Keys to Productivity Management!

Human productivity is defined by the ratio of labor hours to units of output. Here are a few keys to effective productivity management.

• Eliminate unnecessary calls on labor that consume time but do not increase output.

• Optimize the effectiveness of people's time through the application of good technology.

• Schedule as much of the department's work as possible. Then match the availability of resources--including human resources--to that scheduled work through employee work schedule design and routine assignments.

• Some department work is time-critical (that is, somethings must be done at a certain time). Other department work is not. Inventory the department's tasks and sort them into "time-critical" and "not time-critical" task groups. In departments with multiple shifts, adjustments can sometimes be made to the timing of work that greatly benefit productivity. If there is a concentration of "not time critical" tasks on the day shift, consider the practicality of shifting at least a portion of those tasks to evenings or nights. This can have a profound positive impact, depending upon circumstances.

• Evaluate the seasonal, day-of-week and hour-of-day patterns in work flow and corresponding labor demand. Develop a work force of full-time and part-time staff to match those patterns to facilitate optimum staffing.

• Measure and manage the relationship between total paid hours and productive (worked) hours. In the typical U.S. acute care hospital department, productive hours generally range from 87% to 91% of total paid hours. What is the relationship in your department?

• Make judicious use of overtime. In departments where workload volumes are very volatile, overtime can be a better answer than "staffing up."

• Establish attainable productivity goals and integrate them into the labor budget. Routinely measure performance against those goals. Periodically check department productivity goals against external benchmarks to assure "reasonableness" and continued competitiveness.

• Connect department labor scheduling methods and practices to labor budget goals. Develop tools to prospectively measure the impact of staffing at expected unit of service volumes on the attainment of budgetary targets.

• Develop a culture that values human productivity. Reinforce the idea of stewardship by emphasizing that unnecessary labor costs place a financial burden on patients, third parties, and the community at large.

Assuring optimum productivity should be an integral part of the management process, not a task that should be pursued periodically on a project basis. How does your hospital treat productivity management?