Measures to improve the efficiency of the unit. How to increase team productivity? Latest Methods

The prospect of growth is an incentive for every entrepreneur. One of the most important resources of any company on the way to development is its employees. The well-being of the company depends on the quality of their work. The dependence of the amount of work done on the time spent on its implementation is called labor productivity. Today we will get acquainted with the economic significance of labor productivity and ways to increase this indicator.

Definition

Labor productivity allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of the work of employees of the enterprise. The higher it is, the less management spends resources on the release of the final product. Consequently, high productivity also ensures high profitability. Labor efficiency is the achievement of good performance by the company's personnel at low cost. Productivity, in turn, includes efficiency in material production, the volume of goods produced for a certain period of time and the labor costs required to produce a unit of output. Before considering the indicators and ways to increase labor productivity, we will learn how it is classified.

Classification

Labor productivity is of the following types:

  1. Actual.
  2. Cash.
  3. Potentially possible.

Actual, contrary to popular belief, do not call the performance that can be recorded in the company at the current time. In fact, it is performance in relation to the amount of goods / services that was produced / provided by the firm.

Cash productivity illustrates what can be achieved if existing costs and reasons for downtime are completely eliminated, without changing equipment and materials. In practice, the prospect of realizing such performance is extremely small. It is used as a kind of standard to which employees of the company should strive. The actual performance is compared with the actual performance in order to obtain its adequate assessment.

Potentially possible performance is similar to cash, but it implies a more global approach. This indicator illustrates how many products can be produced at a given level of development of civilization and in given natural conditions, if the effect of downtime and delays is reduced to zero.

Criteria for evaluation

In order to correctly determine the value of the effectiveness of the work of employees, it is necessary to know the most important criteria for its evaluation. There are seven of these:

  1. Effectiveness. They illustrate how effectively a company can achieve its goals and what its production capabilities are.
  2. Profitability. Expresses how justified and economically the company spends its resources.
  3. Quality. The ratio between the expected and actual results of the company.
  4. Profitability. The ratio of actual production costs to the profit actually received.
  5. Actually performance. The ratio between the volume of labor costs and the volume of goods received or services rendered.
  6. Quality of work life. An important criterion that unscrupulous employers neglect to increase production volumes. It shows how competently the process of work and rest of employees is organized. In heavy industries and in construction, ways to increase labor productivity associated with the quality of working life are especially relevant. In large enterprises, anonymous surveys are often used to assess this aspect, in which everyone can make comments and suggestions to management.
  7. Innovation. Reflects the company's policy regarding the introduction of innovations in the organization of the production and labor process. It is important that when introducing innovations, statistics are kept that illustrate the difference in the amount of profit before and after innovation.

Direct factors

Considering the factors and ways to increase labor productivity, most experts agree that two main factors affect productivity:

  1. Qualification. It is logical that the higher the professionalism of an employee, the more work he does per unit of time. Many companies prefer to "educate" the necessary personnel within the company, sacrificing productivity at first, but getting, as a result, an almost ideal employee. Such ways of increasing labor productivity are effective, but not always. As practice shows, the involvement of experienced professionals is more beneficial, especially if the area of ​​their activity involves the presence of any specific knowledge and skills. For example, when choosing a way to increase labor productivity at oil and gas enterprises, it would obviously be wrong to neglect qualified personnel.
  2. Time management. No matter how competent and experienced a person is, his working day will be ineffective without the ability to allocate time. By setting tasks that need to be solved within a strictly defined period, the employer helps the unorganized employee to do his job more efficiently. Today, there are a number of methods that can significantly increase labor productivity through the competent distribution of working time.

Several more indirect factors follow from the time management factor: competent goal setting, clear priorities for achieving them, planning things with recalculation for a certain period, and finally, the right motivation.

It is worth dwelling on the last aspect in more detail. The fact is that in domestic business, employee motivation, as one of the main ways to increase labor productivity, is associated with a number of problems. Many managers prefer to motivate their workers by threatening them with losing their jobs. Since there is always a job for a good specialist in the modern job market, such methods of motivation are ineffective. Therefore, it is much more correct to use financial methods of motivation, paying bonuses to those who are responsible for their work.

As for penalties, they work much worse. However, this issue has another side. The fact is that financial motivation acts only on those employees who are interested in receiving increased pay. And then there are those workers who will not go beyond the minimum work plan for the sake of money. Such a contingent can be motivated by the prospect of dismissal. It turns out that the employer needs to learn to understand people, choosing ways to increase labor productivity. The course orientation (development vector) of the enterprise also plays an important role here.

Manifestations of labor productivity in practice

The reduction in labor costs required to produce a unit of output, with an overall increase in the volume of goods produced, indicates a saving in labor time. In this process, it is important to reduce labor costs to a minimum without compromising the quality of the product. In this regard, managers prefer to hire one highly qualified employee and assign him a high salary, rather than hiring ten inexperienced and low-paid employees who, even if combined, will bring less value. This and other elementary ways of increasing labor productivity are often overlooked.

The constant improvement of the quality of the product or service provided, with the same production volume, is a priority for all entrepreneurs. In this regard, it is advisable to introduce as many automated lines as possible into the production process and reduce the number of personnel who serve them.

Reducing work time is another positive result of increased productivity. It is achieved by compacting the production process and introducing innovative methods. These measures save employees time and allow them to focus on the work process. In parallel, a consistent increase in productivity can be achieved, which in other cases is a difficult task.

Indirect factors

There are two groups of factors that indirectly affect the productivity of labor and the quality of products or services provided: external and internal.

External factors include:

  1. Natural. Unfavorable weather conditions (high/low temperatures, heavy rainfall, strong winds, etc.) can adversely affect productivity. This is especially important when determining ways to increase labor productivity in agriculture and other trades in which abundant contact with nature is expected. At the same time, many factors of this group even affect the workflow arranged indoors. For example, due to low air temperature, with insufficient heating of the room, workers will have to take additional steps to warm up, instead of performing their duties.
  2. Political. Social stratification, when some people receive part of the income from the result of the work of others, leads to a decrease in the motivation of workers.
  3. General economic. These include: the amount of taxes, the presence or absence of benefits and support from the state, and much more.

Internal factors include:

  1. Implementation of new production or organizational technologies into the company's activities.
  2. Timely correction of the company structure and optimization of internal processes.
  3. Improvement of managerial functions.
  4. Competent work motivation.

Methods for assessing labor productivity

Before thinking about ways to increase productivity in an enterprise, an entrepreneur must correctly assess the current state of affairs. For this, there are two main indicators: the complexity of the workflow and the volume of production. They are in inverse proportion to each other. Production can be called the ratio between costs and the volume of the product received.

Indicators of the volume of goods can be:

  1. The value of a product produced or shipped.
  2. Gross goods and other similar indicators. The volumes that were produced during the reporting period at related enterprises can also be taken into account.
  3. Indicators obtained without taking into account the spent energy, raw materials and the depreciation cost of equipment.

Costs can be understood as both labor costs and total costs. However, the greatest indicator in this regard is labor intensity. As labor productivity increases, labor intensity decreases. And vice versa - the higher the labor intensity, the less products will be produced, in the long run. Therefore, it is always worth striving to reduce it.

Mechanization

Analyzing the reserves and ways to increase labor productivity, it is worth paying attention to mechanization. Many managers have formed the wrong opinion that the negative consequences of the high labor intensity of production can be leveled by compacting working hours without investing in mechanization and improvement of technological equipment. Confessing such a fit, you can achieve only one thing - high staff turnover. People simply will not withstand the difficult working conditions and will go to the employer, who develops his production and takes care of his subordinates.

Mechanization ways to increase labor productivity have a number of important advantages:

  1. The ability to observe and analyze a clear relationship between labor costs and production volume in a specific period of time.
  2. The possibility of leveling the influence of external factors (climate, work regime, etc.) on work efficiency.
  3. The ability to accurately compare performance across departments and lines across a plant.
  4. Opportunity to clearly assess promising areas for further development of production.

Getting acquainted with such a concept as labor productivity, we briefly touched on ways to increase it. Now let's dwell on them in more detail.

