How To Utilize Productivity Intelligence Across Various Departments Within An Organization

What Is Productivity Intelligence?

The future of work has arrived, and organizations are required to streamline the employee experience. Workforce flexibility must be accommodated with respect to work hours, work locations (from home, in-office, hybrid environment, work from anywhere) and worker designation (full time, part time, contractor, consultant). Organizational agility, once desirable, is now central to business survival. But no matter where teams are located or how employees work, they need to remain engaged in the business in a way that drives success.

Senior executives need actionable information that supports improved performance, growth and sustained contributions to the business, even in the face of change and crisis. Now is the time for productivity intelligence.

With insight into and a clear understanding of productivity, leaders can provide objective, consistent, and immediate feedback that supports knowledge based workers and helps to ensure success. We need to understand what outputs (i.e. activities) actually drive the desired results so we can reinforce them.

If activity is the most accurate measure of employee engagement, then with insight into the activities that make up a day, week, or month, leaders can visualize engagement quickly and make smarter decisions. In this way, productivity intelligence addresses the demand for innovation today, and helps to produce more favorable outcomes.

Let’s look at some of those proposed outcomes.

The Benefits Of Productivity Intelligence

When acted on, productivity intelligence can improve employee retention, enhance coaching opportunities, improve business performance and employee productivity, increase cloud tool adoption and ROI, and ultimately streamline the employee experience. According to SHRM, engaged employees tend to be optimistic, teamoriented, solution-oriented, selfless, passionate about learning, accountable, and likely to go above and beyond. With productivity intelligence data, companies can improve engagement levels and provide more opportunities for employees to grow and succeed.

Organizations that rely on data to foster improvement can create a culture that rests on a shared commitment to meet company objectives, encourage collaboration and an inclusionary environment, and promote openness.

Here’s a deeper dive into some of the key benefits of productivity intelligence.

Employee Retention

Knowing when employees are engaged and when they’re checked out can mean significant cost savings. Data helps to mitigate surprise resignations and gives leaders the chance to step in before it’s too late.

Coaching Opportunities

It’s not always easy to distinguish between will and skill. By understanding the patterns of a successful employee and someone who may be less successful, How To Utilize Productivity Intelligence Across Various Departments Within An Organization 5 managers and employees can work together in a transparent way to replicate behavior that typically results in success, and mitigate the behaviors that fall short.

Business Performance & Employee Productivity

Qualified data helps outline how employees work, not just what they produce. That insight helps teams to understand trends over time and better predict outcomes.

Cloud Tool Adoption

Providing tools that keep teams organized and aligned is critical for business development. But, if under-utilized, those tools are merely an expense. Visibility creates accountability, encourages employees to use tools that can improve performance, and calls attention to employees who may need guidance.

Employee Experience

When facing adjustments to the workplace there’s an immediate requirement to define opportunities for process improvement and streamline the employee experience through digital transformation.

Now that we understand what productivity intelligence is and the benefits it can provide, let’s consider who can take advantage of those benefits within an organization.

Who Can Benefit From Productivity Intelligence Data?

The role of productivity intelligence in streamlining the employee experience is focused on delivering non-invasive technology that supports a flexible work environment and provides employees with consistent, objective and immediate feedback to drive performance and growth. This digital transformation is necessary across all roles and departments within organizations today, and will provide greater opportunities for success across the board.

Next, we’ll highlight where productivity intelligence insights provide value across various roles and departments within an organization.

Key Roles

Executive Management

CEOs are concerned with all aspects of execution within a company. Things like expense management, market position, market share, go-tomarket, company reputation, profitability and sustainability are top of mind.

Operations

Operations teams are striving for excellence with execution and process improvement. They look for reputable solutions with proven success. Finance Leaders in finance are focused on costs, performance and profitability. Reducing costs and understanding both short and long-term impacts on expenses is critical for this group.

Information and Technology

IT and Information leaders are concerned with technical excellence, integration with other technologies, infrastructure alignment, and information security. Technical quality and integrity are a priority.

Human Resources

HR teams and those responsible for employee relations want to ensure fair and consistent labor practices, and are focused on hiring, terminations, and performance evaluations.

Areas of opportunity

Insights derived from productivity intelligence provide needed visibility and support leadership organization-wide in the following areas:

Remote Work Cost Reduction – The benefits of remote work have been discussed at length in recent months and years. Outside of things like a happier and more engaged workforce, and increased productivity, remote work can also lower expenses significantly. The costs of commercial real estate, insurance, building maintenance, and office and kitchen supplies can be eliminated (or significantly decreased) when employees work remotely. But, when employees are remote it’s harder to keep a pulse on behavior, which is why productivity intelligence data makes managing a distributed workforce simpler.

Labor Expense Controls – Employee compensation and expenses are top of mind in any discussions around operational cost reduction. With insight into employee engagement, companies are better prepared for attrition, allowing them to save thousands of dollars in onboarding costs and performance declines. Keeping top performers happy and engaged, and identifying red flags like a drastic decline in activity makes it easier to improve retention.

