Employee Profitability: Inspect Your Employees' Work Efforts for Measurable Results

Too many small business managers let the employees do their jobs without measurable benchmarks and thus, without measurable results of employee productivity. Worse, they create measurable benchmarks and do not inspect them or the ones being measured for their accomplishments and employee productivity.

It does not work and that's not the way to measure employee productivity.

People naturally fall into their own rhythm, schedule, level of accomplishment, and, in other words, level of employee productivity. However, employee productivity must be guided and delivered under a manager's direction, as only management knows what it is projected and therefore required for performance, and in turn, profitability. If the worker is unaware of such goals and projections, or is aware but not held accountable, and is allowed to produce whatever he chooses, then the results will be random, unpredictable and well below the requirements of the business. It is simply human nature. Even the most trusted, most effective, self-motivated employee must be given benchmarks to measure employee productivity, and held accountable to a performance standard.

That standard must be reasonable but profitable, and must be determined by upper management, communicated to managers and then to rank and file, and then measured and reported back to all involved. An employee must know what is expected of them and what is being delivered so he can achieve effective employee productivity and be successful. This can only be done through stated goals and frequent inspection.

To support this process, an employee must be adequately trained and clearly informed of what is expected and must be made aware of how successfully (or not) he is meeting those expectations.

TRACK, MONITOR, CONTROL.

Track: Measure activity against projected goals.

Monitor: Review productivity frequently.

Control: Communicate directly with employees. This includes training and other necessary requirements to support success.

This process is critical for success and must be implemented for every employee in your company, even those for whom the nature of the job makes it difficult to quantify results. Find a way; it is important and the way to manage employee productivity effectively, profitably and with success.

Track, monitor and control. Inspect results often... daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. This is the path to achieving success. Do it.