent of companies, while 75 per cent report that cross-training is effective.

Process improvements that reduce tasks are important to managers, as are business practices adjusted to support new technologies.

The measurement of productivity, like return on investment, is not usually devised by people who understand technology and therefore rarely gives a true measure of value.

Computing is looking for the best metrics to measure the contribution of today's IT to workflow and the bottom line.

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