Productivity: The cost of inefficiencies & The value of gifted time

Ever wonder what inefficiency means in terms of cost to you? Every wonder how much you gift to an organisation, in terms of the value of your time? I recently had to assist a Project Management team in large EU healthcare organisation to understand the value productivity and the tools used to support such an effort. In order to quantify the challenge, I used the table below - linking salary to hours worked and what that means in terms of value (click image to view) and the numbers hit home!

Take the following example of a 37.5 hour contract worth £€$50,000:

1. A person who is efficient in the use of available productivity tools, but is working 50 hours to achieve targets/expectations (12.5 hours above the negotiated contract) is actually gifting the organisation free time, which has a value. If you take the agreed hourly rate for the contract £€$25.64 and multiply it by the number of hours actually required to achieve the targets/expectations for the role, then the organisation is receiving a gift of £€$13,333 per annum from the employee.

The organisation is actually saying that you need more time to achieve targets/expectations for the role, which means that the value placed against the hourly rate drops (£€$20.51 - adjusted from the advertised rate of £€$25.64). You could therefore argue that the adjusted hourly rate, multiplied by the actual agreed hours (37.5), leaves the employee with an output value £€$9,787 below the original agreement.

2. However, the same can be said for employees who are inefficient when it comes to accessing or using available productivity tools; taking the same figures from the above example, the employee is devaluing their own output by £€$9,787 because of the inefficiencies in the way they manage time/tasks.

3. What is totally unacceptable is when an organisation fails to provide appropriate productivity tools for their staff. Here, the employee is forced to work in an inefficient manner to achieve targets/expectations. Here, the employee is not provided with the basic hygiene factors (efficient and effective productivity tools) that enable them to achieve the value that their work deserves. Lower levels of hygiene factors impact motivation, even when a person finds the work challenging and exciting.

It is never usually one thing, overload, inefficiency or a lack of tools, it is usually a combination of issues. However, staff need to create the argument for tools that work and organisations need to realise the value that people gift them when such tools are not available. People also need to realise jus how much inefficient personal workflow processes/management techniques actually cost them personally.