Integr8ting Productivity With Time and Facts

How many hours per day is the typical person really work and really is productive?

Well, you can start with an hourly employee.  They work, typically, an 8.5 hour day.  But of course, that .5 is for an unpaid lunch, so really it's just 8 hours even.

But they get breaks, two 15 minutes ones, and you can't really ask for production while they're on break, meaning now you're down to 7.5 hours.

End game: Production, true production that is, should be based on a 7.5 hour work day, but not an 8 hour work day.

As a side note, I tend to say that coders should work on a 7 hour work day so that they are given an extra 30 minutes per day for tough accounts or problem solving with their team lead/supervisor.


Next, how do you really know what their productivity is and what it should be.  Let's take the second part first.

There may be any number of ways to determine what the general production is.  Go on a list server or LinkedIn group and ask your peers.  Maybe read an article from a journal for your specialty.  But those tell you only what the general production for any given role is, without taking into account the nuances of your particular organization.  It's truly unfair to simply use the standard level for production.

What I recommend to Integr8tion partners is that they do two things to determine production:

1. Find out what the industry says their production should be
2. Time study your own employees to find out what it actually is

Next, I take the difference and add 5% (gotta aim high) and use that are our goal.

Now for the first part of the question, measuring production.  Here are my tips:

1: Automate: Humans are prone to error.  I know, big shocker, but that's why you need to automate as much of the process as possible.  Don't let staff manually track inches, pages, accounts, etc, since they could make an error either on purpose or mistake and throw off your calculations.  On the backend, who wants to waste the time manually adding up everything and also worrying about making mistakes.  Get the process online to save time and avoid confusion.

2. Set a policy and get HR's approval:  Always have a policy in place the explicitly explains what the production standard is, how it's calculated and what the consequences are for failing to meet it.  Work with your HR to ensure they believe in the policy and will help enforce it should that problem arise.

3. Be tough but fair:  Explain the policy and process to your staff, answer any questions they may have, but when push comes to shove, you need to be tough and enforce the standards.  Even if that means writing up "good" employees.  You need to administer the policy fairly and evenly, but let everyone know there are standards and they must be met.