Talk:Workforce productivity/Archives/2013

Sources

I've just done a bit of research to try and get some comparative statistics on productivity between countries. I've got population and GDP figures from here and labour force numbers from . . . the CIA, as there's nothing here on that.

The most productive country? . . . Cyprus!? The USA comes in at no.8 France is no.19 amd Germany no.35! This makes no sense to me. Please email me any (polite) suggestions. Natural resources need to be eliminated from the equation. That's why Norway is at no.7 for instance.

Thanks

LookingGlass 13:07, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Labor Productivity

LABOR PRODUCTIVITY: OK I am new to this please forebear! I have reviewed the PRODUCTIVITY areas and feel they need a lot of work, plus there does not seem to be any clear consensus around the actual meaning of LABOR PRODUCTIVITY. What is usually determined as Productivity is taking an item produced (Unit of Service UOS) and defining the ratio of hours required to produce this item. This can be extrapolated to whole countries and we must assume that the QUALITY of the goods is well established and accepted. The problems of different amount of work hours in different countries is not really a problem (it is cultural). But none of this is really productivity, it is a form of productivity, a good common sense approach but true Productivity is when we devote ourselves to the following process. WORK (Output in hours as defined by standards NOT as defined by volume. See REQUIRED HOURS. This is then compared to PEOPLE (Hours as defined by WORKED HOURS).

WORK: This is made up of items or volumes of activities that should make up the majority of the work (approximately 80%) these activities should be based on LOCAL standards that are acceptable (hours/minutes per volume). The rest of the work is defined is defined by Administrative hours or Fixed Activities that can be defined as all the other hours or people who are required to help ensure the product is finished, these hours or people come in at 100% of their time and have no standards applied to them. Weekly, Monthly or even Annual activities that happen can be factored into this equation.

LABOR PRODUCTIVITY: Here is an example. Say we have WORK to do at an 'acceptable' standard that will require 8000 hours (converted to Full Time Equivalents FTE's which is 40 hours a week or 8 hrs a day for 5 days a week) 200fte or 200 people. (The work that is defined by local standards and fixed activities).This is the REQUIRED HOURS. And we also have Available Hours 16,000 hours (400 fte or people). Perhaps some of these people (100 FTE OR 4000 HRS)do NOT actually do any 'core' work (16,000 minus 4000 =12,000). They are at MEETINGS, SPECIAL PROJECTS, TRAINING, ETC. This is the WORKED HOURS (12,000). PRODUCTIVITY can be formulated as REQ HRS/WORKED HRS = PRODUCTIVITY PERCENTAGE (e.g. 8000/12000 = 66.6%)

LABOR UTILIZATION: This is the WORK divided by the AVAILABLE formulated by REQ HRS/AVAILABLE HRS = UTILIZATION PERCENTAGE (e.g. 8000/16000 =50%) This means the "work" (REQ HRS) to get done by local standards that equal 8000 hrs(200 fte)and we have 16000 hrs (400 fte)WORKED HRS which is Available Hrs minus Special Projects, Meetings, Training etc. Therefore Utilization percentage is 50%. --Dtheiler (talk) 22:01, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi, and thanks for the notification of your comments Dtheiler. Aug 2007 seems a very long time ago now. Have you rewritten the piece? My 2007 comments don't seem to fit the new article at all now.

There must be some standard definitions of the terms and I think that these should be what sets out the stall for the article.

I've only had a brief scan of the new article. First impressions is that it needs to include the data in tabular form from the primary sources for this data. I think it might also be a more comprehensive about current definitions, to cover the points you are raising, before going into the pros and cons about them.

Did you write the original article? Please get back to me if you want any more input.

LookingGlass (talk) 21:23, 19 March 2009 (UTC)