Depending on the size and specialization of the company, the management chooses one or another direction of development. Therefore, in the household, the ways to increase labor productivity are one, and in large corporations, they are completely different. In economics, the following methods are distinguished:

  1. Strengthening the technical and material base. In order for employees to work conscientiously, they should be provided with everything necessary. For example, if a worker's machine breaks down every half an hour, even with a strong desire, he will not be able to produce many parts per shift.
  2. Using modern management tools and increasing the responsibility of middle managers. Often the award for the success of production is received by office employees who have nothing to do with this very success. At the same time, if they accept failed innovations, they by all means avoid responsibility, shifting it to the wards. This leads to a significant decrease in the motivation of employees, on whose activities, in fact, the entire enterprise rests. And this is just one example of poor management.
  3. Regular performance analysis with graphic stands. A performance management visualization stand can be a great way to improve performance. On it, in the form of graphs, you can depict the efficiency of work at each site of the enterprise and the revealed violations. It is important that correlations are identified at the stand that affect the increase in productivity of each shift. Graphs showing labor costs and consumed resources will also not be superfluous. This approach allows solving a number of problems and identifying backup ways to increase labor productivity in the enterprise. In addition, graphic stands may contain information about the most distinguished employees. This simple psychological method will increase the motivation of staff and force them, if not to exceed the plan, then at least to keep up with colleagues. Of course, such ways of increasing labor productivity in the household are ineffective. They are used in more or less large organizations.
  4. Introduction of job description for each employee. Thanks to this document, each employee will clearly know their duties. In addition, a competent job description will make it possible to protect the employee in case the immediate superiors try to shift responsibility for their mistakes onto him.
  5. Improvement of working and rest conditions. In order for people to want to work with high efficiency and ensure rapid growth for their company, it is necessary to take care of comfortable working and rest conditions. All employees of the enterprise must see that they are valued.
  6. Motivation. Each of the employees should know that productive and initiative work will bring him additional income. It was him, and not a dozen of his leaders.
  7. Direct participation of the employee in the elimination of existing problems. Ordinary workers know production and its weaknesses much better than managers. Therefore, they are worth listening to.
  8. Evaluation and approval of all indicators of labor efficiency. Each of the employees should be informed about the current state of affairs in the company and ways to improve it. Dry numbers of reports gathering dust on the shelves do not improve productivity.

The described factors and ways to increase labor productivity are quite simple, but for some reason company managers often forget about them. Neglect of these methods leads to a decrease in profits and the loss of valuable personnel. When choosing which ways to increase labor productivity to apply, an entrepreneur must take into account the individual characteristics of his type of business.

Non-standard methods

In addition to the obvious ways to increase productivity in the organization, there are purely psychological methods that, despite their apparent simplicity, have a strong impact on the success of the enterprise. Here are the main ones:

  1. Money. American scientists conducted an experiment in which 500 thousand people took part. As a result, it has been proven that labor productivity increases several times when employees think about money or see it in front of them. In addition, contact with money helps to improve the relationship of employees with each other and with others.
  2. Using messengers. American scientists have found that the use of instant messengers for business purposes does not “steal” time, but, on the contrary, improves labor productivity. The fact is that, according to research, solving problems using instant messengers is easier and faster than by phone or through personal messages. Of course, we are talking about cases where personal contact of employees is not possible.
  3. Wall painting. Scientists from Japan believe that the color of the walls has a direct impact on productivity. So, in rooms with yellow walls, people work more efficiently. Black color makes employees perform their duties with great perseverance. Red walls make people feel empowered, but make them more aggressive. Blue (can cause depressive states) and gray (causes drowsiness) colors have a negative impact on productivity.
  4. Office romances. Italian scientists, in one of the articles on ways to increase labor productivity, say that a romance at work is a kind of shake-up for the body, tones it and, as a result, has a positive effect on labor productivity.
  5. Humor. American scientists are sure that humor in the workplace is the key to a favorable emotional background, in which a person becomes more communicative and begins to work more efficiently.
  6. Large monitors. Researchers from France have proven that the use of 30-inch displays, instead of the usual 17- or 19-inch ones, can increase labor productivity by 50-65%. The reason for this is simple - the large screen makes it possible to work with several windows at once. When using small screens, a lot of time is spent switching windows and scrolling them. However, other scientists believe that the use of large displays does not increase productivity as much as the use of several displays at once (5% versus 30%). One way or another, an increase in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe "desktop" has a positive effect on productivity.
  7. Profanity. A professor at a reputable English university is confident that a ban on the use of profanity by workers can lead to a decrease in their motivation and productivity. The use of a mat makes it easier for the team to endure stressful situations and enhances solidarity between employees.
  8. Disputes. American scientists have found that in the process of arguing and discussing new ideas between colleagues, the right decisions arise.
  9. Happiness. According to a study by US economists, happy employees work 10-15% better than those who feel unhappy or lack harmony in their lives.

As you can see, a lot depends both on the employers themselves and on working conditions.

The current time poses a lot of complex tasks for businesses, one of which is to find the most effective ways to increase labor productivity. According to this indicator, as studies show, our domestic enterprises are very far behind Western ones.

In this article you will read:

  • What does “increasing productivity” mean in terms of economics and business
  • How to identify growth factors and reserves to increase labor productivity
  • Why Some Employees Don't Seek Productivity and What to Do About Them
  • How to choose the right path to improve productivity
  • How to motivate employees to be more efficient
  • What are the most common challenges leaders face when it comes to improving productivity?

The concept and significance of increasing labor productivity in the enterprise

Labor productivity is a criterion for the efficiency and productivity of workers in an enterprise.

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Types of performance:

  • actual - this is the ratio of the actual volume of manufactured products and the labor costs incurred;
  • cash - indicates the possible volume of output in case of avoiding production downtime, expectations, etc.;
  • potential - the predicted production volume when removing other waste factors from the workflow, updating equipment and improving the materials used.

Is it realistic to force employees to work more efficiently and, thereby, to ensure an increase in labor productivity in the enterprise? Quite. And for this it is not at all necessary to disappear at work until midnight, not having time for even the slightest rest or respite. Efficiency lies in the fact that in the process of labor the employee achieves great results at the lowest cost. In order to influence the efficiency of the work of employees, it is only necessary to strictly observe 3 aspects (in the complex):

To measure the degree of effectiveness - in other words, to evaluate the work of the staff, in order to understand where to go, it is important to know the starting point.
provide an opportunity for professional growth and development of employees based on the assessment.
to stimulate financially the most effective employees.

In order to competently manage labor efficiency in an organization, one should learn how to evaluate and measure it. There are 7 different criteria for the effectiveness of the production organization system:

    Efficiency - shows how the company has advanced in achieving its goals.

    Profitability - indicates the availability of resources for the enterprise.

    Quality level - how the company's activities meet the expectations, requirements and specifications.

    Profitability - the ratio of gross income to total costs.

    Productivity - shows the volume of the product produced and the amount of costs associated with this.

    The quality of working life is the reaction of employees to the socio-technical conditions in the organization, the style of work.

    The introduction of innovations is the result of the manifestation of the creative abilities of the staff.

Recently, there has been a negative trend towards a decrease in labor productivity. It should be said that this problem arises in organizations of various forms of ownership. Therefore, in order to ensure an increase in labor productivity, the tasks facing the management of companies are as follows:

  • reducing production costs and increasing profit levels;
  • increasing the flexibility of the approach in the production process;
  • increasing the level of product quality;
  • improvement of control (technical and technological).

The productivity of workers is determined by the following types of factors:

    Short-term, including objective (change in the types of electricity due to accidents, unstable level of quality of raw materials) and subjective (variable working capacity of workers during the day, working week, year).

    Long-term (electricity prices, materials, equipment quality).

There are two main approaches to assessing labor productivity:

1. Calculation of direct labor costs. With it, you can determine the actual intensity of work by correlating direct labor costs and standard hours.

2. The ratio of revenue from product sales to costs:

  • quality control;
  • for guaranteed repairs;
  • to maintain the number of production workers;
  • for the maintenance of the entire team;
  • for additional indicators: set-up time / paid hours, accepted products / checked, planned / produced, time for production / amount of time actually worked, auxiliary / direct costs, number of workers in production / managers, hours for unaccepted orders / hours worked, actual overhead/planned.

Labor productivity management includes:

  • quality control;
  • development of planned ways to improve efficiency;
  • calculation of labor costs and labor rationing;
  • accounting and financial control.

It is very important not to discount the factors that negatively affect the increase in labor productivity of workers: a decrease in wages in the context of inflation (decrease in living standards) and rising costs of restoring working capacity.

One of the most important indicators of the effective operation of the organization is labor productivity. It is represented by the volume of products / services produced, which falls on the unit of labor costs (in other words, the ratio of the result obtained and labor costs).

An increase in labor productivity in an organization leads to:

  • increase in the volume of products produced per unit of time with its constant quality;
  • improving the quality of products created in the same volume per unit of time;
  • reduction of labor costs per unit of output;
  • reduction in the cost of a unit of production of the share of labor costs;
  • reduction of time for production and turnover of goods;
  • increase in volume and rate of return.

Every day you have to think about increasing productivity

Tatyana Uteva, general director of the Altai silicate brick plant, Barnaul

At work, I have to think almost daily about how to increase productivity in the workplace. After all, one often has to face such problems as non-fulfillment of the daily norm of work, the predominance of manual labor in the production process, the lack of highly qualified personnel, and the wear and tear of equipment makes itself felt. All this has led to the fact that our labor productivity is already 30% less than the industry average. What have we done? We have developed the following measures to improve the productivity of our factory workers:

Operating mode. Before my arrival there, our enterprise worked in 2 shifts. For the first month, I simply analyzed all the processes taking place there: low labor discipline caught my eye, workers changed shifts, the actual load per shift fluctuated between 16-60% (for various reasons), the monthly output per 1 employee was about 20,000 rubles. Then I set the plant's work schedule to one shift, which allowed us to better organize the production process and optimize the number of employees in our enterprise. This led to an increase in labor productivity by 2.5 times, to an increase by 11% in the average monthly volume of output, and its output per employee per month was no longer 20,000, but more than 50,000 rubles.

