Supervisory-Time Efficiency Metric
RCTClinical Trial
Evaluating worker job performance solely based on task completion ignores hidden operational costs, such as the amount of supervisory intervention required to correct errors.
Picture this
Imagine evaluating two assembly line workers who both complete five machines per day, but one worker completes them independently while the other requires a supervisor to step in three times to correct mistakes. Measuring supervisory overhead captures true worker productivity better than simple output counts.
What the evidence says
Standardized composite scores incorporating supervisory friction penalties differentiated referral performance and proved sensitive to referral incentives (mean = -0.009, SD = 1.00 across cognitive tasks).
- Who was studied
- N = 561 male labor market participants in urban Kolkata, India.
- How
- Standardized composite scoring metric combining puzzle completion time, completion success, and incorrect attempts (proxying required supervisor time).
What to do
Incorporate supervisor error-correction frequency and time-to-completion into performance metrics rather than relying exclusively on total output volume.
From the source
"Incorrect attempts are important as proxies for how much supervisory time an employee requires in order to successfully complete a task."
468 Job Referrals in India AER Dec12.pdf