Measuring Your Plant Tech’s Productivity, Efficiency, & Quality of Work
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There exists a commonly-referenced business axiom which states, “Whatever is measured improves.” In other words, if you desire improvement, employ one or more metrics. Simply by tracking and reporting results, performance improves.
How might this rule apply to an interiorscape business? Let’s look at the operational performance of a technician.
When it comes to measuring operational results, there are three metrics that form the foundation. Think of them as a three-legged stool. These are: productivity, efficiency, and quality.
PRODUCTIVITY
Productivity may be measured by dividing the tech’s time spent working onsite by their paid time. For example, if a tech works a total of 6 hours onsite but is paid 8 hours, their productivity for this particular day is 75% (6 divided by 8). The six hours spent onsite are considered “productive” because they were devoted to billable work.
The remaining two hours of paid time are deemed “unproductive” because they were not spent on billable work. Instead, these “unbillable” hours were probably spent driving, parking, loading, unloading, attending meetings, or paid breaks. These are all acceptable and necessary activities but they don’t directly produce revenue.
A perfect productivity rating of 100% is achievable by having techs report directly to large job sites where their paid time is all billable. However, in situations where techs are paid by the hour and travel from site to site, a score of 100% is impossible. In all cases, the goal is to increase productivity ratings as high as possible through route density and striving to eliminate other causes of non-billable time.
When managers begin to measure and report productivity scores, techs will quickly point out that productivity has more to with the company’s ability to sell larger jobs in closer proximity to each other, and to create tight routes. These are all true statements. Nevertheless, productivity ratings are a key operational metric.
Efficiency
The second leg of the stool is efficiency. Unlike productivity, efficiency is controllable by the tech. It is a measure of speed. Efficiency may be measured by dividing actual time by budgeted time. For example, if a job task has a budget of 4 hours and the tech actually takes 5 hours, the efficiency rating is 125% (5 divided by 4). An efficiency rating over 100% means the job came in over budget and vice-versa.
Techs are able to control their efficiency ratings in most cases by working smart and hustling. In my company, we used to be amazed at the efficiency ratings for jobs scheduled on Friday. We could take any job, move it to Friday, and the efficiency would increase by 25-50% every time. People can pick up the pace whenever they want to. Of course, the opposite is true as well.
When managers begin to measure and report efficiency, techs will quickly point out that some of the budgets are unrealistic. This may be true and an analysis of these jobs may ensue, which is a good thing.
When managers begin to measure and report efficiency ratings along with productivity ratings, quality will suffer unless it, too, is measured. Quality is the third leg of the stool.
Quality
Quality may be measured in a variety of ways. The ultimate measure of quality is customer retention. However, proactive management requires more of a leading indicator to measure quality. Customer satisfaction surveys may be utilized to gauge quality. Routine inspections may also be implemented to ensure consistency and standards being met. My preference is to use all three methods.
To get the most from inspections, segregate your customers into two or more groups. Place your largest and most profitable customers into one group. Think of the 80-20 rule, which says that 80% of profits come from 20% of your customers. Make sure that these customers are receiving inspections at a higher frequency than the remaining group(s). If there is a slight quality slip, let it be on a less important account.
Mobile applications tied to software programs make inspections easy and systematic. Simple paper-based inspection forms work well also.
As you consider your operational performance, what are you measuring? Is there a metric you wish to employ after reading this post? Which one? What about measuring results in other areas of your business, such as with marketing, sales, account management, administration, or financial management?
Remember, whatever you measure improves.
Now go forth.
Featured image courtesy of frankieleon
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Phil Harwood is a Managing Partner with Pro-Motion Consulting (http://www.mypmcteam.com/). He is a green industry veteran with over 30 years of managerial experience. He graduated with honors from the Executive MBA Program at Michigan State University and was recently nominated “Alumnus of the Decade” by his peers.