Pay system. The workers of the brick production shop today receive a salary for 1000 units of conditional products produced (to calculate the volume of production, thickened brick is converted into conditional). Since our activity directly depends on the seasonality of demand for goods, we have developed a progressive salary scale: on a turret press after the 11th trolley, and on an automatic press after the 30th, the rates for workers increase by 20%. Hourly wages at the plant are provided for workers of auxiliary specialties. For the employees of the repair shop, we have developed the following system: we freeze their bonus fund for some time in order to have guarantees for the quality of the repair work performed by them. For example, in cases where the equipment works perfectly after the repair, employees receive their bonus, but if a breakdown occurs again, then they must eliminate it before paying the bonus fund. Of course, not everyone likes this approach to payment, so we additionally, to stimulate labor, pay them a bonus for ensuring accident-free work at the plant.

To date, we can boast of continued growth in efficiency. This is facilitated by the optimization of the supply of raw materials to the enterprise and the marketing of products. Summing up, I want to note that the measures developed by us helped to ensure an increase in labor productivity in the organization by almost 4 times.

Why employees do not seek to increase labor productivity and how to avoid it

    small salary;

It's easy enough to discourage people from working in a company if you keep telling them how little the company pays. Usually, the matter does not end with simple whining and complaints. In addition, the instigator begins to operate with statistical data on the salaries of other companies, exposing his enterprise in an unfavorable light compared to them, so to speak, “opens the eyes” of employees to the real state of affairs in the labor market. Usually this method of influence works with a bang. After some time, even those employees who were initially silent, but nodded supportively to such a “benefactor”, begin to sigh, and, due to a spoiled mood, their desire to work disappears. This topic will always be relevant in the company, but in particular it reaches its peak at the time of payment of wages and receipt by employees of their payslips. These days, the instigator is especially depressed by the size of his salary, complaining that he could only pay off the loan and utility bills with it.

  • Team building as a way of perfect personnel management

How to avoid a decrease in labor productivity? First, it is very important to convey to the staff the main idea that they voluntarily agreed to work under such conditions. If this salary did not satisfy them, they would have been looking for a new job for a long time. The next step is to explain to employees that there is another side to benchmarking. For example, in comparison with another enterprise, an employee receives not the highest salary, but not the lowest either. That is, he falls into the category of employees receiving the average salary in the industry. This is quite a good indicator, because. there are many other enterprises where workers performing the same duties receive much lower wages. Thus, as soon as certain employees begin to destabilize the work environment with their complaints and examples of higher salaries in other enterprises, immediately provide other data from the industry in order not to allow them to affect the morale of the entire team.

    do not appreciate;

Very often, disgruntled employees like to talk about how their work is not appreciated by management. Like, you won’t get a kind word, and even more so, gratitude from them, no matter how long and hard you work at this enterprise.

How to avoid a decrease in labor productivity? In fact, the performance of high-quality work for an employee is a necessary norm, and not a reason for special gratitude from the management. After all, it is for this that he receives his monthly salary, and sometimes a bonus. This is how his work is valued. But, in case of poor-quality performance of their duties, an employee may be fined, deprived of bonuses, or even fired. Thus, the idea should be conveyed to the staff that one should not expect any special thanks and recognition from the management for a job well done. But the outstanding merits of the employees of the head should be noted.

    increase the range of responsibilities;

Business cannot stand still, because every enterprise seeks to expand the range of goods and services to attract new customers, increasing production and sales volumes. Of course, this leads to an increase in the workload on employees, their range of duties is gradually expanding. Employees may begin to complain that with an increase in production standards, they do not receive appropriate additional payments from the employer.

How to avoid a decrease in labor productivity? The staff must understand that the head of the company will load it with work throughout the allotted time - eight hours a day. If an employee previously allowed himself breaks in work for personal matters and snacks in the amount of 3 hours a day, then with an increase in workload this time can be reduced to 1 hour (or even reduced to a few minutes). The management of the enterprise has every right to do this, because it pays the employee a salary for all 8 working hours.

    no growth;

It is believed that all employees of the company dream of building a career in it sooner or later. Within a certain time they expect promotions, presenting themselves as part of the management team of the enterprise. But when this does not happen, their motivation to work drops sharply.

How to avoid a decrease in labor productivity? To begin with, it should be made clear to employees that absolutely not all of them can become leaders, because this requires a certain set of qualities that are not inherent in every person: to be able to organize a team, to show leadership qualities, to correctly apply the “carrot and stick” method, to be able to manipulate, after all. Therefore, a highly qualified specialist in the field of economics or accounting is not always suitable for a managerial position. Perhaps his abilities are applicable only to this area of ​​work, and he will not be able to provide the company with an increase in staff productivity or promptly optimize the staff.

And it also happens when only “their own” people are in the management of the enterprise (brother, matchmaker, godfather, etc.). Then employees need to be gently made to understand that it is very naive to hope for a significant career advancement in this company. And finally, the employees themselves should seriously think about whether they need such a job, where they will have to be responsible not only for their own results of work, but also sometimes “blush” in front of the authorities for the mistakes of others, dismiss employees at the first request of the management, conduct an “ungrateful” personnel work, do not have holidays and sick days, like ordinary employees. After all, you can safely work at the enterprise for years, just doing your job perfectly, being a valuable and respected employee who does not have an extra headache.

Factors for increasing labor productivity and growth reserves

Labor productivity is singled out as an indicator of dynamics, that is, it matters only in the case of a progressive change.

Increasing labor productivity is one of the main factors allowing to increase the volume of production and income.

There are many factors that affect the growth of labor productivity. Factors for increasing labor productivity in an enterprise (in other words: reserves) are a set of reasons (both objective and subjective) that lead to an increase in labor productivity.

So, today the factors and ways to increase labor productivity are divided into three groups:

Group I - factors of fixed capital. They are determined by the level of development, application and quality of investments, as well as fixed assets. These factors imply mechanization and automation of labor, the use of more efficient and high-quality materials, and the latest modern technologies. At the same time, it should be taken into account that the increase in materialized labor should not exceed the increase in the volume of work performed, which happened due to the influence of this factor. In reality, it is very problematic to accurately measure the increase in output that occurred only due to an increase in fixed assets, their composition, price levels and the new technologies used in work.

Group II - socio-economic factors. They are represented by the composition and skill level of employees, their attitude to work and working conditions. Here, the quality and composition of the staff is of particular importance, because the contribution of various entities to the common cause is different. For example, part of the team always performs a larger amount of work, and the rest - a smaller one. However, the current methods of determining labor productivity do not take this into account.

The productivity of each individual employee is influenced by the knowledge and skills acquired by him, as well as abilities, health status, etc. In order to ensure high labor efficiency in the enterprise, management usually staffs employees with labor productivity and working capacity above the average. This selection of employees takes place at interviews, attestations, using assessments of the quality of work and professionalism.

When analyzing the factors of the second group of increasing labor productivity, it is impossible not to single out the class character of society, as well as the level of state spending on education and health care systems (capitalization of the social sphere). After all, the professionalism of workers directly depends on what school and vocational education (including higher education) will be in our country, and on how medical services will be provided to the population, its health as a whole depends. A complete set and good quality food, the ability to have durable goods, the affordable cost of services (including maintenance of the railway fund) are very important elements of the standard of living that affect the speed and timeliness of the restoration of the vitality of workers, their mood.

III group - organizational factors. This group includes actions to manage the company and personnel, as well as the organization of work and production processes that directly affect the increase in labor productivity. They help the management of the enterprise determine the location and size of the company, carry out the processes of cooperation, combination and specialization in production, choose the style and structure of the organization's management, and determine the tasks of its divisions. A special subgroup includes factors related to labor discipline and the atmosphere in the team: existing values, ways of interaction between employees, measures to enhance their work, monitoring the implementation of management decisions, correcting erroneous calculations.

The influence of the listed factors of increasing labor productivity is determined by the resulting objective processes in nature and society. These include natural gifts and climate, political life and the development of society, the degree of well-being of people.

Reserves for increasing labor productivity - the available opportunity to reduce labor costs.

Performance improvement occurs under the following conditions:

There are more products and less production costs.
- Production becomes more, and costs remain at the same level.
- There are more products, costs have also increased, but at a slower pace.
- The output is the same, but the costs are getting smaller.
- There are fewer products, less costs, but they are declining faster.

It is possible to single out the main directions for increasing labor productivity in a separate organization:

With the help of unused opportunities to reduce labor intensity, i.e. use in work of innovations, processes of automation and modernization in production.

With the help of reserves for more optimal use of work time: management of the production process and organization of labor, improvement of the organizational structure.

By improving the quality of personnel: increasing its qualifications, redistributing the shares of production workers and managers in the overall structure of personnel.

Managing the increase in labor productivity in the company (its subdivision) must be carried out comprehensively.

I show by my own example that the tasks are achievable

Dmitry Fedoseev, owner and general director of Aibolit Plus, Moscow

Productivity indicators in our industry are determined by the number of patients per 1 doctor during the month. In Moscow, on average, 150-200 patients come out, in the whole country - 30-200, and at our enterprise - 100-120 patients.

