Productivity and Quality

Overview

You might work hard, but are you really being productive? For that matter, is your work of good quality? These are very important questions for every organisation.

Check out the following information about productivity and quality.

Productivity

Productivity is an efficiency concept that gauges the ratio of inputs relative to outputs. It is about the resource usage (inputs) involved in producing needed outputs. If an organisation produces more goods or services (outputs) using the same amount of inputs, or, alternatively, produces the same outputs with fewer inputs, productivity has improved.

Productivity can also be about the balance between quantity of outputs and resources used. Thus, productivity rises when the quantity of outputs increases, or the quality of outputs increases and/or the cost of resources used decreases.

Productivity improves when:

• a person processes more claims per day (quantity)
• a person makes fewer errors in processing claims (quality)
• the cost of office accommodation or computer equipment falls (resources).

Quality

Clearly, quality is a key factor in productivity. There are many definitions of quality, but a simple explanation is that quality is about meeting client requirements. The way clients gauge quality is by looking for the following factors:

• Performance involves a product's primary operating characteristics, for example kilometres per litre.
• Features are supplements to basic functioning characteristics, such as extra options on an autofocus camera.
• Reliability is about the probability of a product working properly.
• Conformance refers to the degree to which a product's design or operating characteristics conform to pre-established standards.
• Durability is a measure of how much use a person gets from a product before it deteriorates.
• Serviceability refers to the promptness, courtesy, proficiency, and ease of repair.
• Aesthetics refers to how a product looks, feels, sounds, tastes, or smells - all subjective issues and highly dependent on personal judgement and preference.
• Perceived quality is about an individual's subjective assessments of product or service quality. These assessments may be based on incomplete information.

Productivity and motivation

Think about these questions:

• Is there any connection between productivity - quantity, quality, and resources - and motivation?
• Does motivation have any impact on the productivity of people or the quality of their outputs? What is the impact?
• Does attitude affect productivity? How?
• Do reward systems and Quality of Work Life have any impact?

Let's look at these links more carefully. Consider absenteeism due to someone taking a 'sickie'. The person (resource) is probably still being paid. They are still a cost but they are not producing any output. This will certainly affect productivity. And clearly, the absenteeism could be the result of poor quality of work life, poor motivation, or inadequate rewards.

Can it work the other way? Can low levels of productivity lead to negative attitudes and poor motivation? Quite possibly. It seems likely that there is an intricate set of cause and effect relationships that work in both directions.

Does staff turnover have an affect on productivity? Of course it does. And what causes turnover? Could there be a connection between defects and errors (quality issues) and attitudes, motivation, and rewards? Could there be links between attitudes and wastage rates, poor maintenance leading to equipment failures, and standards of customer service?

Productivity cannot be considered in isolation. It is the end result of many factors. Some are intangible and most are to do with people.

Consider a productivity or quality issue in an organisation you are familiar with. Identify any attitudinal or motivational factors that might be causing the problem. Can you see causes that are associated with Quality of Work Life issues or the rewards system? What are they?