Measure The Quality Of Work, Not The Quantity
I must confess, I’m a workaholic. Or maybe I just like doing exciting things, connecting them together, and getting paid for that. I’ve been like that since I started working many years ago. It’s ok when it’s a deliberate choice, but I don’t get it when companies nurture workaholism among employees. I don’t encourage it in my company. In fact, I often tell employees to stop working and have some rest. Because as someone who tends to overwork, I know how burnout feels like, and it’s not something I want for anyone.
Amount of meetings and long hours are poor metrics
I caught up with a couple of friends this week who happen to work in a large corporation, and as I was listening to their stories from work, I was astonished. In their company, the one who attends many meetings and stays late in the office a lot is considered a good employee. And good employees are likely to get a bonus and a promotion. No wonder large corporations are so inefficient. While we spend so much time trying to eliminate useless meetings in our small team, there’s a company with thousands of employees making people have more of them. How weird is that? But meetings aren’t the worst of the evil, I want to talk about staying late today.
You know, in Russia you can see a lot of inefficiencies all around, after all, that’s why ‘meanwhile in Russia’ meme exists. For example, you can often see road workers laying down asphalt in the rain. You may think that they’re doing it because of the tight schedule, but in reality, they wait for the bad weather because they are getting paid twice as much for work then.
Same way, when you encourage people to work a lot, they will make it look like they’re working, but find a way to game the system and still do very little. It’s not sustainable, and soon enough, management should notice poor performance and most likely fire the person who’s trying to trick the system. Unless, of course, the management is playing the same game. When this happens, the whole system becomes flawed.
Measure what matters
It’s not the quantity of work that brings value, it’s the quality. You know, some managers judge the quality of development work by the number of lines of code written. This is insane. It’s like judging the quality of a writer by the number of words written. Or a doctor by the number of IV infusions made. It’s just the wrong metric.
But some poor metrics disguise as good ones, like the time spent on a task. I was working on Upwork as a developer for quite some time, and when I was starting out, I had to work with clients who judged my work by the number of hours I spent on a feature. Seriously? I’m building something for you that can be used almost indefinitely, and all you care about is how much it takes to build initally. You could as well count lines of code I wrote.
It’s the same with other professions. An attorney is valuable because of all the experience she has, not the amount of time she spent reviewing a contract for you. A designer can spend an hour creating a landing page for you, but it’s worth paying a lot if you will make a fortune selling goods using that landing page.
Treat employees as independent consultants
It’s obvious to see the connection between the work and its value when we’re thinking about independent services. But it’s much harder to do so when we think about employees who work with us all the time. What helps me is treating employees as if they were independent consultants.
What’s the difference between an employee and a consultant, really? Both of them are working with you because it’s their choice. As an employer, you buy their time, either in bulk or one hour at a time. They are professionals and know what they’re doing. Otherwise, why would you hire them?
See, no difference. But for some reason, a lot of business owners think that they own the employees and that all their time should be devoted to working. Want to go on holiday? Sorry, we have an urgent deadline. Asking for sick leave? You can’t do that, no one can do your work. Want to go home early? No way, you can’t leave earlier than me, the boss.
People leave companies they don’t like working at
You think I’m exaggregating? That’s what my friends told me about the company they work at. I asked why they stay there, and the only answer was, “They pay good money” Well, as soon as someone else will offer them a bigger salary, I’m pretty they both will leave. Probably not something a giant corporation cares about, but something small business like mine does.
Finding and training talent is tough and time-consuming. It’s better to have a team you can count on than hire strangers every so often. Employees who trust you will back you up in the face of adversity, instead of turning their backs.
And how do you build trust? By letting people do their work, paying them well, recognizing their achievements, encouraging them for new accomplishments, and allowing them to have time off they deserve. It’s not that hard at all. And if you don’t have the process where people can leave early or go on vacation, then most likely it’s because of poor management.
Maybe I’m too romantic about it. I’ve been running a team only for five years, so what do I know. But I noticed that nearly every story I hear about quitting the job is about not putting up with crappy management anymore. Sure, there are job hoppers who switch companies every six months, but they are easy to spot when hiring.
