As a manager, it can sometimes be difficult to accurately appraise the output and performance of your employees.
While metrics such as sales figures make it easy to tell who’s doing well in some departments, for the majority of roles it’s difficult to get an accurate picture.
Self promoters – or those who go for high profile wins, can mislead while the quiet types (or the ones you think are slacking) might actually be doing a lot more than you realize.
Employee assessments aren’t always that useful either. Often, colleagues don’t want to be the one to whistle blow on poor performers or highlight quiet stars, while their direct managers might not know their team as well as they think.
It’s not all about engagement
Despite what you might think, engagement is not actually a very good way to measure your employee’s performance.
According to 2013 research by Leadership IQ, in 42% of Companies, the best workers are actually the least engaged.
According to the study, in many instances the top performers in companies were not the most engaged. At the same time, low performers were actually very engaged as they thought the job was undemanding and easy.
Measuring productivity
Wouldn’t it be great to find out what your employees were really doing all day?
These days, there is a very effective way of monitoring employee productivity and separating the wheat from the chaff.
Employee monitoring software can be installed remotely from the cloud onto all employees devices and can be used to monitor exactly what applications and websites they use and for how long.
With the software customizable for each employee, applications and websites can be individually set as either productive, unproductive, neutral or prohibited. A very easy to understand report is then generated which shows exactly how much time each employee has spent on productive tasks.
It’s a great way to get a very clear picture of how your employees are working and to see who is wasting time on a regular basis and who is being productive. When combined with appraisals and other metrics it can give some very useful data for you to act on as a manager.
How have you been measuring employee productivity? Tell us in the comments section below!