Sign Companies on Their Employee Productivity

QUESTION:

Does your company monitor its employees’ productive and nonproductive hours?

Yes: 41%

• All hours are tracked to determine how many hours a month are spent on actual work orders vs. non-work order hours. This is one of the measurables we use in management to determine if we are on track or off track each month. — John Hipple, Sign Designs, Joplin, MO
• We track time against jobs vs. time against overhead accounts (housekeeping, equipment maintenance). It is up to interpretation whether the latter constitutes “nonproductive hours.” — Nicole Bergstrom, SmithCraft Signs, Phoenix
• We have used logs from printer RIP programs to capture actual printer run times vs. file-prep time and other distractions and to prepress more effectively. We compare the quoted install time vs. actual time for the job. — Thomas Nance, Signarama Downtown, Louisville, KY
• We find it necessary to establish an honest burden rate for our signmaking operation. — Steven Carpenter, Archetype, Minneapolis

No: 59%

• We monitor our queues in Corebridge to see where jobs are, how many are in process vs. built and what is in the pipeline. We focus on created sales and completed sales. — Karrie Brock, Fastsigns of Toledo and Maumee, Toledo, OH
• We believe that the people we have hired are capable of managing their own time and meeting deadlines and the expectations of their role. Leadership should not be wasting time micromanaging employees. — Russell Toynes, Studio Dzo, Austin, TX
• We’re small enough that it’s pretty obvious if they aren’t being productive. — Rita Siprak-Weill, Minuteman Press Annapolis, Annapolis, MD
• We don’t currently have a good way of monitoring that. — Vince Cvijanovic, Graphic Components, Greensboro, NC
• We’re not sure how to. — Marco Milliotti, Image360 South Orlando, Orlando, FL

One Quick Question:

How does a manager know if an employee is productive enough?

How happy are you with the overall productivity of your team?