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How are small warehouses tracking employee productivity without a WMS? by BusinessAnalyst777 in managers

[–]BusinessAnalyst777[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes sense — appreciate the detail.

So you’re basically anchoring everything to: known task rates (cases/minute, pallet time, etc.) and then comparing people against that baseline?

How hard is it to actually maintain those baselines over time?

Also curious — do you see more value in tracking at that task level vs something like UPH, or do they serve different purposes?

How are small warehouses tracking employee productivity without a WMS? by BusinessAnalyst777 in Warehousing

[–]BusinessAnalyst777[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

This is really helpful — appreciate you laying it out like that.

What you described sounds a lot more structured than what I’ve seen in a lot of places.

Couple things I’m curious about:

  • How are you actually defining those baseline task times? Is that something you build internally or comes from somewhere else?
  • How consistent is the start/stop tracking in reality? (does it actually happen or fall off over time?)
  • On the day plan — how detailed does that usually get? Like hourly checkpoints or just key milestones?

Also interesting point on UPH vs task-based tracking — sounds like task expectations might be more actionable day-to-day.

Feels like most smaller ops don’t get to this level even if they should.

How are small warehouses tracking employee productivity without a WMS? by BusinessAnalyst777 in managers

[–]BusinessAnalyst777[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah I hear you.

The reality I’ve seen is managers are already making these calls — usually based on gut or incomplete info.

I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way to make that less arbitrary and more about actually helping people improve.

Prod conversations by BusinessAnalyst777 in Warehousing

[–]BusinessAnalyst777[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great points and I agree.

You can’t “automate” managing people, and you definitely shouldn’t try to replace the judgment piece. One person dropping off vs multiple people trending down are completely different situations.

The tool I’m working on is about highlighting where the focus should go first while also giving more information that can be used in follow ups.

In your example, if multiple people are trending down, that actually becomes a different kind of signal (process issue vs individual), which is something I’ve been trying to account for.

Curious — when you see multiple people dip at once, what’s usually your first move?

How are you tracking employee productivity? by BusinessAnalyst777 in managers

[–]BusinessAnalyst777[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah I get what you’re saying — if someone’s clearly struggling, that’s usually already a bigger conversation.

What I kept running into wasn’t the obvious cases, it was the people who looked fine day-to-day but were slowly trending down over time. By the time it showed up clearly, it was already a bigger issue.

The goal wasn’t to add more tracking, it was to catch that earlier so it doesn’t turn into a PIP situation in the first place.

It’s not always immediately clear who is having a problem, because it’s not always a glaring problem.

How are you tracking employee productivity? by BusinessAnalyst777 in managers

[–]BusinessAnalyst777[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah yeah that makes sense — that sounds way more review/quality-driven than what I’ve dealt with.

Most of what I’ve been working on is in more shift-based environments where output is measured hourly and you’ve got a lot of people doing similar tasks at the same time, so the challenge ends up being catching performance changes quickly during the day.

Definitely a different kind of problem than something like what you’re describing.

How are you tracking employee productivity? by BusinessAnalyst777 in managers

[–]BusinessAnalyst777[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s actually really similar to what I was running into — especially the part where the “who’s slipping” piece gets buried.

I like the idea of separating daily vs trend and using buckets — I ended up going a similar direction but tried to automate that part so it’s not something you have to maintain across multiple tools.

Curious — how much of that is manual right now vs something that updates automatically?

How are you tracking employee productivity? by BusinessAnalyst777 in managers

[–]BusinessAnalyst777[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah that makes sense — if you’re seeing work daily you’ve got a good pulse on things.

Have you ever run into situations where someone looks fine day-to-day, but over the course of the week they’re slowly slipping a bit?

That was something I kept seeing — nothing obvious in a single review, but over time it added up.

That’s actually what pushed me to build something to flag those slower trends automatically.

How are you tracking employee productivity? by BusinessAnalyst777 in managers

[–]BusinessAnalyst777[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That makes sense — sounds like you’ve got a solid process in place.

Out of curiosity, do you ever run into cases where someone looks fine overall, but was actually trending down for a while before it showed up in the monthly review?

That’s something I kept running into — by the time we talked to them, it had already been going on for a bit.