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Mental Inputs

  • There are two significant mental inputs which impact productivity levels:

    • Employee motivation

    • Corporate knowledge

Employee motivation:

  • There’s no precise formula to determine the impact of improving employee motivation on productivity levels

  • Hence one is left with the following broad relationship:

                         Productivity = Ability x Motivation 

  •  Ability is what a team can do:

    • It depends on the physical and/ or mental strengths of team members

    • It can be improved by careful selection and good training of each team member, and cross-pollination of ideas and experience between them

  •  Motivation is what a team will do:

    • It depends on many factors concerning job design and the working environment

    • It’s also contagious – team members pass it on to others, and new members soon pick up ‘the vibes’ – this applies to both high and low motivation levels

  •  Empirical evidence suggests their combined effect on productivity can be dramatic – for example:

    • More availability of staff – up to 50% less ‘sickies’

    • More staff efficiency – up to 60% more output from the same workers

Corporate Knowledge:

  • There’s even less known about the cause & effect relationship between corporate knowledge levels and productivity outcomes

  • Have too little and it seems obvious that performance levels will suffer

  • But have too much and some in a team may become overwhelmed, others bored, so performance levels may again suffer

Conclusion:

  • Employee motivation and knowledge levels undoubtedly have a significant impact on productivity levels, even if they cannot be quantified exactly

  • They also interact

  • Therefore, both should be assessed simultaneously – and managers take action if either is found lacking

 

Employee Motivation Index – MI

A team’s overall motivation levels should be measured at least once a year by asking each team member to rate each of the following factors The motivation index is calculated by averaging the ratings that each member of the team gives to each factor – 0 is very poor, 10 is very good You can …

Corporate Knowledge – KI

The following 10 factors would enable you as a manager, whether at task, process or organisation level, to assess the overall knowledge level within your team N.B. Good is over 80% – Poor is less than 60% –  OK is in-between  

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