Why Business Leaders Plead the Fifth on Workforce Performance
In a recent very public hearing, a prominent figure was seen invoking their 5th amendment right over 100 times. Depending on your point of view, this could be seen as frustrating, comical, dishonest, self-serving, or practical. In the business world, the unintentional invocation of the 5th happens every day. It’s not because business leaders don’t want to answer the question; they simply do not have the tools in place to provide them with sufficient information to answer with a degree of certainty.
Too many businesses today rely on dashboards and databases that provide information about the past but do not provide truly actionable steps to correct or identify bottlenecks in the process that are not necessary at all. They rely on supervisors to see inefficiencies on their own. This leads them to tell people to work faster or harder without providing them with any actionable steps to do so. It would be like a basketball coach watching 10 minutes of a game and reviewing a stat sheet at the end. You could see how this could lead the coach to tell their player to score more points, or turn the ball over less, or get to the free-throw line more. This direction without context is meaningless and leads to frustrated team members.
What kind of tools are needed in order to enhance workforce management and improve productivity? Just like championship teams, workforces need film time to identify and make changes. It is imperative that tools exist to capture the entire game, not just the final score. Workforce management tools are available that track time on certain websites and tools needed for work. By contrast, these also let you know how much of the day is unproductive. Could these be seen as gotcha tools and abused by supervisors? Of course they can, just like a coach who only points out missed shots without any practical coaching on how to improve their chances of making the next one. But good coaches use this information to identify ways to help their team improve and have more success. The alternative is to plead the 5th.
The next evolution of workforce management tools actually scrub the data and optimize it to provide process mapping of all work performed by an employee. This is where the true gains in productivity come. It provides insight into the steps employees take when completing a task rather than focusing on one employee at a time. In a recent meeting with one of our clients, we were sharing this data and the conversation shifted entirely from productivity of individual employees to the process itself. It allowed the leadership team to discuss why certain steps were included. They identified several legacy steps that were no longer relevant. They noticed employees backing up data in several different places to protect themselves from scrutiny. The discussion was healthy and lively and as a result, the process was streamlined and significant productivity gains were made to all employees at once, instead of one at a time.
At MySavant.ai, we utilize these tools, coupled with proprietary AI, that allows us to not only identify the opportunities for improvement but act on them. This is not a one-time event, but part of the daily routine. It is not good enough to identify an area for improvement. We continue to scrub the process to make sure the changes are being implemented, and new areas are being identified. Regular film time is critical with world-class coaches to bring out the best in all of our players. These types of tools arm leaders with the ability to answer the tough questions with confidence and improve productivity in significant ways. Pleading the 5th becomes a choice, not a necessity.
Written by Mike Foy, President at MySavant.ai.