Hours Worked Is Never a Good Metric
Are you measuring your performance by your hours worked? What about the company or organization you work for, are they doing it? Is it part of the culture?
One of the great things about my business is that I get to see, hear, and feel a lot of pain points from both the organizational viewpoint, and the employee viewpoint.
Has your organization faced tough hiring challenges? Does it struggle with employee turnover?
You can blame it on all of the typical stuff. Too much free money, not a high enough pay rate, location, type of business, and so much more.
Most of those things probably have something to do with it and so does the business culture and reputation.
Hours worked is a lousy professional occupation measurement tool.
It is certainly applicable for hourly staff, paid by the minute, according to the clock. For everyone else, it doesn’t make a lot of sense and it may be just one of many lingering cultural problems your organization and team face.
Hours Worked
A few years back I was on a corporate coaching assignment. Which means, I was hired by a business to coach several employees. After a session or two, I found a common thread.
All of the employees being coached had corporate speak of, “he/she isn’t puttin’ his/her forty.” They weren’t talking about a 40-ounce bottle of beer and a brown paper bag. There was a culture of professional level positions (salaried) having some measurement based on observations or gossip of hours worked.
Something so simple. It told me a lot about the culture.
Certainly, I think that there is some value, in some professional occupations, to being present and not missing in-action during the normal workday. An old-school observable metric that has been tested to the max since the start of the 2020 pandemic.
At the same time, I believe sitting at a desk or being present in a workspace from 9 to 5 doesn’t mean very much about your contributions, value, or efficiency.
Having a talking point about hours worked doesn’t say much either. Often, the root of this is based in management team members who are resentful about the time they spend at work versus doing other things.
The metrics that you measure will have a lot to do with the results. Time is nearly always part of a metric, but hanging around the office for 10 hours a day and being productive for about 4 hours of that time doesn’t really say much.
A measurement based on hours observed at the workplace might tell a story.
A story your business can’t afford.
-DEG
Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.