The thought that all my employees are not working at full capacity does not leave me. Therefore, in order to cheer them up and provide conditions for increasing labor productivity, I use the following methods:

A third of the company's income comes from bonuses. In those days, when we practiced the payment of a bare salary at our enterprise, subordinates worked reluctantly. Recently, I decided to give to the bonus fund of each division 33% of the total income received per shift. But over time, this figure became too high, and this had the opposite effect, because. work has slowed down. After that, I took action and reduced the percentage, and the employees became active again.

Competition with me. It seems to me that I demand the fulfillment of quite achievable goals, but at times I hear complaints from my managers that these plans are unrealistic to achieve. In this case, I give the employee the opportunity to give me his office chair for a certain time on such conditions: if I reach the announced targets, the manager will be left without a salary or be fired. Very often, after three days, such an employee (after carefully observing my work) realizes the reasons for his mistakes and suggests that the experiment be interrupted. Sometimes there is a dismissal of one's own free will. So, in the last quarter, 2 top managers quit. And it also happens that an employee, after my offer to change places, asks for a second chance and significantly improves his performance.

What are the ways to increase labor productivity

Domestic enterprises will be rebuilt for a long time, starting from the improvement of production processes and the launch of effective management programs to a change in the thinking of the workers themselves.

Ways to increase labor productivity in the enterprise are managerial and economic.

The managerial path is aimed at stimulating employees to work efficiently and productively.

The economic one is connected with the improvement and optimization of production processes to reduce labor costs and working time for the production of a unit of output, as well as an additional volume of products per unit of time.

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By investing in business modernization, many managers understand the purchase of new equipment or the acquisition of real estate. But this is fundamentally wrong, since the main investment should be aimed at increasing the desire of the staff to work.

Only ways to increase labor productivity, together with the stimulation of workers, will lead to the goals set, help employees improve their skills and gain additional work experience. And employees with high productivity will be even more devoted to the common cause and interests of the enterprise. Their commitment to success will lead to a lower turnover rate.

Each company has its own methodology and programs to stimulate the efficiency of staff, but there are also generally accepted measures.

The main ways to increase labor productivity:

1. Clearly communicate the company's goals to all your employees. It is important that the staff is always aware of the intended goals of the enterprise and knows their tasks. The extent to which information is communicated to the team about the success of the company depends on the management. The level of motivation is also very well influenced by the holding of corporate events and the periodic payment of bonuses for employees.

2. Rewards should be different. Employees of the enterprise have different responsibilities, and everyone has their own motivation for work. Therefore, incentives for employees should be appropriate to their degree of performance. They will strive more for success in their work, knowing that this will be followed not just by encouragement, but individually tailored to the needs of each individual employee: time off, bonuses, gifts, etc.

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3. Staff should be involved in the selection of rewards. Otherwise, any program to stimulate labor will not bring results. After all, employees work with the greatest return when they see a specific goal and know what they will get when it is achieved.

4. Reward employees on time. The maximum effect of incentives will be only when employees have done their work and immediately received a reward (and not after some time). Timely gratitude expressed to the employee will then be associated with the successful completion of the task and serve as an incentive for further striving for similar results.

These management tools allow you to find additional resources for improving labor productivity, such as employee engagement, their focus on productivity and the effectiveness of their work. And in order to increase the degree of such involvement of personnel in the work, management should correctly apply the reward system at the enterprise.

Imagine a model of motivation, which consists of two main groups of factors:

- 1st group of factors is aimed at retaining staff;

- Group 2 affects the degree of his involvement in the work process.

The first group includes comfortable and safe working conditions: the availability of water, light, clean rooms for work, ensuring the safety of the workplace, wages, etc. All this gives employees a sense of security and stability.

The second group is represented by the existing opportunities for professional and career growth for staff, gaining recognition, new knowledge and skills. These factors contribute to the work drive of employees, the desire for greater efficiency and effectiveness.

Both groups of factors affect different employees in different ways. So, specialists and managers are focused on the motivation of achievements, and ordinary employees crave stability and comfortable working conditions.

Factors aimed at creating a sense of stability give employees confidence in the future and reduce staff turnover. At such enterprises, employees work for a long time and transfer their experience and knowledge to young specialists without any problems. In general, workers are not set up for constant change; they would be happy to work at the same enterprise for many years if they felt secure and stable there.

So how does a focus on productivity increase motivate employees? How to simultaneously increase the efficiency of the enterprise and retain staff?

The answer to these questions can be the building of an effective remuneration system at the enterprise, which, on the one hand, provides employees with a sense of stability, and on the other hand, stimulates them to increase the intensity of work.

To make the incentive system more effective, it is important to follow the following criteria:

    Transparency - staff should know what determines the amount of income.

    Influence on their income - employees should clearly understand how their income depends on the efforts spent.

    Proportionality - variable remuneration should motivate, because a too low percentage of remuneration for the effective work of an employee will have a negative, demotivating effect, which will cast doubt on the overall incentive system at the enterprise.

A transparent system of remuneration is a very motivating factor that ensures an increase in productivity and labor efficiency in the company.

Motivating employees to increase labor productivity

Allocate material and non-material motivation. Financial incentives include the payment of salaries, bonuses and bonuses. Everything else conditionally refers to non-material incentives. Meanwhile, the last type of motivation does not mean for the organization the complete absence of costs for it. For example, social benefits (health insurance, reimbursement for mobile communications, travel, meals, additional pension, etc.), often related to non-material motivation, require considerable financial costs for the company. Also, holding various corporate events provides for additional costs. In addition, there are various types of directly non-material incentives: verbal gratitude to the employee in the presence of the team, the title of the best employee of the month, certificates and decals, honor boards, etc.

The incentive system will not give the expected effect, or the indicators of increasing labor productivity will be minimal if motivation is based only on material factors, bypassing non-material ones. After some time, the constant increase in wages will no longer justify itself. And too high wages can even have a negative effect: why work at full strength, if you can not strain and get a considerable income? In such cases, employees simply hold on to the workplace, but stop working effectively for the benefit of the enterprise.

For our domestic companies, the issues of non-material incentives are especially relevant, because. business is often conducted with limited financial resources. But in Russia this type of motivation has its own characteristics. Sometimes you can find enterprises on the domestic market that do not use the methods of non-material incentives for employees at all. Basically it is the firms trading from wheels. However, if the company is in a competitive environment, then, other things being equal, it will lose to enterprises where non-material motivation exists. That is, in fact, this type of stimulation is one of the competitive advantages of the company.

Non-material motivation

Of course, all members of the team are in great need of non-material stimulation. But management should not be under the delusion that these methods are of equal importance to all employees of the company. Therefore, it is very important to use the principles of differentiation.

Stimulation of production staff. The system of motivation is always faced with a huge range of life orientations of workers. What will attract executives will not be appreciated by production workers at all, and vice versa. Given this factor, the General Director should choose an individual approach to all valuable employees, without placing special hopes on general incentive methods.

Managers motivation. For this category of employees, the following methods of non-material motivation are best suited:

  • wide popularity of the company's trademarks;
  • recognition of the manager by the owners of the company;
  • performing an interesting task;
  • availability of opportunities for development and learning ;
  • opportunity to make a career.

Social benefits. Previously, employees sought to get into foreign companies in order to receive official salaries, health insurance and free additional training, but now all these attributes have become the norm for almost all Russian enterprises. And their absence at the moment just scares off some applicants. In addition, now, in addition to the standard social package, domestic companies offer the following benefits: subscriptions to sports clubs, medical insurance for all members of the employee's family, favorable conditions for lending, etc.

But the management of the enterprise needs to take into account that additional benefits will be assessed by employees in different ways. For example, for young people, voluntary pension insurance or medical insurance will not be entirely relevant, but subscriptions to fitness centers or a cafeteria will become a serious incentive for them. On the other hand, middle-aged workers will often appreciate the availability of health insurance, because they already understand the importance of maintaining health.

But even here there are nuances. If workers receive a small salary, they are unlikely to be happy with additional benefits in the form of health insurance or a subscription to a sports club, expecting a greater salary increase. Or they will begin to use the opportunity to be treated for free beyond measure.

material motivation

The foundations of increasing labor productivity in the company are based on competent material incentives, which include a constant and a variable part. The permanent part includes the basic salary and the accompanying social package. And the variable part depends on certain results of the work of the employee and is aimed at fulfilling the long-term goals of the company. It represents various systems of bonus payments. The basic needs of the employee are designed to satisfy the constant part of material incentives.

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But the variable part will be no less important for him: bonuses and additional bonuses. It is advisable to pay staff bonuses of two types: based on the results of the individual work of the employee and the activities of the company as a whole.

The establishment of the bonus system is based on the following main provisions:

The payment of bonuses should not be too frequent and widespread, otherwise employees will perceive it only as a due part of the salary;

The bonus should be linked to the employee's direct personal contribution to the overall result, his personal achievements (for example, as part of a group, department, etc.);

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The most objective and well-known method of calculating the employee's personal contribution to production should be applied;

Personnel should perceive the bonus as a reward for a certain result obtained with the help of additional efforts, but not as payment for ordinary, daily work;

Employees should not associate bonuses with paying for their loyalty to the firm or trying to keep them;

The additional efforts of the staff, paid for with bonuses, are required to cover the cost of paying the latter.

