Increase Workplace Efficiency with ActivTrak

Operational efficiency is the relationship between an organization’s output and input, that when healthy, helps businesses cut down on unnecessary costs while increasing revenue. It’s what businesses strive to do – product a high-quality product at scale with as few resources as possible.

To decrease extraneous costs, the operations manager must be able to identify which processes in place are not needed. To do this, they need to be able to identify a baseline of operations.

Operational efficiency is calculated by dividing output (revenue, sales, cold calls, inbound leads, etc) by input (resources, man-hours, licenses, etc). As explained by Mankins in the Harvard Business Review, efficiency is a matter of producing the same output with less input.

In order to calculate efficiency, decision-makers need to determine which output and input variables are most appropriate for their organization. These variables are determined by their key performance indicators; the quantifiable metrics that reflect the health of an organization (dictionary). These can shed light on the overall direction of an organization by providing unbiased data about performance.

• Step 1: Record your performance and compare it against industry standards. This will give the organization a reference point to measure improvements.
• Step 2: Review the baseline of operations and identify the functions and goals within each department.
• Step 3: Understand the key players involved when it comes to executing those functions and goals.
• Step 4: Then review how much time it takes to achieve those goals and the quality of work done every step of the way.
• Step 5: Within each step, identify bottlenecks that make that process slower. Bottlenecks are any functions or steps that are unnecessary for completing the task at hand. For example, waiting a couple of days for another approval when two approvals are sufficient would be a bottleneck.
• Step 6: Remove those bottlenecks. One strategy to eliminate waste is the 5S method: Sort, Shine, Straighten, Standardize and Sustain. The leadership team needs to collaborate with other employees to ensure the right steps are taken.
• Step 7: Measure the performance and compare to the previous baseline of operations to track improvements. Make sure that the quality of work done along the way is not impaired.
• Step 8: Track performance by creating reports or a dashboard. Convene with your team at regular intervals to discuss performance and areas of improvement.

Note to the COO
There is much more to efficiency than simply cutting costs. It takes more strategy and forethought. A study done by PwC UK showed that two-thirds of UK businesses planned to cut costs over a 12-month period, but less than 30 percent of those organizations were able to reach their operational efficiency goals and only about a fifth of them could sustain the benefits of cutting costs over a period of three years.

Improving operational efficiency requires the collection and monitoring of data to establish a baseline upon which you can measure growth. We know employee monitoring and activity analysis have a mixed history and association with intrusive supervision and heavy oversight. ActivTrak intends to change that by focusing on the real output of employee monitoring: improved productivity and efficiency.

We designed ActivTrak from an ethical direction: with cornerstones of transparency, collaboration and informed insight. We’ve consciously developed a powerful platform that focuses on the collection of contextual data, avoiding intrusive employee monitoring technologies like keystroke logging and video surveillance. We invite the users of our product to join us on our journey to migrate employee monitoring from the age of surveillance and into the results and data-driven space that is productivity insights and operational efficiency.