Why is Productivity Management Important for Businesses?

In today’s new normal, the improvement of productivity is the most challenging matter that most global businesses are facing. Hybrid model has made it difficult for the employers to monitor staff productivity. That’s where productivity management works.

Productivity managment could help teams and individuals enhance productivity. In today’s article, we are going to discuss productivity management, its importance, and tips to help you to generate a great productivity management system.

What Is Productivity Management?

Productivity management refers to a framework or setup in the organizational level to help teams and individuals improve their productivity. As you might know, productivity could measure how efficiently and well businesses and their staff convert the inputs like capital and labor into the outputs like services or goods. The managers utilize incentives, goals, communication and development strategies to improve the performance of employees, even field workers like promoters while helping them enhance their productivity.
The higher the productivity, the more businesses gain. Well-managed teams regularly deliver increased productivity. Meanwhile, poor productivity management could become the biggest obstacle for lacluster staff engagement and performance.

Work productivity management is the secret of business success

Why is Productivity Important in Management?

Work productivity management is the foundation to help employees work harder when implementing business goals, helping build the most effective productivity management process.

Through the productivity management process, employees and managers will be more enthusiastic at work. At the same time, they can have a clear picture of what value they have brought to the company.

When setting productivity goals, employees know what they need to do to be most effective. This method also helps eliminate unnecessary jobs that do not bring positive results.

In the process of productivity management, managers must regularly communicate, discuss through meetings, update progress continuously, train personnel and provide feedback on employee performance.

Through it, managers and employees can quickly determine the amount of stagnated work, work efficiency, and flexibly change business plans and operations of the enterprise if needed.

Factors Affecting Work Productivity

There are many factors that affect employee performance. Some of the main factors that directly affect the productivity management process of enterprises include:

• Human capital includes employees' working skills, experience, professional knowledge,... These are factors that directly affect labor productivity.
• Facilities used in the working process, supporting software to help save time, effort and costs.
• Technological knowledge includes knowledge and how to create the best quality products, goods and services. Optimize business performance and support business sustainable development.

But how does management improve productivity?

According to studies, efficient management could boost productivity, enhance market growth and valu and the ability to handle adverse conditions (i.e. a recession). 
The action of enterprises and managers could influence the business’s productivity realization.
Managers are important to improve and maintain the levels of productivity in the team. As per a study from Gallup, almost 70 percent of the variance in the employee engagement could be attributable to the management. 
A great manager has a good understanding of each employee’s skill levels, their capabilities, and cooperate with them to ensure the optimal output from all employees. 

4 Basic Steps in the Productivity Management Process

The performance management process consists of four steps:

1. Planning 

This is the first step in the productivity management process. In this step, managers and employees need to agree on the goals to be achieved in the upcoming plan. Work goals that need to adhere to SMART principles include:

• Specific (S): Clarity, specificity.
• Measurable (M): Can be measured.
• Attainable (A): The feasibility of the goal.
• Relevant (R): Actuality of the plan.
• Timebound (T): Time limit for completion.

Work plan needs to be adjusted flexibly. Managers and employees set long-term and short-term goals by week, month, quarter, year. During the working process, it is necessary to change the plan to ensure that the goal is consistent with the core values ​​and general business direction.

Work plan needs to be adjusted flexibly

2. Act

In this step, all levels of management and employees will carry out the implementation of the roles and tasks of each individual. Each person's individual work plan serves the overall goals of the business.

3. Track 

In the process of implementing the plan, employees and management levels need to have a reciprocal exchange. This helps you clearly identify the difficulties encountered, how to solve and overcome the problems that arise. Through continuous training and feedback to come up with an appropriate plan of adjustment and change.

4. Review 

After each cycle, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, managers and employees need to have meetings to report, analyze and evaluate work results. Through the report to draw experience, give suggestions and discuss the goals and plans in the next period.

Evaluate productivity once a month to have a suitable adjustment method

Productivity Management Model Analysis

The two most important steps in the productivity management process are tracking and action. It is best to regularly monitor and urge serious and effective work while encouraging employees to optimize individual plans to achieve goals and finish on time.

Besides, you need to regularly give feedback on the work performance for employees. It also supports staff training, accompanying each other to overcome difficulties, and solve problems that arise quickly.

In short, the productivity management process doesn't have to be all four steps. However, it is necessary to take action and monitor continuously over a long period of work.