Additional awards include:

For the successful completion of projects (implementation of a new computer program, reporting system, etc.) with the help of additional efforts of workers that exceed the outlined scope of duties;

For active participation in special programs (work as a mentor, development of innovations, rationalization activities, etc.);

For the overall result of the work of the unit (for successful annual results of work);

For an individual contribution (outstanding personal achievements, mostly not related to a simple range of duties: the development of some interesting programs, projects, etc.).

Negative Stimulation Rules

Managers of enterprises sometimes resort to such a technology to increase labor productivity as negative stimulation, because from time to time you can encounter such workers whose dependent attitude prevails over any of their positive qualities. And in cases where it is impossible to replace them at a certain moment, and positive motivation simply no longer works, negative stimulation can be used. But you need to do this in accordance with the following rules:

    You can not apply actions that are contrary to the Labor Code.

    It is necessary to accurately state the reason for the punishment and explain how it could have been avoided.

    It is not necessary to punish the employee immediately, because. leaders may be overwhelmed by negative emotions. It is better to calm down a little, and then once again think about the reasons for the misconduct that occurred. After all, sometimes it happens that there are no real reasons to punish an employee, and undeserved punishment is a very demotivating factor.

    It is impossible to analyze the circumstances of the misconduct with the subordinates of the culprit, otherwise the consequences will be deplorable for the enterprise itself.

    It should be used as a measure of stimulation in the most extreme cases, because. employees of our domestic enterprises already have a lot of everyday problems, and therefore they may simply not be able to cope with this stressful situation.

You can only come to the manager with your own solution to the problem

Pavel Kuzmin, General Director of ForestLine, Vologda

Everyone knows the proverb "Work is not a wolf - it will not run away into the forest." This is exactly what a significant part of the employees of the enterprise do in cases where the manager does not inspire them with other attitudes.

At my enterprise, I have specifically established rules that will encourage staff to take a more responsible approach to work, to work productively and at full strength. For example, we have such a rule: "rested - report." That is, when an employee, performing a task, encounters problems that he cannot solve himself, he must immediately approach his manager and describe the situation. In the past, we often encountered the fact that employees stopped performing a task when they did not know how to solve the problem that had arisen. And the authorities received information about this situation much later, when it was already very difficult to fix something.

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We also have a rule that you should come to higher management with a ready-made decision. That is, before asking the manager to solve the problem (with which, I note, the employee must cope on his own), you should give yourself answers to the following questions: 1. What are the options for the development of events (both negative and positive)? 2. What can be done in one way or another? 3. What arguments can be found in favor of these actions? At the same time, we do not accept emotional responses like “I think so.” Of course, it is extremely difficult to foresee everything, and the situation can change very quickly, but this does not mean that you can shift your responsibilities onto someone else's shoulders. And if you really need to consult, then you should state the problem in detail, indicating the thoughtful options for solving it.

Our next rule is: "There is work done and work not done." Those. either you did 100% of the work, or you didn't do it at all. We consider a task that is 99% completed to be unfulfilled. When you watch the activities of subordinates from the outside, it seems that the work is in full swing. But it is worth really delving into, and it becomes clear that there is no sense in this running around. At the same time, workers are indignant: “We are working!”. Therefore, our rule brings clarity and puts everything in its place: if there is no result, then the work is not done.

5 problems affecting the increase in labor productivity

Problem number 1. A bloated administration.

Sometimes there are several managers (or controllers) for one simple employee. Overly bloated command and control apparatuses hurt companies:

1. In fact, these are superfluous employees who do not benefit the enterprise.

2. Such workers try to find something to do and show their importance to the enterprise by requesting a large number of unnecessary reports and constantly calling meetings. Thus, they distract other employees from their immediate duties.

In order to correctly assess the management structure, one should be guided by a very simple model. As practice shows, 1 leader works effectively with 7-10 subordinates. The latter, in turn, can also have their own 7-10 subordinates. And so on. Accordingly, for a company of ten people, only 1 leader is required. For an organization consisting of 70 people, 2 levels of management are already needed. There will be 7 managers at the 1st level, and 1 top manager at the 2nd level. And so on. It should always be remembered that the administrative apparatus tends to grow. And the methods of increasing labor productivity at the enterprise are designed to limit its number in time.

Problem number 2. Various control, checking services and security.

In this sector, one must be able to compare the risks and the costs of reducing them. There are cases when a trade secret worth a million rubles is guarded by 3 employees of the security department. Moreover, the cost of their annual maintenance is higher than the cost of the secret itself. Of course, one should take into account not only material, but also other types of risks, for example, image ones. And only after that, assess the need for the company to maintain one or another security or control staff.

Problem number 3. Bloated service staff.

Sometimes an employee may have several secretaries, drivers, security guards, etc. Of course, the ability to use the services of service and support staff helps to ensure an increase in the quality of productivity of this employee. For example, secretaries offload higher-paid workers, thereby increasing their productivity. And the content of the secretary is a small price to pay for increasing the efficiency of his head. Again, in this case, it is necessary to accurately calculate and analyze the labor efficiency of the service personnel, the degree of their workload. After all, it often happens that the secretaries of an individual leader are not fully loaded with work. In such cases, you should get rid of personal secretaries and create a department of the secretariat serving all the heads of the enterprise (in order to reduce the total number of secretaries).

Problem number 4. Poor management decisions.

Studies show that in firms, about 70% of the working time is spent on activities that are unnecessary for the final result: constant meetings, as a result of which nothing is done, the development of internal reports in excess quantities, the performance of duplicate functions, and other unnecessary work.

Problem number 5. Bad organization of work.

You can often hear complaints from managers that their subordinates go out too often for a smoke break, drink coffee, or just talk during working hours. That's the way things are. But the leaders themselves are to blame. When an employee is assigned a specific achievable task by a certain date, and its completion ahead of schedule will be rewarded, the employee will not waste time in vain. And when there are many tasks, priorities are not set, deadlines are not clearly defined, or the task cannot be completed within the specified time (the employee does not know how to do it), there are no current tasks - in such cases, employees with a clear conscience go to smoke, drink coffee to have conversations with colleagues.

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It is difficult to overestimate the importance of increasing labor productivity in a company. And the significant lag in this area of ​​our enterprises from foreign ones has long been of concern to both the management of Russian companies and high-ranking government officials. But in recent years, the economic situation has made other issues a priority (increasing competition in the markets, developing new projects, purchasing assets, etc.), and the problem of labor productivity has been overshadowed.

Information about the author and company

Tatyana Uteva, general director of the Altai silicate brick plant, Barnaul; candidate of economic sciences. LLC "Altai Plant of Silicate Brick" Business profile: production of silicate thickened bricks (size 250 × 120 × 88 mm). Number of personnel: 171. Labor productivity indicator: 71 thousand rubles. per person per month. Production volume: 30 million bricks per year.

Dmitry Fedoseev, owner and CEO of Aibolit Plus, Moscow. Aibolit Plus LLC. Field of activity: a network of veterinary clinics, grooming, zootaxi. Number of employees: 100. Annual turnover: 70 million rubles. (in 2012). Labor productivity indicator: 100-120 patients per doctor (per month).

Pavel Kuzmin, General Director of ForestLine, Vologda. Forest Line. Field of activity: design and construction of houses from glued laminated timber (spruce, pine, larch, cedar). Form of organization: CJSC. Territory: production - in Vologda; representative offices - in Moscow, Murmansk, Podolsk (Moscow region), Yaroslavl. Number of staff: 81. Number of house sets produced annually: 48.

Increasing the efficiency of the personnel of enterprises is currently gaining special importance in the world. Working in a modern progressive society dictates new rules:

  • determine the qualification level of the staff,
  • knowledge and skills of workers
  • search for ways to improve the efficiency of the staff.

Modern researchers of this issue are looking for new approaches, for example, new organizational forms of workers' activity, calculation of the labor participation rate. In modern market conditions, the management apparatus of any enterprise for effective recruitment should take into account not only the professional qualities of future employees, but also the level of emotional stability. Labor as a phenomenon is directly related to the intensive development of production, as well as to the use of automated systems, information and computer technologies. This significantly changes its functional basic content. Therefore, the professional and qualification composition of workers is changing radically. Of great importance is a prospective analysis of human resources, which includes labor productivity per unit of time or the amount of working time spent on the production of a unit of output, the effective use of human resources in general. By effectively increasing the productivity of personnel in an enterprise, it is possible to achieve overfulfillment of plans for projects. To repeat this result, it must be encouraged by a premium.

Ways to increase effective staff productivity

Often, the efficiency of the work of the company's personnel achieve the prosperity of a particular business structure. Business expansion leads, as a rule, to an increase in the number of employees. It is necessary to list the main ways of possible increase in the efficiency of the work of the staff. Among them:

  • control and maintenance of labor discipline,
  • quality management and accounting for the results of the work performed by each employee,
  • possible correction of deficiencies,
  • diagnostics and correction of the emotional atmosphere in the team as a whole and specifically for each employee.
Lack of attention to these factors can cause serious difficulties. Among the methods for improving the efficiency of work by personnel are noted:
  1. monitoring the attendance of employees at the workplace (at the beginning of the working day),
  2. control of the employee's working time (its rational use),
  3. time-consuming payroll based on hours worked,
  4. identification of malicious violators of labor discipline,
  5. documentation of the facts of violation of labor discipline,
  6. control over the implementation of work schedules.

