How employee productivity can make or break business

Today’s corporate world is an arena which witnesses cutthroat competition between brands. There are millions of brands selling perfectly competitive goods. If a brand falters, even minutely, there is great likelihood that it will lose its customers to its competitor. Thus, no business can afford inefficiency. How a company performs is a direct outcome of what, and how much, a worker can deliver in a stipulated time, i.e how efficient the employee are.There are several factors which affect efficiency. Whether it is the mood of the employee, the amount of stress the worker is working under, availability of resources at hand or it is clean and safe working environments, all factors are pivotal to ensuring that the worker is sufficiently motivated.

Sentiment Analysis

According to a survey of 800,000 workers in over 300 companies, an estimated 1 million workers are absent every day due to stress. The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work reported that over half of the 550 million working days lost annually in the U.S. from absenteeism are stress related. If this occurs in key employee it can have a domino effect that spreads down the line to disrupt scheduled operations. Unanticipated absenteeism is estimated to cost American companies $602.00/worker/year and the price tag for large employers could approach $3.5 million annually [1]. This decreased worker turnout is very detrimental to company efficiency. And not only stress, but also depression, lethargy, and disappointment can act as a disincentive for efficient output.

Most companies, having realised that worker sentiment is directly proportional to efficiency, invest in expensive softwares that can read employee moods, but only after long surveys. According to a survey by Deloitte, organizations in North America alone spend more than $ 1 billion each year without getting fair results about employee engagement [2]. employee engagement is a usual indicator of worker satisfaction and thus efficiency. Psychology and cognitive science says that a person’s mood is reflected in his body language. For instance, you’re likely be slumped over with your neck and shoulders curved forward and head looking down, when you’re sad or depressed [3]. Thus, in reality, you actually do not need expensive softwares to help determine the sentiment of workers. Studying their body postures might just be enough. With FaceorbitTM algorithims, which make us of AI in order to determine how the worker is feeling. FaceorbitTM is adept at both posture and facial expression reading, facilitating the understanding of worker mood, and thereby determining their efficiency. This way, if a worker is not in the right mood, an instant alert will be sent to the authorized in charge, who can then decide the future course of action, such as giving the worker a half day, or helping him get help and support, to ensure that neither worker trust nor worker efficiency declines.

Worker Distraction

There are several instances, wherein even though workers come to work, they do not work. The average worker is bombarded by constant distraction: emails, slack chats, WhatsApp texts, text messages, Facebook messages, Instagram live, Snapchat notifications, loud co-workers. As The New York Times reported, a UC Irvine study found that a typical office worker gets interrupted every 11 minutes – yet it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to the original task [4]. This is where time is lost.

A majority -- 55 percent -- of employers considered smartphones to be the biggest killers of workplace productivity. That's hardly surprising given that more than eight in 10 workers (83 percent) own the devices and 82 percent keep them within eye contact while at work. Three in four employers (75 percent) say two or more hours a day are lost in productivity because employee are distracted. Forty-three percent say at least three hours a day are lost. Productivity killers can lead to negative consequences for the organization, including:

• Compromised quality of work: 48 percent
• Lower morale because other workers have to pick up the slack: 38 percent
• Negative impact on boss/employee relationship: 28 percent
• Missed deadlines: 27 percent
• Loss in revenue: 26 percent
• Negative impact on client relationships: 20 percent.

Multinationals obviously cannot put a complete ban on social media, for it would be draconian, considering half of the information, regarding work, is circulated through social media itself. Thus, its use needs to be minimized to only when needed. This can be achieved through constant monitoring what the workers are doing. With FaceorbitTM algorithims, embedded with the features of Artificial Intelligence, one is enabled to record the details of the working hours of each employee, in the form of hourly attendance. The application shall take into account interpersonal talks between co-workers, record the number of breaks an employee takes as well as the duration of these breaks, how much time the employee is spending on social media, and if a certain upper limit, as specified by the end user, is breached, FaceorbitTM will raise an instant alert to the authorities, so that appropriate action can be taken/ worker’s concerns can be addressed.

Apart from keeping a constant vigil on employee, and ensuring that there is no hindrance to worker productivity, FaceorbitTM algorithms can also be used to ensure safe and healthy working environments for the employee. In case any weapon is detected within the working premises, or there is an unauthorized intrusion by any personnel, an instant alert will be raised to the administrative system, so that instantaneous action can be taken. FaceorbitTM is also adept at object identification, and can tell you the exact location of the item that you’re looking for, along with the time log of where it was last spotted.

Gone is time when you needed different softwares to carry out different tasks. With FaceorbitTM algorithims installed in your redundant surveillance cameras, all the functions can be carried out simultaneously, on a single device, reducing firm costs incredibly, meanwhile enhancing productivity greatly!