Are We Measuring Work, or Just Activity?

The more we can measure what colleagues do, the easier it becomes to mistake activity for performance.

I’ve seen what happens when a contact centre becomes fixated on average call handling time. It usually starts with a reasonable objective: calls cost money, customers dislike waiting, and managers want to know how efficiently the operation is running. So they measure how long each adviser spends on a call.

Then something changes. Average handling time ceases to be one useful measure among many and becomes the number that really matters. Advisers know it, team leaders talk about it, and performance conversations centre on it. Soon, everyone understands that a short call is a good call. Except, of course, it isn’t.

I’ve watched advisers rush through conversations because they know the clock is ticking. In the worst cases, I’ve seen advisers deliberately end difficult calls. The customer will almost certainly call back, probably to someone else. The first adviser protects their average handling time. The contact centre records another call. The customer starts the whole miserable process again. The metric says productivity has improved. The customer experience says something very different.

When the thing we can measure becomes the thing we manage, activity often starts to replace value.

People get good at what we measure

Measuring employee performance is nothing new. What’s different now is how much we can measure. But visibility isn’t the same as understanding. A measure starts to observe work. Eventually, it can become an instruction on how to work.

Tell a contact-centre adviser repeatedly that average handling time matters, and they’ll shorten calls. Tell a checkout operator that scanning speed matters, and they’ll scan faster. They’re not gaming the system. They’re listening to us. Colleagues discover what an organisation truly values not from posters or values statements, but from the metrics their manager asks about.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

You can see the same tension every day at a supermarket checkout. Grocery retailers have measured scanning efficiency for years, and for good reason. Labour is a significant cost, and low-cost retailers especially need efficient operations. But I’ve experienced two very different versions of how that plays out for the customer.

With the first checkout operator, the head stays down. Beep. Beep. Beep. Shopping races through the scanner while you scramble to find space in your bags. Another packet of pasta, tin of tomatoes and carton of milk appear before you’ve dealt with the last lot. The colleague is doing exactly what the measure encourages.

Then there’s another type of checkout operator. They’re still quick, but they look up and say hello. They notice when you’re struggling to pack and discreetly change pace. Maybe they comment on something you’ve bought or ask how your day is going. Nothing dramatic happens. It’s simply a human interaction. Yet those few seconds can completely change how the checkout experience feels.

If the only number on the dashboard is scanning speed, which colleague looks better? Probably the first. But I’m not sure the customer would agree.

Measurement isn’t the problem

I don’t think businesses should stop measuring performance. Contact-centre managers need to know how long calls take. Retailers need to understand checkout productivity. Those numbers can reveal poor processes, training needs, and genuine underperformance.

The problem starts when we confuse the measure with the outcome. A large meta-analysis of electronic performance monitoring covering 94 independent samples and 23,461 workers found no evidence that monitoring improved performance overall. It did, however, find that monitoring was linked to increased employee stress.

That doesn’t prove monitoring never works. But it does suggest that measuring more doesn’t automatically produce better performance. Which brings me back to the checkout operator and the contact-centre adviser: what exactly are we trying to improve?

The work that doesn’t fit on the dashboard

Some valuable work is surprisingly hard to count. An adviser spends another two minutes resolving a problem properly. A checkout operator slows down for someone who needs more time. A manager spends twenty minutes coaching a struggling colleague. Each may look less productive in the moment. But the value often appears later.

The customer may not need to call again. The checkout customer may leave feeling treated as a person. The colleague who received the coaching may perform better for months. Good colleagues often understand instinctively that the measure and the customer sometimes want different things, so they compensate. They watch the clock without rushing the customer. They scan quickly while still making space for a conversation. They complete the task while noticing the human being standing in front of them.

Great colleagues often rescue poorly designed measures in the same way they rescue poorly designed processes. We shouldn’t rely on them to do it.

What behaviour does the number create?

There’s one question I think managers should ask before placing too much weight on any performance measure:

If someone became obsessed with maximising this number, what would they do differently?

If an adviser became obsessed with cutting average handling time, would they listen more carefully? Would they take ownership of a complicated problem? Or would they start looking for the quickest way to end the call?

If a checkout operator became obsessed with scanning speed, would they notice the customer struggling to pack? Would they make eye contact? Or would their attention stay fixed on the next item?

The metric may be perfectly sensible. The behaviour it creates may not be. That matters, because colleague behaviour changes customer behaviour. Rush a customer, and they become frustrated. Fail to resolve their problem, and they call back. Make them feel recognised, and the experience changes.

Eventually, those behaviours appear in the numbers businesses really care about: complaints, repeat contact, loyalty, productivity, and sales. Sometimes we just must wait a little longer to see them.

What are we trying to achieve?

The fastest checkout operator may not deliver the best checkout experience. The contact-centre adviser with the shortest calls may not resolve the most customer problems. The busiest employee may not create the most value. The dashboard can tell us who scanned fastest and whose calls were shortest. What it can’t always tell us is who did the better job.

Before we measure more of what people do, perhaps we should clarify what we really want them to achieve. Start with the outcome. Then decide what is worth measuring.

This is part of the RetailCX Blueprint – a growing collection of practical ideas, frameworks and real-world examples to help organisations create better customer and colleague experiences. 

At RetailCX, we specialise in helping organisations harness the power of leadership and employee engagement to enhance customer experiences. Contact us to learn how we can support your journey toward a more innovative and customer-centric future.