A competent, qualified HR specialist plays a key role in this situation. This position should be in any company.

Techniques that improve staff efficiencya

You should pay attention and take into service such proven methods for improving the efficiency of staff work:
  1. mandatory entry of job descriptions,
  2. introduction of an automated system for recording working time,
  3. employee appraisals,
  4. conducting regular monitoring of personnel,
  5. employee motivation system,
  6. a system of incentives for disciplined employees (the salary of employees must correspond to their efficiency for the enterprise),
  7. strict accounting of the time of absence from the workplace, even for a good reason, when calculating wages,
  8. punishment for violators of labor discipline,
  9. development and implementation of a transparent system of work control schedules.
It must be remembered that any boss needs to be in the key of the news, interests, circumstances and psychological mood of each of his subordinates. This is the golden rule of running a successful business. Without respect for the personality of each person (employee), it is impossible to achieve high results. The employee, in turn, should have the following motivation:
  • guarantee (preservation) of the workplace;
  • opportunity for professional growth in the company;
  • the employee's income, that is, wages that should fully suit the employee;
  • reward system (bonuses, excursions, free trips, benefits, discounts, gifts).
I want sociable responsible employees.

Good organization of employees on old equipment gives better results than new equipment with poor organization.

What questions will you find answered in this article:

The only objective criterion by which it is possible to evaluate labor productivity in an enterprise is the competitiveness of a product in the market. Therefore, to compare performance indicators (such as the volume of production divided by the number of employees) in different companies, in my opinion, is incorrect. The results of the comparison will vary greatly depending on what is in the numerator of the fraction: price, weight, labor hour, value added, or some other parameter.

I worked for almost 20 years in senior positions in various companies in Belarus and Russia, participated in consulting projects in dozens of different industries - and here are the conclusions I formulated regarding increasing labor productivity.

Conclusion 1. In order for the enterprise to constantly develop, labor productivity must grow at a higher rate than wages. There are two ways to achieve this.

  • To complicate the manufactured product, abandoning relatively technologically simple products with a low cost per unit weight in favor of more complex ones, the cost per unit of weight of which is higher. Different variants of this approach are applicable in any enterprise.
  • Use more productive equipment. This method is economically viable only under the condition of serial production and only when certain production volumes are reached.

Conclusion 2. Each company should develop measures to increase labor productivity independently; moreover, different workshops of the same plant will require different methods. For example, at the production association "BelAZ" the development of such approaches was carried out by a special laboratory for the scientific organization of labor. In order to increase efficiency and productivity, they first of all improved the rationing and control of deviations from the norm centrally. Any newly introduced incentives for more intensive work were based on calculated norms, and the share of the variable part in the salary did not exceed 30%. In the smaller plant I now run, we achieve the same goals by incentivizing the search for productivity improvement reserves in every workplace; while the variable part of the salary is more than 60%. It cannot be said that one of these options is better than the other, but I would not recommend swapping them, introducing the first one at an enterprise like mine, and the second one at a company like BelAZ.

What affects labor productivity

1. Mass and serial orders. Large production volumes justify the use of expensive, but high-performance equipment and make it possible to standardize production in detail.

2. Innovative nature of the product.

3. Production planning horizon. The longer the period for which plans are drawn up, the more precise and rhythmic the production process can be made.

4. Availability of long and cheap loans or long-term investments.

5. The degree of automation of the collection of accounting information in production.

6. Increasing production volumes while maintaining the number of personnel due to the diversification of output and the manufacture of technologically more complex products.

7. Carrying out activities that stimulate the intensification of the work of each employee (first of all, the preparation and adoption of appropriate bonus provisions).

Obviously, the head of a particular enterprise cannot influence the first four factors, which are especially important for increasing labor productivity: the most essential conditions are determined by the quality of the state policy pursued. So, when our directors are scolded for the low efficiency of the companies entrusted to them, this is not always criticism at the address.

However, in a free market, CEOs can drive productivity growth through the last three factors. This may be enough to achieve a beneficial effect - even in seemingly hopeless situations. A good example is the positive development dynamics of our company. Even 10 years ago, it had negative net assets and was under external management. And today, with almost the same number of employees, the volume of output in value terms has increased by more than 11 times, and the average salary - a little more than five times. At the same time, the cost output per worker increased by almost 11 times, while the natural output (measured in tons per person), on the contrary, almost halved due to the complication of the manufactured product (see figure). The fastest way to influence the situation is the introduction of new wage schemes. I will dwell on this method in a little more detail.

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Increase productivity with premium payment plans

Each wage scheme works only as long as productivity indicators continue to rise. That is why it is so important not to miss the moment when the growth ends: it will be a signal for you that the used reserves for increasing efficiency have been exhausted and you need to look for new ones. I have developed motivation systems for hundreds of work teams, and my experience suggests that if you find the right solution, you will achieve a tangible positive result in two months. Let me tell you the system by which our company has been calculating bonuses for the workers of the machine assembly shop for the last two years.

So, in the calculation we use the following indicators.

1. Fulfillment of the workshop plan. The base (normal) value of remuneration for achieving this indicator is 60% (there is no upper limit on the size of the bonus - we use a flexible approach). The final value depends, firstly, on the percentage of the implementation of the production plan (see Table 1), and secondly, on two coefficients.

  • K1 is the ratio of the output of marketable products (in rubles) to the base indicator equal to 80 million rubles. per month. The introduction of K1 encourages shop workers to look for reserves when making difficult plans and insures against paying too high salaries in case of low workload.
  • K2 is the ratio of the base number of employees (35 people) to the actual one. The presence of K2 in the calculation scheme keeps the shop management from attracting an excess number of workers to fulfill the plan, because if the number exceeds the base one, the coefficient will be less than one and the total bonus will decrease. I assure you: now, without an objective need for additional staff, applications for new employees from the shop floor never arrive.

As can be seen from Table 1, the first part of the premium for the volume of production when the plan is fulfilled by 70–100% is from 0 to 40%. A flexible scale allows you to maintain a focus on results, even if the targets seem unattainable. The second term of this premium is calculated using the formula 20% × K1 × K2. Examples of calculating the premium for the volume of production for various input data are given in Table. 2.

2. Product quality. The base value of the reward for providing this parameter is 30%. The specific amount of payment is influenced, firstly, by indicators of compliance with the technological process, ascertained during internal control, and secondly, by the number of registered claims from customers. Thus, this component of the bonus is not related to labor productivity - and therefore I do not dwell on it here.

The percentage of "workaholics" among IT professionals is incredibly high: they can discuss the solution of a problem for hours, sit at the computer for days, go on vacation for years, moving from project to project. However, this asceticism for some reason may not affect the efficiency of the IT department team in any way.

Improving the efficiency of staff work- a matter of concern for almost every head of the IT service - from a small company to an industrial giant. The personnel motivation system is often built by trial and error, and the number of errors is quite large. How to optimize motivational models? How to make people want to work in this particular organization, to work to achieve a business result?

In IT services, a situation often arises when people are well motivated to work on a project, understand the goals and objectives of the work, clearly see horizons, realize areas of responsibility and work with full dedication. In everyday work, the picture is often significantly different: people do not think about the ultimate goals of their work, do not feel an incentive to do it as well as possible. It turns out that the team goes through the sprint distances quickly and smoothly, but the achievements at the stayer distances look much more modest. Since managers are often unable to reverse the situation, the search for external factors of influence begins. Any explanations are used - from the general state of the Russian economy, which, like an ocean in a drop, is reflected in the organizational features of individual companies, to the specifics of the Russian mentality, which, of course, sometimes allows you to "go fast", but only due to the fact that before this is “harnessed” for a long time and slowly. However, no matter how reassuring and reliable the explanation may look, it does not solve the problem.

In order to understand the reason for this phenomenon, it is necessary to consider the real, and not the declared, organizational principles of the company in general and the IT department in particular.

Formula for success

They think about creating or improving a motivation system when it becomes necessary to increase the efficiency of employees, in a more rational use of labor resources. Often, managers describe the problem something like this: “People work wonderfully, love their profession - to the point that they are ready to give the company and their personal time, working overtime on their own initiative. They are good professionals. But in general, the IT service does not work as efficiently as it could be, time and labor resources are used irrationally.” Often the feeling of inefficient use of labor resources arises on an intuitive level and is not supported by any indicators. Managers often see a way out of this situation by changing the system of staff motivation, which, as a rule, means an increase in salary.

“Improving the performance of a company or its division is not limited to the creation of motivational schemes. The effectiveness of people's work depends not only on motivation, so it is necessary to consider it in combination with other significant factors of influence. The approach to creating an effective system of personnel work that we practice is quite often used in the West, but has not yet become widespread in Russia,” says Dmitry Voloshchuk, consultant in the “Personnel Performance Management” direction of Ecopsy Consulting.

