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Why Your Business Needs to Analyze Workers’ Performance

The performance of individuals in your employ when put together makes up the overall performance of your entire organization. Sure, ineffective business practices, outdated systems, and hardware, as well as the shortage of resources can also contribute to the overall drop in performance. Nevertheless, more often than not, this performance is determined by A) competence of your staff and B) their willingness to invest effort. This is one of the most important reasons why your business needs to analyze workers’ performance but there are many others that you need to focus on. Here are four of them.

Their actions are affecting the organization

Every single product that you make and service that you provide speak volumes about your organization as a whole. If the job of your employee is to promote your business on social media (from their private account) then their private social media activity makes a difference, as well. So, their actions are definitely affecting the organization as a whole, which is why you need to put a much stronger emphasis on their performance. In a world that we live in, the line between employees’ work and private life is getting blurrier by the moment. The individual performance of each of your employees can be scaled up to make up the performance of your organization as a whole.

Are they doing things the right way around?

The next important thing that you can learn through worker’s performance analysis is whether or not they’re using adequate methods and measures to get the job done. You see, during their training, your employees will be instructed into the most effective business practices that they need to adhere to in the production process. Some employees, nonetheless, like to cut corners wherever they can but to discover these missteps you would have to watch them every step of the way.

Being next to them while they work is not indicative since A) they can pretend until you leave (after all, they know what they’re expected to do even if they don’t really do it) and B) is incredibly distracting. With a performance analysis, you can discover this quite easily. The number of mistakes, accidents, and faulty products is often more indicative than the number of completed tasks.

Are they really working?

According to Price’s law of productivity, the square root of your employees is doing about 50 percent of the work within the office. This means that if you have 9 people in your employ, 3 of them are doing 50 percent of the work, while the other 6 are doing the rest 50 percent. However, if you have 100 employees, 50 percent of the work is performed by only 10 people. In other words, while competence is growing linearly, the incompetence is growing exponentially. Keep in mind that this creates a psychological, even sociological effect where people start working less knowing that there’s someone else to do their work for you.

Needless to say, allowing for this phenomenon to grow unchecked is a massive asset and resource mismanagement. Therefore, you need to start looking more closely into what your employees are doing during their work hours. The most non-invasive way to do so is to invest in an employee monitoring software system like Uniguard. This allows you to keep track of their workplace activity, without accusing anyone or looking over their shoulder. It also helps you in the case where you’re employing telecommuters and remote workers.

How long does it take for them to become proficient?

Another important metric you get to learn this way is how long it takes for a new employee to become proficient enough at each post. Keep in mind that this differs from person to person but an average is quite important when you decide to start a new hiring process. You need to know (at least get an idea) of how long it will take for an employee to get from a point A (getting hired) to the point B (being able to carry their own weight around the office).

Needless to say, this metric alone helps you determine both the ROI of a potential hire and the break-even point. Remember, you invest resources both to hire the right people for the job and to train them. These resources come in many forms, ranging from learning materials and equipment, all the way to time and effort of your employees. One more thing you get to learn this way is just how efficient your training system actually is.

In conclusion

At the end of the day, in order to make all the right business decisions, you need to be fully aware of all the strengths and weaknesses of your enterprise. As it happens, the analysis of workers’ performance is one of the most effective ways to do so. It is also incredibly actionable and often gives you a number of opportunities to turn things ever in your favor.

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Written by Lucas H. Parker

My name is Lucas H. Parker and I am a freelance writer with a passion for business and marketing.