What is Productivity?

Productivity is defined as the efficient use of resources, labour, capital, land, materials, energy, information, in the production of various goods and services.  Higher productivity means accomplishing more with the same amount of resources or achieving higher output in terms of volume and quality from the same input. 

The amount of output per unit of input (labor, equipment, and capital). There are many different ways of measuring productivity. For example, in a factory productivity might be measured based on the number of hours it takes to produce a good, while in the service sector productivity might be measured based on the revenue generated by an employee divided by his/her salary.

Usually expressed as output/ Input = productivity.

Very broadly productivity captures our ability to transform our physical and human resources to generate the desired outputs.

It is important to note that productivity improvement or the effective use of available resources is the only way for future development in the society.  Productivity improvement results in direct increases in the standard of living under conditions of distribution of productivity gains according to contribution.

20 Types of Productivity

Productivity is the rate of output that is created for a unit of input. It is used to measure how much you get out of an hour worked or a dollar of investment. The following are factors that are tend to improve productivity.

Automation

Automating labor intensive tasks to improve costs, speed and quality. May also reduce risks related to human error.

Best Practices

Following the best known way to do something unless you can improve upon it.

Competition

Competition is widely viewed as the root of economic productivity. In other words, if a firm or employee has no competition they have less incentive to be productive. In some cases, people are inspired by their work and can be highly productive without being pushed by competitive forces.

Culture

Corporate culture has a broad and deep impact on productivity. For example, values, habits and norms such as openly sharing information and treating each other with respect typically improves employee work output.

Efficiency

Eliminating inefficiencies in processes, practices and work habits is a common source of productivity gains.

Fail Well

Fail well is the design of activities so that if they should fail, they fail quickly, cheaply and safely.

Environment

Offices and other work spaces that are healthy, safe and aesthetically pleasing. Stimulating social environments and quiet spaces may both play a role in productivity.

Flow

Flow is a state of uninterrupted mental concentration that is considered important to knowledge work. Flow is the opposite of multitasking, or an attempt to quickly bounce from one thing to the next such as developing code, talking on the phone and watching a movie at the same time.

Innovation

Innovation is the creation of something new that has value. It is often used to find labour saving techniques and devices that boost productivity.

Knowledge

Access to knowledge can improve work results and prevent knowledge workers from repeating efforts.

Prioritization

Working on your highest priority items first tends to boost your output.

Quality

Focusing on quality boosts the value of your work and may help avoid time consuming future problems. For example, each hour spent improving product quality may save ten hours of customer service work.

Reuse

Reusing materials, equipment and knowledge contributes to efficiency.

Risk Management

Risk management has an impact on productivity in areas such as business strategy and project management. A failed strategy or project can set back the productivity of an entire organization.

Sharing

Sharing information and resources such as technology between teams. It is surprisingly common for teams to reproduce a document, technology or database that already exists within an organization.

Skills

Skills directly related to productivity. For example, an highly skilled computer programmer may solve problems with code in hours that might take a less skilled developer weeks.

Specialization

Clear roles & responsibilities that give highly specific duties to individuals are considered an element of productivity in some industries.

Strategy

The first step in productivity is to know that you're doing the right thing to advance your goals.

Tactics

Taking advantage of time-sensitive opportunities as they arise to achieve wins that far exceed your regular productivity rate.

Technology

Technology tools that get work done quicker, better or with less risk. Includes information support for knowledge work such as decision making.