Within this approach, efficiency is considered as a derivative of three elements:

  • Efficiency = competence / organizational barriers x motivation, where competence is professional knowledge and skills (and in the case of an employee in a leadership position, also managerial skills). Leadership qualities are an important component of the competence of IT service employees, since in a business environment, a significant part of which is organized according to the project principle, most specialists from time to time take a managerial position - a project manager, head of a project office, etc.;
  • motivation - a system of material and non-material incentives, based on the values ​​and orientations of people;
  • organizational barriers are attitudes and features of the organizational structure that prevent people from working with full dedication for the benefit of the company. These can be inorganic work rules, standards that make it difficult for employees to work, gaps in the organizational structure, the lack of regulations and procedures - for example, procedures for responding to problem situations, and so on.

Based on the formula, it is possible to consider the activities of employees in three dimensions - professionalism, motivation and corporate environment. “In order to understand the degree of efficiency of the unit, you need to look at what point in this three-dimensional coordinate system it is located: how big is the competence and motivation, and what are the organizational barriers. Only after that it is possible to draw a conclusion about what steps need to be taken to improve efficiency,” says Dmitry Voloshchuk.

The level of professionalism of IT professionals can be measured using professional tests or based on the assessment of the line manager. The situation is more complicated with their managerial skills and competencies - often IT specialists do not receive any training in managerial skills and implement their managerial functions based on their own ideas about them. Moreover, the situation is widespread when the best IT specialist becomes the head of the IT service, regardless of whether he has the makings and skills of a leader or not.

Organizational barriers in different companies are very individual. Endless mandatory memos that need to be written for any reason, complicated procedures for coordinating actions, outdated corporate standards, and much more can hold back the development of an organization. “It is difficult for people to look at their activities from the outside and take steps to optimize them - there are so many current operational priorities and there is absolutely no time for a critical review. As a result, the importance of organizational barriers is often underestimated. Meanwhile, experience shows that simple steps to improve business processes can free up 20-30% of employees' useful time, says Dmitry Voloshchuk. “In addition, if a person is engaged in ‘monkey labor’, it demotivates him.”

Theory and practice

Roman Zhuravlev: “The practices of managing IT services in companies do not form any system.” Like any other process in the IT management system, personnel management must have clearly defined goals that are clearly related to the goals of the IT department, agreed, in turn, with company goals and priorities. To achieve these goals, tasks, main activities, procedures should be defined. Responsibility for the implementation of both individual procedures and the process as a whole should be distributed. The necessary resources must be allocated, the availability of the necessary competencies must be ensured. It is desirable to identify and learn how to evaluate measurable indicators of the effectiveness of the personnel management process. It is important that the activities of personnel management include the phases of planning, execution, evaluation and improvement.

“As a rule, the practices of managing IT services in companies do not form any system,” says Roman Zhuravlev, director of the IT training department at IT Expert. - Processes, if identified, interact inefficiently. The goals of the IT service are not defined or are not related to the goals of the company. The main activities in the field of personnel management are carried out, according to him, something like this:

  • planning: quantitative - within the limits of the staff expansion quota, as a rule, annually. Quota calculation is not based on anything. In the field of education - within budgets - on the one hand, vague ideas about the prospects for infrastructure development - on the other.
  • recruitment: sources are not systematized. The activity of the corresponding department at the company level does not give results when it comes to IT staff. Professionally-oriented selection is conducted haphazardly. Selected on the basis of an expert assessment of the heads of IT departments, employees are sent "to the staff" for registration and formal checks.
  • training: in full accordance with planning, that is, randomly. (A detailed calendar plan can be not only drawn up, but also observed. However, the question “Why are these people and these programs in it?” Belongs to the category of rhetorical questions.)
  • motivation: employees involved in projects are financially motivated to complete the project on time. Employees involved in operating activities are motivated to retain as part of a corporate-wide motivation program (salary, bonuses, “social package”). The CIO gets involved in this on special occasions, such as a key employee's attempt to leave the company.

The described practices are not at all similar to the recommendations set out in modern IT management models, such as COBIT, MOF, which determine the need for effective personnel management, including planning, selection, training, development, motivation, rotation and dismissal. The reasons for this discrepancy, according to Roman Zhuravlev, are:

  • low level of maturity of management processes in most Russian companies;
  • uncertainty of the status and goals of the IT service in the company;
  • insufficient training of heads of IT services in the field of management;
  • lack of adapted methods of personnel management, taking into account the specifics of IT services.

“Under such conditions, in most cases there is no practical need to ‘optimize motivational models’. They will remain models,” says Roman Zhuravlev.

“The most important thing is to build a motivation system for a particular person into the overall goal-setting system of a company (or a division, if we are talking about an IT service), - says Elena Sharova, Deputy Director of the Department of Corporate Management Systems at IBS. - Each individual employee must understand his role in the overall “working mechanism” and see his contribution to the overall success. And the motivation scheme should be directly related to the achievement of the business goals of the unit and the company as a whole.

In the process of setting the general strategic goals of the company, they are decomposed to the level of individual performers. Each employee must, on the one hand, have a list of clear goals and objective criteria for achieving them, and on the other hand, see how his work contributes to the overall success. All this creates the most important psychological effect - a sense of belonging to a great cause. Without it, it is almost impossible to interest an employee.

It is very important that the rules of the game are initially set, not only in terms of motivation, but also the organization of work in general. It is necessary to clearly fix what are the areas of responsibility of employees, how we work, how we communicate, how and who will control the work, how we will punish. The rules of work (and the rules of motivation in particular) should not be a "black box" - they should be transparent and understandable. The less subjectivity, the better.”

sources of inspiration

Elena Sharova: “Each individual employee must understand his role in the overall “working mechanism.” In order to build an effective management and motivation system for the IT service, Roman Zhuravlev emphasizes, it is important:

  • clearly formulate the goals of the activity - the IT service as a whole, its individual divisions, individual performers. Coordinate high-level goals with the company's management, bring them to the attention of employees;
  • make reinforcements dependent only on the explicit results of IT activities. Rewards for other people's success do not stimulate you to work better. Bonuses and other incentives based on company performance may contribute to the loyalty of IT employees, but not to improve the quality of work;
  • determine intermediate points for evaluating activities - semantic or temporal. The year-end bonus encourages better work in December. The results of interim assessments should be prompt and visible. The first quarter good performance bonus paid in September is seen as a late payment;
  • make the system of management and motivation adequate to the complexity of the organization, ensuring simplicity, fairness and accuracy of assessments. Take into account the features of different ways of managing activities. Use data from automation systems for IT management activities (records of work performed, reports, protocols, etc.);
  • remember that IT employees are different. A user support operator, a programmer and a network engineer have different personality traits, prefer different objects of activity, organize their work in different ways ... And an effective management and motivation system should take into account these differences;
  • provide opportunities for professional growth. For IT professionals, it is usually a priority for a career. The possibility of training ensures the relevance of the professional level, the maintenance and improvement of qualifications;
  • try to establish effective communication with the personnel department. Often he doesn't help the CIO because neither party understands what the common challenges are, not because those challenges don't have solutions.

Bread, knowledge, spiritual atmosphere!

“If we compare the entire motivation system with an iceberg, then salaries, bonuses and other material benefits are what lies on the surface, what is visible and relatively easy to compare,” says Nadezhda Shalashilina, HR Director of the Lanit group of companies. “But non-material motivation is the very underwater part of the iceberg, which is much larger and deeper, and you can’t immediately see it, although it makes up most of the block.”

However, so far for most people the main motivating factor is material motivation. But this factor, according to Elena Sharova, needs to be subtly and competently worked on: “Financial compensation is not just a purchase of a person’s qualifications, it should motivate him to achieve specific goals and stimulate him to grow. The often occurring “ritual” salary increase annually by a certain percentage does not in any way motivate to achieve success. Employees perceive it as a fact and do not see the connection between the increase in wages and the growth of their qualifications. And more capable employees are not motivated for rapid professional growth, because they do not see how their earnings depend on the quality of work. Thus, an objective assessment (in monetary terms) of the employee's abilities should be formed taking into account the employee's contribution to the achievement of project goals (if we are talking about project management) and the opportunities for his professional growth.

One of the effective mechanisms of material motivation is the certification of personnel. During the certification process, the employee agrees on goals for the year related to professional and career growth. In the certification form, not only his duties are recorded, but a development plan - in which new role you need to try yourself, what skills and competencies you need to develop in order to step to a new level. Work goals for the year lay the foundation for the development of certain skills. The growth of qualifications, the development of skills and competencies is followed by a change in compensation.

The second tool for building motivational schemes is motivation by goals. “Goals must be clear, and clear indicators of their achievement must be set so that there are no discrepancies,” emphasizes Elena Sharova. - The principle is that a better result guarantees a greater reward. There is always a bonus fund. It is only necessary to give meaning to the bonuses that are traditionally issued in different companies annually, quarterly or monthly, you need to tie them to the achievement of specific goals. This mechanism should not be a “black box”, but should be clear and objective.”

“Given the indisputable importance of the monetary factor, in my opinion, non-material motivation is the most reliable way to retain highly qualified specialists, especially in the face of a shortage of personnel and a rapid increase in wages,” says Nadezhda Shalashilina. “And all because it is non-material motivation that gives people common values ​​and goals, passion for their work, opportunities for development and self-realization, recognition and real pleasure from work.”

