Measuring how productive your staff members are will give you insight into other areas of their performance. For example, a sales rep who isn't hitting targets might just be bogged down with administrative work.

Sales

First off, look at sales targets and whether or not team members are selling what they need to. Reward your teams for hitting targets but do look at the individuals. A team might hit their target but one person could be slacking. Look closer and you may find that sales rep is being unproductive in some area.

Even higher performing reps might be lacking in productivity and could have the potential to make more sales than they already do.

Social media

Stalking your employees on social media might not be the best idea as it's dishonest but encourage your staff to use social media to help promote your business. This gives you the excuse to check their activity. If they're spending too much time chatting to friends or playing Candy Crush, just mention it to them and let them know what is and isn't acceptable.

Response times

Take a look at how quickly staff respond to phone messages and emails, especially those from clients as this can be an important factor in customer satisfaction.

It also shows how productive they are. If they can respond to an email within half an hour, it shows they aren't bogged down with other work.

Customer satisfaction

If you can, survey your customers on a regular basis. This might be at the end of the sales process or a big mail out every six months. From this you'll be able to find out which of your staff are giving the best customer experience. This can often be down to productivity.

The best sales reps manage their time well so they can spend more of it selling, looking after customers and keeping everyone happy.

Project management software

If you use project management software such as Basecamp, you'll be able to see who is completing the most tasks. It's a good way of tracking what employees are up to.

Look for redundancies

If you do find that a member of staff is unproductive, it might not be because they are wasting time on social media. It might be because they have to write out invoices and appointment cards by hand when doing this on the computer could be much quicker. Take a look at your processes and see if they can be made quicker and simpler.