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2 responses to “Measuring Your Plant Tech’s Productivity, Efficiency, & Quality of Work”
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I totally understand and applaud the necessity of evaluating performance/production in some purposeful and real-world way if one wants to have a successful company, be it interior landscaping or anything else. I also uphold the right of bean counters to count beans. If you’re a manager or owner who likes to convert everything to lists, charts, and statistics, this article could be quite meaningful to you. Some techs are also list-and-figure oriented; if the statistically minded techs, managers, and owners could all get together in the same company at the same time, they all might live happily ever after.
Alas, such conjunctions are vanishingly rare. In my opinion, most techs would respond with something between a glassy-eyed stare to seething rage if the owner or manager started to go on about productivity percentage ratings of their operational performance. Anyone who’s been in the business for a year or so knows that what you’re calling PRODUCTIVITY is a matter of scheduling, not technician performance. If a management person starts analyzing productivity figures and finds them wanting, they’d best look to the schedules; so this category then is a measure of management performance, not technician performance.
Now, EFFICIENCY is a major issue for techs;it is not a simple matter, and is only learned by trial and error, or by having a superb training program that teaches efficiency both in general, and as it applies to each individual account. As you note, this is an intersection point of the various facets of the company. A 4 hour account that consistently take 5 hours may well indicate a billing problem; a tech who consistently takes longer to complete accounts than the scheduled time is probably in need of more training (or maybe this is just not the job for them.) In my experience, techs spend most of their time “hustling.” If you’re finding that Friday accounts get finished in less than scheduled time, you may want to reconsider your scheduling. Of course, people can pick up the pace whenever they want to; every now and then, for whatever reason, techs hustle in double-time. But if the have to do that too often, quality will start to suffer; again, it usually comes down to management scheduling problems.
QUALITY is where we all sit down to the table, and where the tech really makes the difference. Many people think that customer retention is the proof of quality, but I’ve seen too many accounts where the customer never says anything about less than beautiful plants; at least until they move to another company. Customer surveys may be of some use, but the very best tool for insuring quality, I believe, is a robust schedule of quality control inspection visits. These not only identify problem areas the tech may be having, before they even become visible to the customer, but also make the client feel cared for.
The other aspect of quality that has ramifications in the facts-and-figures area of business in the replacement rate. Every account should have billed into it the expected replacement rate, and the tech needs to know where they stand in relation to this figure. This may be the most meaningful figure for the tech to know, and the area where good plant care practices will have the most impact. Coupled with one-on-one feedback meetings based on the quality control assessments, and training sessions where necessary, this would seem to me to be the most effective way to optimize technician performance.
If you like to measure things, go ahead and count your beans. But please, oh please, go easy when talking to your techs about measuring their operational performance ratings. The tech you lose may be your own.
I agree with Marlie that the obsession with metrics often leads decision-makers down the wrong road. I could not disagree more with the notion that measuring things will make them better. Some things may improve; other things definitely do not. Let’s retire that misleading axiom.
I also take exception to the notion that only tech time spent servicing plants is productive time because other time, such as travel, is not billable. If you are estimating your accounts properly, all time spent is billable. Time spent traveling, setting up, waiting to get in conference rooms, doing replacements, etc. must be taken into account in determining how much a client is to be billed. Indeed, all indirect (overhead) costs must be factored into the calculus used to determine account billing. To think of these costs as non-billable is a fundamentally flawed way of thinking about account evaluation.
I have personally serviced hundreds of accounts over several decades and they are all unique. Yes, I can make some initial general assumptions as to time and replacements required. But every account needs to be tweaked, not according to a formula, but by the idiosyncrasies of that account. Metrics are a sometimes useful starting point, but are terribly misleading if followed rigidly. Intangibles are very significant, but usually don’t lend themselves to measurement.
We have all had the experience of bidding against competitors for a client. And we all also know that we have often lost out in the bidding process because a “numbers-oriented” decision-maker had no idea what is involved in plant quality or plant service. The decision was made “metrically” based on a bottom line number in which there was no appreciation of the intangibles. If you have been burned by this bean-counting bids approach, make sure you don’t make the same mistake in managing your own company.