In the IT industry, by all accounts, the main factor of non-material motivation is professional and career growth. Therefore, it is necessary to plan how the employee will grow both professionally and career-wise, for the perspective of two or three years, says Elena Sharova. “This is where the performance appraisal tool comes into play again,” she continues. - It is during the appraisal (if it is an operating, and not a formal procedure in the company) that the goals of the employee's personal growth are developed and they are coordinated with the general goals of the company.

To ensure consistency between the strategic goals of the company and the goals of individual employees, IBS has adopted a “top-down” approach to appraisal - first the management, and then down the job ladder. Thanks to this, the general goals of the top level are decomposed into the specific goals of each employee. In accordance with the work goals, the employee is set development goals - what needs to be learned, what to master. Moreover, in order to show the employee development opportunities, we always set somewhat more ambitious goals in the certification than are required by qualification. This stimulates and motivates him to develop, gives confidence that he has many prospects and has the opportunity to constantly learn new things.”

Among other important factors of non-material motivation, one can note the importance of the leader's personality. “Obviously, the leader and the atmosphere he creates in the team mean a lot - the mission of the company is transmitted through the leader, he must inflame hearts. But still, the organizational structure, especially if we are talking about industrial scale, should not be based on the personality of the leader, but, first of all, on a certain culture, regulations, rules of interaction and development plans,” Elena Sharova believes.

According to a survey conducted by Ecopsy Consulting on the topic “What keeps talented employees in the company in the first place?” 91%) turned out to be the personality of the immediate supervisor. The high level of income did not rise above the third step (16.42%). “People remain people. The material component is important, but the conditions are more important - professional and personal. No one is ready to work with people who are unpleasant for themselves and pour water from empty to empty, - sums up Dmitry Voloshchuk. - The topic of non-material motivation by Russian companies is still poorly mastered, largely due to the fact that the potential of material motivation has not been used up. The competition for specialists is largely due to this resource. But since we are already in a situation where candidates form the market, and the demand for them is much higher than the supply, the issue of non-material motivation will be acute in the coming years. When wages reach the ceiling, other resources will be sought. And here the Russian market will follow the Western path: most likely, it will be a motivation that is costly for the company, but is given to employees in the form of intangible benefits: a social package, the possibility of free education and recreation, payment for a number of family needs - life insurance, payment for children's education and etc. These practices are well developed in the West and will soon be actively implemented in Russian companies.”

How to make the secret clear

The development of a motivation system for each company is individual, it depends on many internal and external factors. “When creating a motivation system, it is necessary, first of all, to find out the internal attitudes of people and how their own goals are related to the goals of the company,” emphasizes Dmitry Voloshchuk, consultant at Ecopsy Consulting. - At the moment when a system of motivation for operational activities is being developed, it is very important to understand, on the one hand, what the company expects from employees and what it is ready to motivate them for, and on the other hand, what people expect from the company.

If the system motivates for one thing, and people expect another from the company, then the motivation system will not work because it is not suitable for these specific people. And vice versa - motivational schemes should be adequate to the company's expectations from the staff. If a company expects teamwork from a department, but the motivation system is aimed at encouraging the manifestation of individual qualities, not taking into account how a person is involved in teamwork and works for a common result, a cohesive team will not work out.

The internal attitudes of people are a difficult area to identify. They are made up of social, group and individual preferences, goals and traditions. But, despite all the variety of internal motives, some characteristic features inherent in IT professionals can be identified.

Life from project to project

Nadezhda Shalashilina: “Non-material motivation is the underwater part of the iceberg.” When selecting employees, managers sympathize with like-minded people. As a result, over time, the team is made up of people with the same way of thinking. Along with the obvious advantages, this approach has some disadvantages.

Today, the leaders of companies and their divisions in the overwhelming majority of cases are people aimed at constant professional and career growth, and the IT sector, as already noted, is distinguished by the fact that professional growth has priority. Each next step of professional growth, as a rule, correlates with participation in any project. Accordingly, many IT professionals have developed design thinking. Becoming leaders, they select employees with similar business qualities. If the work of the IT department in such a situation is organized according to the project principle, it will be very effective, especially in a dynamically developing company. But if the current operational activities of employees are not marked with clear time periods and clearly described goals, people on this “plain” quickly begin to lose their zest for life and soon set off in search of new Everests. “The daily activities of such employees can be organized in the form of mini-projects, with clear goals and a clear system for evaluating results,” says Dmitry Voloshchuk. “Motivation should be built in such a way that people see clear guidelines and realize what it will mean for them to achieve or not achieve their goals.”

Design thinking is fraught with another danger. People who are accustomed to project work consider it necessary to get involved in the implementation of as many projects as possible, regardless of the real possibility of completing them. The main indicator of professional failure, they consider the rejection of the project. Therefore, the IT department can be involved in many simultaneously implemented internal projects aimed at automating various business processes or improving the systems created. At the same time, the total amount of work significantly exceeds the capabilities of available resources. Accordingly, dozens of projects can be in an unfinished state for years. “The essential difference between an internal IT department and an independent company implementing projects on the market is that the internal department does not evaluate its own profitability,” notes Dmitry Voloshchuk. - This is the situation in most IT departments of large companies. Of course, the manager would have to filter the proposals of internal customers, based on the resources at his disposal. But, as a rule, he himself is characterized by project thinking, and he formed a team of like-minded people. The circle closes.

In such a situation, we propose to change the value orientation - the main thing is not the number of implemented, but the number of successfully implemented projects. This automatically entails the creation of a filter of customer proposals - only those projects in which the functional units are really interested in are accepted for work. At the same time, obviously hopeless projects must be terminated so that resources are not wasted.”

Player Coach Syndrome

The problem of the "playing coach" is very typical for IT departments. IT staff are great professionals with a high level of knowledge and rich experience. They have gone from novice programmers and system administrators to high-level professionals, they know the subject area thoroughly and understand well what their subordinates at all levels are doing. However, their current work lies more in the field of management than in a specific subject area. The main function of these specialists is setting tasks and monitoring their implementation. But knowledge of the subject area and lack of managerial skills lead to the fact that they tend to analyze every problem that employees have too thoroughly or undertake to correct the shortcomings themselves. To any request for help or in the process of monitoring the execution of orders, they respond not as managers, but as engineers. “This is a very common problem in IT,” notes Dmitry Voloshchuk. - The unit works inefficiently, because employees of a higher official and qualification level spend their time and effort on solving the problems of their subordinates. They love their job very much and are unable to refuse interesting tasks in the subject area, because managerial tasks do not fascinate them so much. In such a situation, it is very important to build a system of priorities in the motivational scheme. If employees are motivated for a business result, they will solve the problem as a whole, without going into small details.”

Public over private

Dmitry Voloshchuk: “Motivation should be built in such a way that people see clear guidelines.” Another common mistake in creating a motivation system is when the system motivates people only for individual work and all indicators reflect the personal effectiveness of each employee. In such a situation, employees lack a sense of team, collective mutual assistance and support for comfortable work. In addition, in a team where everyone feels like a "star", there is no team effect. Having messed up, people unconsciously tend to lobby for the priorities of their site, which slows down the common cause. There is not enough synergy effect from the work of the team.

“It is necessary to create indicators of the unit's collective work,” advises Dmitry Voloshchuk, “and back up the achievement of these indicators with a bonus system. Prizes in this case will be split: part is issued on the basis of general indicators, and part - on the basis of individual ones. There is nothing revolutionary in this method of motivation - this is how, for example, the bonus system was organized at industrial enterprises back in Soviet times. But it almost never occurs to CIOs to apply this experience to the work of their subordinate department. Perhaps, at first glance, the idea of ​​comparing the labor of a person who produces material values ​​with the labor of a person who creates intellectual values ​​seems absurd. But if you take a closer look, there is much in common in the process of organizing their work and goals. It is only necessary to build a motivation system in strict accordance with the expectations of employees.”

CIO note

Like any field of activity, the field of information technology goes through various stages of the life cycle. First, creators come to a new area, but over time, technologies are developed and a wide layer of artisans appears. A clear procedure appears, a set of algorithms and templates designed to solve problems. This is necessary and inevitable. Since the IT industry is quite young, creativity in it has turned into a craft relatively recently. Therefore, today the situation is typical when an IT specialist who has reached the highest professional level loses interest in the subject area, which no longer gives him the opportunity to solve problems of ever higher complexity. The sacramental question arises: what to do? “There are two ways out: either push professional priorities to the background and enjoy life, or look for new applications in professional activity,” says Dmitry Voloshchuk. - If the first option is unacceptable, then for the CIO the solution to the problem may be in changing the role, in entering the managerial activity. Moreover, the IT environment is arranged in such a way that a person can reach a very high career level while remaining an expert.

Today, companies have a serious need to improve the efficiency of IT services, to increase their manageability. IT services have big budgets, big prospects, big risks with illiterate management. The situation has come to a critical point when it is necessary to reach a qualitatively new level of IT service management. Companies have already begun to allow IT managers to take part in business management, in strategic planning. Accordingly, not just specialists will be in demand, but specialists with the makings and knowledge of a manager. Those who are able to combine both of these roles - an expert and a manager - are already becoming competitive and interesting to the market."

Elena Nekrasova

Bookkeeping automation for any business

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