Improved Profitability – By reducing operational costs and improving employee performance, companies realize better results. Visibility into daily activity means leaders can better understand performance and productivity trends over time, using quantitative and qualitative data, to better predict outcomes.

Accelerated Employee Contributions – Productivity intelligence presents opportunities for feedback and growth, so employees can learn quickly, and continuously be improving. Understanding the behaviors that lead to success and those that may fall short allows leaders to replicate top performers and coach lower performers. Accelerated performance also ties into scalability, another area that’s top of mind for executives across various teams.

Streamlined Employee Experience – Workforce flexibility is required, regardless of work hours, work location and worker designation but employees need to contribute and remain engaged. Visibility into daily productivity provides that insight and delivers metrics that support flexibility. In today’s work environment, it’s more important than ever to ensure a robust employee experience; in fact, “Organizations that prioritize employee experience see a greater boost to profitability, resilience, and growth than those that don’t,” according to a Harvard Business Review study.

Risk Mitigation with Employees – With the right strategy in place to accommodate work from anywhere employees, negative and harmful workplace events can be managed, and hopefully mitigated. Sexual harassment, workers compensation, and workplace discrimination claims are reduced or can be largely eliminated, and unbiased performance feedback can be assured. If workplace bullying or discrimination occur in a remote setting, productivity intelligence data can identify employees who are no longer working to their full potential, or who may be overworked – which could be a sign that workplace bullies have offloaded their work on another employee. Productivity intelligence can help your team proactively identify workplace bullying before victims have a chance to burn out, take leave due to stress, or leave the company outright.

Cloud Tool ROI – Visibility into cloud tool usage allows executives to understand how often those tools are being utilized by employees. There are so many tools available today and unfortunately, many of them go unused but things like your Office Suite, UCaaS, and CRM solution are costly to implement and maintain. Transparency into usage creates accountability and encourages adoption but also gives managers an indication of when an employee may be struggling with the tools they’ve been asked to use.

Employee Burnout – Burnout is a major issue with some aspects of a remotely distributed workforce. It’s fairly easy to see who is at risk of burnout in an office, unless employees are very quiet about it for fear of getting fired. It’s not so easy to see who is at risk of burnout in a remote environment. According to The Mayo Clinic, job burnout can result from a variety of factors but “an inability to influence decisions that affect your job — such as your schedule, assignments or workload” is one major factor. Similarly, Harvard Business Review suggests that things like an unmanageable workload, lack of support, and unreasonable time pressure, could play a role too. Being able to identify easily and quickly who may be at risk of burnout based on daily activity is incredibly beneficial and allows managers to step in before it’s too late. If an employee consistently puts in high levels of activity, day after day, week after week, they may be overworked and in need of help. With insight, managers can rethink workload, reallocate resources, and adjust deadlines.

Data Security Compliance – “Cybersecurity is more top of mind for tech executives given the rise in phishing attacks, and the challenges of managing a distributed workforce” according to CIO Dive. With the massive shift to a nimble, technology-driven workforce, CIOs and tech executives are tasked with identifying the initiatives that align best with business goals without sacrificing innovation. Visibility gives these leaders assurance that the tools they’re investing in, for instance to keep networks and data secure, are used.

Employee Evaluations – More organizations have shifted away from annual performance reviews. In a July 2020 survey of 1,000 US-based workers, less than 50% of participants admitted to finding annual performance reviews helpful. Close to 70% believe active coaching sessions would be more useful. Managers must be engaged daily to ensure employee growth. Relying on objective and unbiased assessment with quantified and qualified performance data about all employees can make that possible.

Terminations – Potential liability associated with claims of “wrongful termination” can be refuted with documentation of events leading to separation How To Utilize Productivity Intelligence Across Various Departments Within An Organization 10 of employment. Trending information and objective data is critical to mitigating this potential area of liability.

Employee Training Programs – When learning management solutions are used, productivity intelligence can be leveraged to quantify the effectiveness of performance with ramping of new hires.

Fraudulent Work Hours Being Claimed – Occupational fraud can cause significant financial loss for any business. Visibility into daily activity gives employers factual evidence of hours worked, engagement, and other work duties that can help prevent false claims.

Tying It All Together

In an environment where change is the norm, reliance on technology is unavoidable, and in-person interaction is less of a priority, we can’t ignore the importance of employee engagement. Companies need to provide tools that keep employees engaged so businesses can thrive and to ensure high levels of satisfaction.

Agility in business is no longer a choice, it’s a necessity. And, to be agile we need information. Data that gives leaders an understanding of daily output, levels of engagement across teams, and opportunities for improvement can quickly drive overall performance and growth without sacrificing flexibility. Plus, relying on data to foster improvement keeps everyone focused on company goals, and supports a collaborative and open environment.

At Prodoscore, productivity intelligence is presented in the form of a simple score and easy to use dashboard so organizations can access data quickly and easily. The results are greater employee retention, enhanced coaching opportunities, improved business performance and employee productivity, increased cloud tool adoption and ROI, and a streamlined employee experience.

It’s no longer business as usual – the future of work has arrived and digital transformation is now.

How can data help your managers become better leaders?