5 Tips: Gauge Employee Productivity with Project Management

• Table of contents
  • What Entails Productivity?
  • Importance of Measuring Productivity
  • How to Accurately Measure Employee Productivity?
  • How does Project Management Software Track employee productivity better?
  • Measuring Employee Productivity with PMS
  • Summing It Up

Assessment of employee productivity is very important for fostering a significant relationship between employer and employees. This relationship usually has a significant effect on customer relationships, which is also an independent high impact factor facilitating the smooth running of a business. As essential as this may sound, a lot of business organizations still do not accurately measure their employees' productivity. This is because they lack the reliable automated equipment to carry out the assessment.

There may be several actionable methods of measuring employee productivity manually. Still, they have been found to be relatively expensive and time-consuming as a lot of human effort may be required to carry out the assessment more often than not. In addition to that, individual performance is cumbersome to measure due to variances in workflow and assignments being carried out by each individual. This makes the entire process time-consuming, and it may require extra cost to speed up the process making it cost-ineffective to perform.

Measuring employee productivity is one of the business processes taken over by workflow automation, which poses an actionable solution to the workload cast upon the process, However, before going into the details of tackling employee assessment via automated methods, let us begin by swallowing a good understanding of the concept of productivity, especially where it has to do with employee productivity.

Employee Productivity and Project Management

What Entails Productivity?

Generally, productivity is referred to as a phase whereby the time and effort invested in a venture produce results that satisfy the invested resources. It can also be seen as a measure of the efficiency of a person, a group of people or a machine to deliver according to the resources they have been presented to work with. It retains the same concept in business, except for the fact that in business, productivity is measured by the revenue achieved from a venture.

In a business where profits are the key factor, an investment is only referred to as a productive one when the resources invested are less than the revenue generated as the investment outcome. John Hoeven, An American banker, and politician, currently serving as the senior U.S. Senator from North Dakota since 2011, insisted on the importance of productivity in business when he said, "Nowadays, business is all about productivity."

Basically, productivity refers to the quantity and quality of the outcome-based when in comparison with the input. That is to say that businesses measure productivity by calculating how much they stand to gain by investing time, human, and financial resources in a project.

Importance of Measuring Productivity With Project Management Software

As a leader, you have to know every relevant detail about your followers to relate well with them and achieve greater heights together. Especially in a business organization setting, it is important for the employer to simultaneously monitor the employees' performances for greater efficiency. More specifically, a manager needs to know precisely the abilities of each employee to assign tasks to them in accordance with their specific skill set with task management software

In all, proper evaluation of employee performance is important because it grants the employers the opportunity to monitor workers' efficiency properly and identify those who are passionate in working for them and those who do not take the jobs seriously. This, in turn, determines proper compensation of the effective workforce, which will result in improved overall Team productivity.

Without this information, the employer or manager of the organization cannot properly schedule pay grades or even know the employees that deserve promotions. This will result in underappreciation of the more productive employees and may affect their relationship with colleagues and customers.

How to Accurately Measure Employee Productivity?

Now that we have had a detailed rundown of what employee productivity assessment necessitates, we can now proceed to find out the method with which an accurate employee evaluation process can be successfully achieved.

Basically, to measure employee productivity, a business owner is required to monitor the activities carried out by each employee, then proceed to find out the outcome of these tasks being handled by them to finally evaluate the efficiency ratio in comparison with their pay grades. Yes, doing this is as difficult as it sounds, and assigning this role to an individual or a group will cost so much money. Also, there is no guarantee that the statistics the team delivers will be accurate, as they may not consider some easily neglectable factors during the evaluation.

However, there is a more conventional method of achieving even better results at a cheaper rate. In fact, this conventional method delivers perfectly at no cost due to the fact that it accomplishes another very important task at the same time. A project management app organizes and tracks the efforts and performances of members that make up the workforces of the various projects in the organization. This creates an avenue for the employer to extract employee productivity data.

Even further, an automated project management software (such as the Projectsly by 500apps) also possesses the ability to evaluate this employee productivity data compared to the outcome of the work they put in to calculate the productivity level for each member of the team. Since the entire process is automated, the accuracy and efficiency of the software are beyond a reasonable doubt, as it will reflect the statistics accurately as it has been evaluated.

How does Project Management Software Track employee productivity better?

Project management software like Projectsly grants the project manager and the business owner access to tools that will allow them to split all the high-level projects into easily monitorable tasks and assignments. A good project managing software will also proffer an advanced task scheduling platform where the progress and involvements of every assigned role will be reported in detail. This will enable the owner of the project to monitor the conduct of the employees in real-time.

