In Simple Words
Think of a worker assembling furniture: finishing four chairs quickly seems great, but if a supervisor had to step in three times per chair to fix misaligned screws, the worker wasted valuable manager time. A true productivity score deducts points for every supervisory fix required.
Research question
Evaluating employee productivity strictly by task completion or completion speed overlooks the supervisory time and firm resources consumed when workers make repeated mistakes. Comprehensive performance metrics must penalize error rates and managerial intervention alongside completion speed to reflect true net productivity.
Participants
N = 561 male labor force participants and 407 referrals in Kolkata, India.
Study Design
Standardized scoring algorithm across four cognitive logic puzzles combining completion time, successful completion, and penalties for up to three incorrect supervisor-corrected attempts per puzzle.
Results
A perfect standardized score of 20 per puzzle required completion in under one minute with zero incorrect attempts; incorrect attempts and excessive completion times continuously lowered scores, with uncompleted puzzles receiving zero.
Takeaway
Design workforce productivity scoring metrics that incorporate supervisor assistance frequency and error correction attempts alongside completion speed to capture the true operational cost of a worker.