Dr. Gleb Tsipursky – The Office Whisperer
Nirit Cohen – WorkFutures
Angela Howard – Culture Expert
Drew Jones – Design & Innovation
Jonathan Price – CRE & Flex Expert
- Future employee performance productivity measures will extend beyond current parameters to include aspects like quality, innovation, employee well-being, and ethical practices, emphasizing the overall value created by workers rather than just their output.
- Artificial intelligence will play a crucial role in advancing and refining performance metrics, offering deeper analytics for efficiency.
- As performance tracking evolves, transparency in the use of data, ethical consent, and the protection of employee privacy will become imperative to maintain trust and balance the benefits and risks associated with AI in the workplace.
Traditional annual performance reviews will likely look a lot different in the coming year. Future measures of human work productivity promise to go beyond the rudimentary as the work landscape continues to be shaped by AI.
New metrics that quantify productivity, efficiency, quality, and innovation are on the horizon as the vast majority of employers realize the importance of evolving: 74% of respondents in Deloitte’s 2024 Global Human Capital Trends survey said that it’s very or critically important to look for improved ways to measure worker performance and their value (beyond just traditional productivity).
“Only 17% of respondents said their organization is very or extremely effective at evaluating the value created by individual workers in their organization, beyond tracking of activities or outputs,” according to Deloitte.
How will human work productivity be measured in 2024 and beyond?
For productivity, in 2024, we can anticipate more widespread use of sophisticated time tracking tools aided by artificial intelligence — which could differentiate between task types and automatically categorize activities to provide insights into how much time employees spend on different kinds of work. This would include active work, meetings, and breaks, offering a more nuanced picture of productivity than simple output volume.
“With new digital technologies providing access to more work and workforce data than ever before, it may seem that shifting to a new system of measurement would be easy to do,” according to Deloitte.
For example, efficiency metrics include the ratio of output to input, providing an assessment of how effectively resources (including time, money, and materials) are being used. AI could enhance these metrics by optimizing workflows and suggesting improvements based on patterns identified in data.
Quality of work is often more challenging to measure, but it often revolves around error rates, customer satisfaction, and peer reviews. Advances in natural language processing and sentiment analysis could help in quantifying such subjective metrics by analyzing customer feedback or team communications concerning the work done.
Innovation metrics focus on the generation of new ideas, patents filed, or novel solutions to problems — which are harder to quantify but are important for organizations driving for growth and adaptation. AI might assist by tracking project timelines and outcomes to identify which teams or individuals are consistently involved in successful innovative projects.
In future, we might also see a move toward metrics that emphasize the well-being and engagement of employees, considering the link between these aspects and overall productivity. These could include statistics on morale, burnout rates, and utilization of mental health resources.
In addition to direct work output measures, skills development and learning could be a focal metric that businesses watch. An organization in 2024 and beyond may want to track the rate at which employees acquire new competencies, especially as lifelong learning becomes essential for staying relevant in a rapidly changing job market.
AI might also start to contribute to ethical performance metrics, by monitoring and ensuring compliance with fair work practices, diversity, and inclusion policies.
The most difficult to measure, at least initially, may be finding ways to measure proficiency with AI tools. Leaps in efficiency will be enabled by AI, so tracking an employee’s knowledge and abilities with relevant tools will become vital. As the use of AI in the workplace continues to grow, employers will want to measure the rate and success of upskilling programs.
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Workers need to be aware of what metrics are being measured
Leaders must build trust by transparently communicating the purposes of data collection, particularly location tracking at work for safety reasons, and allow workers to opt-in. Despite alignment on using workforce data, ethical considerations require thoughtful transparency, consent, and benefit-sharing, which are crucial for realizing the value of such data.
It’s also important for workplace leaders to understand that aggregated, anonymized data protects worker privacy. Effective AI use can boost human performance, but misuse may harm reputation and results, so organizations should employ an ethical framework to balance AI’s risks and benefits.
Future performance metrics for human work output are likely to be multi-faceted, encompassing not just productivity and efficiency but also the quality and innovativeness of work, the well-being of workers, and adherence to ethical standards, with AI increasingly underpinning the assessment and improvement strategies of these metrics.
