From year to year, and even from generation to generation, calls are made in our country and tasks are set to increase labor productivity. This is the most important integral indicator, comprehensively reflecting the result of all aspects of the company's production activities - management organization, employee motivation, applied technologies, and the level of human capital development. With a certain stretch, this concept can be called the quality of labor. So what is it, what indicators measure labor productivity.
Important but not the main
In general terms, labor productivity is the quantity of a produced product of a given quality for a certain period of time. But at the same time, the product must be in demand. Otherwise, a repeat of the story of Sisyphus arises, hard, long and tedious rolling its stone uphill, that is, making meaningless actions at the cost of considerable effort. There is no use measuring the performance of this kind of activity.
All the same, the product is primary, but how quickly and by what efforts it is produced is the second question. It makes no sense with high labor productivity to do unnecessary things, settling dead cargo in a warehouse or sold only and exclusively under powerful administrative pressure. However, it often happens so very often when decisions are made in a monopolistic, non-market way and with budget money financing.
Kinds
Usually distinguish between individual labor productivity and social. The first characterizes separate production elements, starting with a separate worker and separate enterprise, the second - the whole society, that is, the whole country.
Labor productivity is measured by the ratio of the quantity of the product of labor to the time spent on its manufacture. This estimate can be either cost or expressed in physical terms, for example, in pieces or tons. In general terms, the formula is the quotient of dividing the amount of work by the amount of time spent on this work.
Scorecard for the enterprise and employee
At each enterprise, the level of a number of indicators is constantly evaluated. Here, labor productivity is measured by the ratio of various input data. All of them are considered and analyzed in dynamics over different periods of time. The most common are estimates of labor productivity indicators of production and the complexity of manufacturing products.
In this case, there are three main evaluation methods: natural, cost and regulatory. In the natural method, physical counting units of production (pieces, tons, etc.) are taken into account. With the cost approach, the monetary value of the product produced is estimated. The normative method is used in cases where it is required to evaluate productivity at intermediate stages, that is, at sites and in workshops where unfinished products are manufactured.
Formulas
The output per worker shows the amount of products produced by one employee for a certain period of time. The time period may be a day, a shift, a month or a year.
The output is determined by the following formula:
B = OD / H or B = OD / EF,
Where:
OP - the volume of production;
H - the average number of employees for the period;
FV - fund of working time for the period.
Labor intensity, as an indicator of labor productivity, is measured by the amount of labor costs per unit of output, usually in kind. The formula is as follows:
Tr = PV / OPn,
Where:
FV - fund of working time for the period;
OPN - the volume of production in physical terms.
In the normative method, the estimated labor costs (standard hours) are compared with the actual ones. It is easy to see that the above formulas are quite simple. Labor productivity is measured by the ratio of two quantities: the labor expended and the resulting product. Since in modern enterprises, as a rule, the number of main production workers is much smaller than the other categories of employed personnel, the full number of employees, not only directly involved in production, began to be used in the calculations. This approach allows you to get a more objective picture.
The situation in the country
Social labor productivity is measured by the ratio of the gross domestic product produced to the population employed in the manufacturing sector. In this indicator, Russia is seriously inferior to other developed countries. The data are shown in the following graph:
At the same time, in terms of the average number of working hours, Russia is, as it were, in the forefront. In other words, we produce less and work more. The situation is clearly not normal. The following are country data on this issue:
Factors of increasing labor productivity
Since labor productivity is measured by the ratio of the product to the time spent, the answer is banal and obvious. It is necessary to increase production and reduce operating time. It sounds extremely simple, but gives away demagoguery. The level of this indicator depends on many factors that can conditionally be divided into external and internal.
External factors include climatic and environmental conditions, as well as the logistic situation, that is, the distances between individual producing entities. All these factors, for obvious reasons, in Russia do not contribute to a radical increase in economic indicators, although, as the experience of the Scandinavian countries shows, they are not a fatal obstacle.
If external factors are an objective reality that is poorly amenable to control and control, then internal factors are what can be controlled and with which tangible results can be achieved. These factors include both the general economic situation (level of investment, tax and monetary policies, inflation expectations, etc.) and microeconomic parameters that affect the activities of enterprises. First of all, they include:
- the degree of introduction of innovative technologies and products, and most importantly - the willingness and desire to do this;
- the level of organization of production based on the rationality and elimination of unnecessary, unprofitable actions and phenomena;
- employee motivation to create a link between productivity and reward;
- the quality of human capital, which includes qualifications, the level of education and the general culture of employees, the meaningfulness of their actions and the minimization of paternalistic expectations in combination with a certain ambitiousness.
This list can be continued almost endlessly, but even understanding what needs to be done, an understanding of how to do this does not always come.
Unfortunately, this process in the country has dragged on for a long time. The result is unstable growth with a tendency to stagnate, as demonstrated by the above chart.