A version of this article first appeared in 2010, and was written, tongue-in-cheek, to warn of impending lunacy. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should!
Any similarity with trade names or organisations is purely coincidental.
It appears the UK economy has started to grow again!
Sooner or later, organisations will come up against capacity constraints.
It is usually the case that unused capacity becomes lost capacity. The assumption that you had the capacity two years ago so still have it today, is just that, an assumption.
To help bring up general productivity levels, to boost capacity, we suggest you think about the three techniques below and what they can do to your organisation’s performance.
Financial Incentives
In the industrial setting, we need to make widgets more cheaply than our competitors. The following story shows a solution.
A keyboard manufacturer had to ensure the availability of all the parts needed to make a keyboard. In order to maximise efficiency, they have dedicated moulding machines, one for each key, one for each part of the case.
The operators of the machines are extremely skilled. By careful adjustments to the machines, they can change the machine’s performance. Therefore, a financial incentive means more parts are made.
The bonus scheme was a runaway success!
So much so that the storage facility was overstocked with L, F and O keys for weeks.
Clearly, this wasn’t acceptable, so the operators were asked to slow down. But naturally it was only fair to protect their bonus payments.
Clearly tightly incentivising people has dramatic results.
Work rate monitoring
One way to measure how much attention people are paying to their work is to ensure people are not looking out of the window, daydreaming, when they should be hammering the keyboard!
The biometric iris scanning systems is an obvious solution. A webcam monitors the amount of time the operator is looking at the screen.
The software package, Scanoptes, can display their statistics in real time, as well as produce summary reports. This allows the employer to determine when an operator usually has slack time and can then have a supervisor on hand to give encouragement.
This productivity tool is being enhanced at present as it was discovered that many operators were capable of staring at the screens, daydreaming with their eyes open! Just another example of the lengths some people will go to in the attempt to avoid work!
Creative
Obviously, those in the creative industries don’t expect to be tied to their PC screens!
Yet capturing their ideas is important and a measure of how creative they are being. A simple solution, utilising well proved technology, is to monitor keyboard activity. The theory is simple. The more they type, the more they have created.
Clichz measures the person’s keystroke rate. While a copy typist might achieve a 1000 keystrokes per hour that would be high for a creative activity.
However, the Clichz software has a nice feature. Along with the customary remote monitoring and summary reporting, it provides individual feedback to each creative person!
Each person has popup display showing their Clichz rating against their peers. This is done in a completely open manner and the figures are collated to be used in the annual appraisals during the pay rise discussion.
Organisations find that this hugely increases the amount of created material!
Of course, this incentive should not be applied to the quality control team. We would not suggest any pressure to pass more work and therefore endanger standards.
Organisations using Clichz, have been extremely successful as witnessed by the expansion of their quality control teams.
The metrics are very good. The creative people are now twice as productive, as evidenced by their pay rates, and some organisations have had to treble their quality staff to keep pace with output!
If this sounds familiar, you know where to find the cure, contact us here