How To Determine Where To Make Productivity Changes At Your Organization

Many organizations are going through changes in how they structure their workforce. From talent acquisition to productivity, as remote and hybrid work cultures has made a resounding financial impact that is forcing organizations to adjust how they move forward with their people strategies. One areas where we see major changes is with productivity. Because many employees are now forced to work remotely, organizations have to make changes to the their workflows, processes and employee engagement strategies moving forward. 

With so many different areas that need to be adjusted, it is critical that you have a plan for how to determine what areas you should make productivity enhancements in. With so many different areas within your organization that can be changed, figuring out which areas take priority over others is critical to ensuring that your changes make the the most immediate impact.

Below we share how too determine where you can make productivity enhancements at your organization.

Conduct Employee Interviews / Surveys

One way you can determine where to make productivity changes is to conduct employee interviews and surveys. It is critical that you get insights from your employees so you have qualitative research to better understand their work habits, processes and workflows. It also gives you insight what pain points your employees are having in specific areas that impact their productivity. The other benefit is employee surveys gives you additional data that you can correlate with your productivity data from software systems so you have a complete picture on what areas need improvement.

Analyze Your Data

Another important step that can help you determine where to make productivity enhancements is by analyzing your software data. Data doesn’t lie, and by analyzing your data that you have from your software systems, it gives you data-driven insight on where productivity enhancements can make the biggest impact. It also acts as a check on your qualitative research from employee interviews or surveys as they can be subject to response bias. By combining your qualitative research with your quantitative data, it will help you determine what areas of productivity could have the biggest improvement.

Measure Potential Financial Impact

Once you have your data analyzed, it is critical to determine the potential financial impact of the productivity enhancements that you think should be implemented. This a crucial step as it gives you insight into how any changes to productivity can make a financial impact at your company. Since productivity data is not financial, integrating it with people financial metrics and analysis will tell you what the expected financial impact would be from the productivity changes. Financial impact can include everything from whether the productivity enhancements eliminates overhead costs to helping generate more revenue for the company. This can also help you get buy-in from leadership and other key stakeholders on any productivity enhancements that you suggest during the approval process, as decision makers usually look for financial information to determine whether to approve a new solution or not.

Search Solutions

Once you have an idea of the productivity areas that you want to focus on, it is critical that you figure out the types of solutions that can be implemented. You might find in one area has a big financial upside for your organization is limited in solution options or that the solutions that make sense for your company are too expensive in relation to its financial benefit. By researching solutions and looking into the pros and cons of each, you can figure out if its possible to execute on the productivity enhancement that you want to make. You should also model solutions to determine the potential ROI that you would expect from implementing the change within the first three years of implementation.

Assess Implementation Risk

The last factor you should consider when determining your productivity changes is to assess potential implementation risk. This includes financial, adoptability, usability and security risks that derail your productivity enhancement efforts. All these need to be taken into account as you determine you productivity enhancements because it allows you to assess any downsides of making any changes within your organization. If a productivity change has a great financial impact, but you believe that adoptability will be low, then it should rank lower than other productivity enhancements that have a lower risk of adoption. Understanding your organizations risk profile around these changes will help you determine what productivity changes you should make and ensure that it has the biggest impact.