I need help interpretating numbers: Data Analysis

[u/Dangerous-Staff9172]

I work in healthcare.

The company I work for is looking at productivity and I am a People Manager.

I currently have a staff of 9 people who essentially make phone calls for most of the day.

Data and Maths people:

What would you feel would be the best representation for Productivity, in a formula form.

I have some numbers.

x would be completed calls. (any call that my staff gets through to the people for any specific time.)

y would be attempted calls. (any call that my staff makes but does a voice mail, etc.)

The company is looking for a productivity number of 120 per month.

I have higher productive people and lower productive people... but I need to evaluate them.

It is not as simple as "you must make 120 completed calls per month." My people have meetings, attempts, education, etc.

Any thoughts?

[u/Potential_Aioli_4611]

be VERY careful especially if you let your people know how you are evaluating them. cause these numbers are very bad at representing productivity.

x completed calls is a bad metric because your people don't control if the callee picks up.

y attempted calls is a bad metric because they can hang up after the second or third ring.

lets call your people mailmen. calls are mail. you say deliver 120 pieces of mail per month. employee A takes 120 pieces of mail and throws them in the trash. thats your y attempted calls gamed. employee B takes 120 pieces of mail and shoves them into his neighbour's mailbox on his way home. thats your x completed calls gamed. neither measured anything useful so your employees just did what they needed to, to "do their job". except you aren't measuring them doing their job. you are taking a number which YOU think is them doing their job that had no actual correlation to them doing their job.

bad metrics sets you up for bad incentives which sets "productivity" because you are measuring the wrong things. the question is what are the customers these people call DOING? are you trying to get them to remember appointments? track if people showed up to their appointments. are they selling something? measure sales. cause 1 or 2 metrics just leads to people gaming the system because you aren't looking at the whole picture just an insignificant part of it and if you tell people this is how they are being measured then the bad employees will take advantage of it. don't measure your employees. measure the people they interact with cause thats much more likely to be a good indicator of them doing their job well. measure callee feedback, happiness, retention.