10 Tips to improve Labour Productivity as per ISO 9001

 

Increasing labor productivity enables an industry to produce the same amount or more output with fewer workers.  Because labor productivity is directly related to output, it has a major impact on economic growth and the standard of living.

10 tips to improve Labour Productivity

1.      Match tasks to skills

Knowing your employees’ skills and behavioral styles is essential for maximizing efficiency. For example, an extroverted, creative, out-of-the-box thinker is probably a great person to pitch ideas to clients. However, they might struggle if they are given a more rule-intensive, detail-oriented task.

Asking your employees to be great at everything just isn’t efficient – instead, before giving an employee an assignment, ask yourself: is this the person best suited to perform this task? If not, find someone else whose skills and styles match your needs.

2.      Give them a reason to do

One of the best ways to encourage employees to be more efficient is to actually give them a reason to do so. Recognizing your workers for a job well done will make them feel appreciated and encourage them to continue increasing their productivity.

When deciding how to reward efficient employees, make sure you take into account their individual needs or preferences. For example, one employee might appreciate public recognition, while another would prefer a private “thank you.”

3.      Hire Local

Labor productivity suffers when the workforce you need has to travel long distances before clocking on. For the employer, this isn’t an obvious disadvantage, but for workers employment will come with greater travel costs, and more time away from family – meaning a lower effective pay rate. This can affect morale and engagement – and lower the employer’s ability to attract the best staff. Getting broken equipment repaired or serviced may also take longer and cost more.

4.      Avoid expertise overlap

When a production process requires two or more sets of differently skilled workers to be in the same space at the same time, productivity can fall. Requiring access to the same tools at the same time – or competing for space for two different sets of equipment – can disrupt the smooth flow of work and lead to frustration in the workforce.

5.      Increase labor productivity by limiting overtime

Overtime affects manufacturing productivity in two ways. Firstly, paying more for your staff in order to get a big job out generally raises your costs relative to output, which drops your capital productivity. And while a few extra shifts will often be welcomed as bonus income, too many extra hours too often will wear down your staff and lower their performance.

6.      Identify the true source of wasted time

In a perfect world, all your employees would be working all the time when on a job site. That kind of productivity would give you the most bang for your buck and earn you the most profits.

But more often than not, you’ll see a bunch of construction workers standing around on the job not doing much of anything. In most cases, they’re:

·         Waiting for a piece of heavy equipment to start up

·         Waiting for materials to arrive in their work area

·         Waiting for their work area to be prepared for a task

·         Waiting for instructions from a foreman about what they should do next

That’s a lot of waiting! And all that waiting is what you want to try and avoid whenever possible.

Ideally, you want your employees to be actively engaged in tasks that need to be done, not waiting around for them to start for whatever reason.

If you’re able to limit the waiting and encourage your foremen to keep their teams actively involved in tasks, it’ll improve labor productivity in no time.

But before you can do it, you need to take time to figure out why so much time is being wasted and what can be done about it.

 

7.      Use technology to your advantage

It used to be difficult, if not impossible, to track productivity out in the field. But today, there are apps and web interfaces that are designed to make it easy to do.

 

8.      Beware staggered or alternating rosters

When workers are scheduled for, say, 10 days on then 6 days off, labor productivity is often affected. Workers can take time to get back to full speed when returning after an extended break – while errors are more likely to creep in as staff tire at the end of long periods on the job. Similarly, rotating rosters where staff switch between day, evening and night shifts is disruptive to productivity.

 

9.      Target stockouts

Halting a production run because a key component runs out is devastating to labor productivity. Not only do workers sit idle, but the break-down and set-up time of machinery and equipment is doubled if the production line has to switch to a different product – and then switch back to complete the original run when stock arrives.

 

10.  Communicate effectively

Every manager knows that communication is the key to a productive workforce. Technology has allowed us to contact each other with the mere click of a button. This naturally means that current communication methods are as efficient as possible, right? Not necessarily.  Instead of relying solely on email, try social networking tools designed for even quicker team communication. You can also encourage your employees to occasionally adopt a more antiquated form of contact … voice-to-voice communication. Having a quick meeting or phone call can settle a matter that might have taken hours of back-and-forth emails.