MeasureProductivity

Markets and industries differ in productivity measures. Each market segment can adopt these methods to measure and increase research productivity.

Productivity differs from one market to another and from one industry to another. Various industries may have the same measures in productivity, but no two industries have exactly the same set of measures in its entirety. Markets differ in categories and each of them comes with corresponding measures in increasing productivity. It is important to keep in mind that no matter what system or market is being examined, output is but the only aspect that is being measured. Output can come in different forms. It may be the quantity or the quantity of the items produced.

There are different measures in increasing research productivity of a business. For instance, if the nature of your business is in manufacturing, the measure of your productivity can involve the quantity of products that you are manufacturing. The total number of products manufactured can be known as your productivity level. Let’s say your business is in furniture manufacturing, specializing in the production of high end chairs with hotels and restaurants as your main target markets. Your company is able to sell up to, say 500,000 chairs in a span of five years. When gauging the productivity of your business, the result would be that you sell an average of a hundred thousand chairs per year.

Moreover, if your business is service-oriented, that which includes restaurants, hotels, bars and others, you can measure your productivity by the number of customer turnovers. This includes new customers coming in and out of your establishment. And because data involved in gauging a service industry’s productivity is quantitative, measuring it is fairly easy. You can also measure productivity through customer satisfaction, which can be quantified through customer questionnaires and surveys. Customer survey forms should be able to convert data from qualitative to quantitative. This can be done with the use of tabular checklist.

Moreover, if your business is in sales, your productivity measure can be done by measuring the sales performance of an employee or the entire company. Instead of accounting even the smallest item sold, you may want to calculate the total sales amount in monetary unit. This way, it will be easier for you to know how your company has performed in terms of sales. Let’s take a salesman selling appliances, for instance. He is not particularly focused by the number of appliances he sells but by its price. As a way to boost his sales performance or perhaps take his position in the company to a notch up, his sales strategy may be to press you to get a pricier model.

It is inevitable in business for markets trends to mix and mesh with one another. And these measures can be used to boost research activities to further boost your company’s productivity as well. Whatever the nature of your business, you can actually mix productivity measures if you find that your business might need more than one of the said parameters. However, you should make sure that these data mesh well together so you would not have a difficult time comparing them.

The job of an assistant is not easy at all. For operations to be successful there is then a need to measure and increase assistant productivity.

A lot of people may think it is easy being a personal assistant or secretary. However, this position is not as easy as it may seem. True, assistants merely comply with the instructions given by their superiors. But you can never discount the fact that there just may be tasks assigned or delegated by superiors can be quite difficult to some extent. Plus, there is also the fact that if you have superiors with busy work schedules, your very own work schedule as a personal assistant can very much be busy as well. Thus, you have to be ready to meet the demands of the job, and this can require you to be a multitasker at times.

So, how do you measure and increase assistant productivity? The concept of measuring the productivity of your personal assistant actually entails a number of aspects. First and foremost, you have to determine if your assistant has certain qualities and that very important positive attitude towards his or her work. Look at your assistant and try to assess his or her qualities. Is your assistant flexible enough that he or she can deal with the inevitable changes that would sometimes arise in any ordinary work day? And when there are so many changes to be plotted out in a day, is your assistant still able to work all of these out efficiently? If you can answer these questions with a strong “yes”, then your assistant is indeed flexible and productive in this aspect.

Another thing to look out for is the quality of initiative. Now, assistants do rely on the instructions that are given to them by their superiors. These instructions actually plot out their work schedules as well. Still, it would really help to have an assistant who has enough initiative to act on his or her own. Imagine being the superior and you would have to dish out every single task to your assistant. Working very closely with each other, your assistant should be able to develop a certain pattern in the tasks and responsibilities that come with the job. There should be particular tasks wherein your assistant would no longer need you to give out that particular instruction anymore. After months or years of plotting monthly meetings with board members or suppliers should give your assistant insights on how he or she can do the job more conveniently for both of you. This spells out much initiative.

Time management is also an effective tool to use in determining just how productive your assistant is. Your assistant does not just attend to the demands of her own job because he or she also attends to that of the superiors. Thus, it would be very important to have excellent time management skills at hand. If your assistant can work very efficiently when under pressure, then this is a strong indication of productivity.

Increasing assistant productivity is an easier concept to grasp. All you have to do is offer your assistant enough incentives and motivation, and things will surely run more smoothly for the both of you. This way, your assistant would be motivated enough to want to be more productive in every aspect of the job.