Managers need to accurately evaluate the performance of employees according to the overall goals of the business.

Continuously monitor employee activities with FieldCheck software

Modern Productivity Management Trends

The modern productivity management trend applied by large corporations such as Microsoft, Deloitte, Adobe, General Electric,... is a continuous productivity management process.

Exchange meetings are carried out continuously on a weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis. Regular exchange helps managers and employees have a common consensus when making action plans and business goals. Sticking to the plan helps to improve productivity and efficiency at work.

Managing work productivity with technology applications on mobile phones is the perfect solution for businesses. Currently, most businesses are managed by software to optimize time, costs and personnel.

Productivity management software on mobile phones

Limitations In Traditional Productivity Management System

Traditional productivity management methods are no longer suitable for business development. Because this method has many limitations when managing such as:

1. Lack of Objectivity

Traditional management methods are often subjective when assessing the capacity of employees. This leads to a lack of fairness and accuracy.

The capacity assessment once a year makes it impossible for the manager to memorize all the relevant facts. This leads to the efforts of many employees that will not be recognized, causing dissatisfaction.

Traditional management methods are inaccurate due to lack of transparency

2. Projection Process

In many enterprises, when it is necessary to evaluate the performance of employees, managers only say "Pass" or "Fail". Some other businesses scored from 1-10 without any feedback or comments.

This is the reason why employees "stagnate", ineffective management, preventing the development of the business.

3. Instead of Focusing on Training, Businesses Appreciate More

Before meetings to discuss and evaluate performance, employees are often worried because they are afraid of judgments from management.

In order for meetings to run smoothly and effectively, you need to make time for employee training. Giving employees praise before giving feedback helps them to be happier and reach their full potential.

What Elements Make Up An Effective Productivity Management Process?

To effectively manage work productivity, businesses cannot ignore the following factors.

1. Goal Setting

Setting accurate goals and communicating adequate information to departments is a necessary condition in productivity management.

Employees need to clearly understand their information, roles and goals in the business's action plan. This helps them have more passion and excitement when working.

Managers need to adjust goals for each level. Meeting to present the common goals of the business, orientation and specific action plans. Through the data, employees will set up and add task lists in their personal action plans.

The proactive spirit and responsibility for each person's work are sufficient conditions for the plan to be effective as desired.

Set goals and action plans

2. Transparency in Communication and Collaboration

The personality of the manager has a certain influence on the employee's enthusiasm. Because they always want to communicate and collaborate in a healthy way with reliable colleagues.

Therefore, if you are a leader, give regular feedback and talk frankly and honestly with employees as soon as you see a problem.

3. Employee Recognition

Any employee at work wants to be recognized. Managers who care about employees' feelings and always act with integrity will be welcomed.

To effectively manage work productivity, managers need to prioritize recognition and reward issues. This will stimulate employees to work harder to achieve their goals quickly.

4. Employee Development

Regularly organize training courses, hone skills to help employees become more outstanding. This helps employees have the desire to stick with the business for a long time. Because they have the opportunity to advance and develop. On the contrary, thanks to them, the business grows stronger.

5. Regular Feedback And Honest Reviews

Effective work productivity management is to regularly evaluate and accurately respond to employees' work performance and plan implementation results.

The reciprocal interaction is done easily and quickly by electronic devices. This helps employees and businesses capture all the information at the present time to have the most effective method of handling the situation.

FieldCheck integrates digital checklists to streamline the process of completing tasks like sales reporting and fieldwork.

Accordingly, in lieu of using pen-and-paper-based methods, store staff can utilize their mobile phones or tablets to complete their assigned tasks. They do not need to spend time sending emails or messages to report. All tools to do tasks are compiled in one application, FieldCheck.

As soon as the employees submit their work, the results are updated on the system in real-time. The supervisors can monitor their activities anywhere, anytime. You can rest assured that every piece of information uploaded is transparent and clearer, reducing the proportion of cheating.

On top of that, both managers and employees can know their performance shown right on the app in the form of a line chart and numbers. Accordingly, the final performance evaluation is more persuasive and transparent.

That's all about how to manage work productivity optimally. We hope our content is useful for your question. Thank you for reading!

FieldCheck is a management support software that helps businesses manage in-store activities such as quality audits, visual merchandising, product display, and time attendance.

The application is specially developed to optimize fieldwork and field trips of retail chains. You can easily use the application to manage or support promoters or PGs and store employees in performing their jobs.