A Measure of Efficiency and Honest Conversations

We were introduced to Prodoscore very early on. At the time we were looking for something that could help us translate and validate what my teams were doing. I learned that Prodoscore had a very unique way of measuring activity and then providing a way to measure productivity.

Competitive Landscape

Before Prodoscore, we tried other products to help us better understand employee productivity. No one tool could give us the right view. While some tools helped us measure email or phone calls, it just wasn’t comprehensive enough. We tried measuring communication patterns, the amount of time people were spending in meetings…but what I was finding was that everything was in bits and pieces. I couldn’t get a complete assessment of an employee’s day. Prodoscore was really the only solution to do that, which gave me a metric around efficiency.

Using Prodoscore for Efficiency Measurement

Prodoscore helps me understand how people use their time. It isn’t built to tell me whether their time was used effectively, but it allows me to start a conversation with the employee. In our 1:1 or when I meet with other leaders, we can have a conversation about effectiveness. I can then use Prodoscore WITH other tools to better coach and coordinate.

A true manager needs to understand how somebody spends their time, when people are most or least productive, and differences in engagement across employees in different positions. Adding our internal measures of effectiveness (metrics like response time) and interpersonal relationships to Prodoscore’s measure of efficiency, shows me the whole story. It creates a clear view of what an employee is doing so we can help them to improve.

Work feels like an algorithm. You take all of the things you’re working with and try to translate that into how best to do things. I feel like Prodoscore is the best “pulse-keeping” measurement I have. I truly am not interested in pulling threads and looking to punish someone for having a bad day. I am interested in helping each person bring their best to the table. Let’s be honest, some activities are more productive than others. If I can help people do the best things, they are more valuable. When they are more valuable, everyone feels it – customers, partners, teammates, and even those individuals themselves.

Prodoscore is about motion and trending. When you can see measurement over time, you can smooth out the highs and lows and build towards more highs.

The Rollout

As we rolled out Prodoscore to our teams, it didn’t take a lot of work to understand. The process was relatively simple. We had data almost immediately and started peeling back the onion. It doesn’t take long for you to have something usable.

That said, managers should know it does require some tweaks. It takes time to discover what you’re dealing with and how to maximize the return. Still, for us, the rollout was quick, relatively painless, and it gave us some early baselines to make improvements.

Immediate Impact

Right from the start, we made it a point to go out to all the teams and tell them what we were doing and why. We gave every operations employee access to their own Prodoscore because there’s always the concern that something like this gets a little “Big Brother.” We wanted to change the conversation and for our staff to know they had access to the same data as their managers. When the employees themselves can see what they are doing, they can make their own modifications and help us help them. Some of the best conversations with staff started when the employee came to us to ask why the score was what it was.

We made it clear to the team that bonuses and incentives were not being paid based on scores. We also made it clear that the highest Prodoscore wasn’t the goal. We put measures in place to talk about scores, not punish or reward. In fact, one thing that people should know is that the highest Prodoscore usually means you have an employee doing too many low value tasks instead of a few things that matter more.

After implementing Prodoscore, we did see an increase in productivity by some team members who were conscientious about wasted time. But, more important than the score going up after implementation, we figured out what mattered to us and how we should spend our time. The score is just a number. The number needs to be translated WITH the employee. For example, are there meetings the employee doesn’t need to attend (we found we have way more people in meetings than required)? Are the emails or interactions that could be consolidated or improved?

The message is simple: Kill the little time wasters and focus on what moves the needle. I don’t think people realize all the things that waste time in our days. When you look at the complete picture, they are significant. It’s really a shock to find out how much dead time there really is. We’ve gotten to the point where we are much more honest about our activities and can have much more valuable conversations. We use the number to help guide us, but the value is in learning how we can build the most effective and efficient team.

Making Improvements

I think people make the mistake of thinking that Prodoscore is just for desk-bound roles. In reality, it’s much better for those roles that are more “results” defined – sales roles, commission-based people – those in roles where you might not see they are struggling until they’ve done the job for 6 months and they aren’t hitting targets.

I’m a huge believer that a series of small actions translates to big improvements at the end. If I have Prodoscore, I don’t need to wait around to gauge activity, I can understand right from the start what you are doing. It means I can have conversations about all the small things in order to affect the outcome. Understanding all those small actions provides insights that I can use to coach my people so they are contributing in the right way.

It’s been incredibly helpful with new employees since I can see very quickly how they’re engaged. Plus, I know that if I can get people to the right place based on what I’m seeing, I can train them to do the job in the right way, right from the start.

If nothing else, Prodoscore should allow you as a manager to have a conversation about the small things that should help to improve the outcome. So many people work hard but all too frequently, they’re working hard at the wrong behaviors. Without insight, you don’t know they’re the wrong behaviors until things fall apart or something is public enough for someone to ask “why would you have done it like that?”

My Favorite Features

I like that every week I get an email about which scores were up and which were down. I also like the ability to make comparative analyses. When a score catches me by surprise, being able to go back and look at other weeks and really get an understanding of engagement over time is really useful.

The Benefits

The biggest benefit in my opinion is, if nothing else, the ability to ask questions. What did you do? Why did you do it? How can we help? We make so many assumptions about how people are spending their time. Wouldn’t it be nice to validate things? As my old boss used to say, “inspect what you expect.”

Organizations have an opportunity to get really strategic about the types of work people are doing. I don’t believe Prodoscore is here to tell me what people are doing on an hourly basis; instead it’s telling me about engagement, “attachedness,” and emotional state. I believe Prodoscore gives me a viewpoint so I can answer the question, “are these the right things for employees to be doing?”

It’s a necessary tool that allows me to understand attachment and have conversations about the tasks that are ultimately stitched together to make a job.

Prodoscore lets me have conversations about long-term goals. It’s not meant to be task driven – we interpret the data based on trends over time.

At Telarus, when we make strategic decisions, we do take Prodoscore into account. Perhaps the most important thing we have done is to identify overachievers who are about to burnout. It’s actually easier to coach bottom performers than it is to change the behaviors of really high performers. Your high performers are the LEAST likely to tell you they are burnt out. Prodoscore has been really useful in pointing me to those people so we can find out how to support and better accommodate them.

Thanks to Prodoscore, the conversations we can have with our teams today are very real.

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