For instance, assuming the work done by ten engineers to conclude a project was carefully recorded in detail. An employee assessment team will record the time spent by each engineer in the workshop and then sum up the general time spent by all of them. Then each engineer will be paid in accordance with the ratio of the time they spent individually to the general time spent by all others. The figure will be multiplied by the revenue generated from the project. The only lapse here is that some of the time spent by the engineers in the workshop may not have been spent working on the project, which will mean a supposed reduction in the wage paid. Thereby reducing costs for the company and increasing profit from the entire project.

Measuring Employee Productivity with Project Management Software

After going through the details provided above, it can be agreed that Project management software is actionable in tracking employee productivity by tracking their activities and performances in tasks assigned to them. The remote access feature offered by 500apps Projectsly allows the user to track and assess the conduct of the employees without persistently doing a physical check in the facility or workshop.

This remarkable project managing software also has the necessary feature to allow users to communicate remotely in real-time. Below we have put together five tips on how to use project managing software to measure productivity seamlessly. Now let's get to it.

1. Setting Long-Term and Short-Term Goals

Project planning software is usually programmed to track workers' contributions towards achieving a revenue-packed purpose. Setting long- and short-term goals makes it easier for the software to evaluate employee productivity by equating their contribution towards the goal with the benefits derived from achieving the said goal.

Setting these goals can help eradicate pretence from the employees when there are no actual timed projects at hand. For instance, an employee in marketing may be less functional after a successful campaign has been concluded with positive results but will still want to enjoy the same pay as when there was more work to do. Setting a new goal, therefore, keeps them busy, and their performance can easily be assessed using the outcome of the goal they have contributed to the pursuit.

2. Stating Deadlines for the Goals to be Achieved

Measuring employee productivity by setting goals will be even more efficient when the goals have stipulated deadlines accompanying them. When goals have been set to pursue, and the teams are aware of the roles expected of them to carry out, the introduction of deadlines will help the workers strive to achieve the goal, and all the results will come out in time for performance evaluation. Setting achievable deadlines has been made easy using Project management software.

Without setting deadlines, the teams will not deliver simultaneously, and the result computation process will not be uniform. Also, 'time' is one of the important resources being invested in a project, and it is important in the computation of the productivity level of the project. For example, ten workers spend five days building a storehouse while five workers build the same storehouse in half the time (less than three days). In grading their performances, if the quality and cost of the building are the same, the next factor to consider is the punctuality of the delivery, which will mean the five workers are more productive than the 10.

3. Assign Individual Roles to Each Team Member

While teamwork may be highly encouraged, it still has its disadvantages; tracking employee performance as a team will mean an equal split in blames and performance bonuses, which will produce an inaccurate result. The best way to get past this is by assigning individual roles to team members, which can easily be done using task management tool.

By scheduling individual tasks to team members, the team members will now be rated according to how each performs in the responsibility assigned to them. Furthermore, this will encourage division of labor and poses a much greater chance for the teams to meet their deadlines.

4. Communicating With the Employees During Project

During the project, good communication between employer and employees is encouraged in order to make the work more effective. Advanced project management software like Projectsly is incorporated with team collaboration tools for the team members to communicate easily. The chat feature allows team members to brainstorm together and find solutions faster.

The communication feature also allows the business owner to communicate possible changes to the employees. It creates an opportunity for the employees to communicate their experiences easily to colleagues and their superiors if the need arises. In other words, it helps in making sure the employees are aware of the new changes and allows for flexibility where it is required.

5. By Digitizing Employee Data and Integrating With Other Business Management Software

Measuring employee productivity with project management software can be made easier by integrating with other relevant business management tools that can process employee productivity data from other data gathering software like the email marketing apps, the calendar app, and other relevant management software.

Proper project management software like Projectsly has the 3rd party integration feature that can be used to ease the tracking of employee productivity. Many other important cloud-based tools can be assessed using this automated project management software and its ability to store and analyze data. Ready to streamline project planning process and enhance team productivity with Projectsly? Sign Up 14 Day Trial

Summing It Up

With the rate at which the remote jobs system is being adopted, the future of employee productivity tracking will become based completely on automated project management software that accommodates tracking of remote roles being carried out.

In the same vein, the five tips expressed in this article are actionable for tracking employee productivity on a reliable project management software like the Projectsly by 500apps which also allows for effective remote tracking. For more information on Projectsly, you can visit our website.