Productivity Pulse Episode 1

Productivity Pulse Episode 1

 Hear directly from our experts—Sue, Simon, & James—who share real-world trends, new data findings, and actionable productivity insights 

We dig into why efficiency swings across sites, how that volatility hurts peak service, and what workload models can do to stabilise performance. We also show how role drift reduces leadership time and how structured interviews add a 360 view that turns data into action.

• Variable efficiency index and why it matters
• Removing slack and the risks at peak
• Tactical fixes for rotas, breaks and coverage
• Building a robust workload model linked to WFM
• Reallocating budget to balance the estate
• Role studies revealing leadership time drift
• Restating manager expectations and blockers
• Structured interviews adding qualitative insight
• Turning insights into consistent employee and customer experience

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Chapters

• 0:09 New Monthly Format And Guests
• 1:15 Why Share Cross-Client Trends Now
• 2:44 Defining The Efficiency Index
• 5:08 Risks Of Tight Operations At Peak
• 7:15 Fixing Mismatch: Peaks, Rotas, Models
• 9:22 Reallocating Budget For Balance
• 11:17 Manager Time Drift And Variability
• 13:19 Employee And Customer Consistency
• 14:41 Interviews Add A 360 View
• 16:22 Turning Insights Into Action
• 18:28 Wrap-Up And What Comes Next

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:05

Welcome to the Productivity Podcast. This is the first episode of Productivity Pulse, which is our new format. And I will be joined on a monthly basis by Sue Hedow and James Ball. Hi both, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_00: 0:20

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 0:21

Yeah, great. Thanks for having me again. You're welcome. Now you've you've both been guests before, but maybe for those that haven't listened, Sue, do you want to give a quick overview of who you are and what you do in Rethink?

SPEAKER_00: 0:34

Yeah, so I'm the other half of the uh co-founder, the other co-founder in Rethink. And it's my team that do all the data capture, the analysis, and the reporting of insights back to clients.

SPEAKER_01: 0:50

Perfect.

SPEAKER_02: 0:51

And James, my role within that as head of insight development is thinking about how we can continue to uh produce great quality insights because that's kind of at the heart of what we do, but also how that can develop over time and how we can use technology to make it more exciting, more insightful.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10

Brilliant. And we're gonna use this first episode to follow on from our productivity thought forum that was in September. And for those that are interested, the next one is already available to register, and the link will be in the show notes around the key themes. And James, you led a really interesting session on the day, some great feedback. And I think you just wanted to pick out a couple of highlights to talk through with two.

SPEAKER_02: 1:33

Yeah, if that's okay. I mean, something that we do all the time, all day, every day for our clients is collect really high quality data. You know, we a lot of data quality checking goes into um producing our insights. And so people in the in the business spend a lot of time checking data. Uh, we spend a lot of time analysing the data and interpreting the data. Something we haven't traditionally done as much is then give back some overviews of what we've seen across our clients, trends we've been seeing. That's because you know, we work with the clients we work with. We've we've never said that we're providing a census to a state of of any sector in any country. But there are a number of themes that that Stu have picked out as happening across 2025 so far, uh, that we thought it was really useful to share with our clients as a whole because they're relevant to everybody. And so we chose at the forum this year to to share that for the first time. And as you say, all the feedback I got was that it was really valuable and something people would actually like to hear a little bit more about. So I'm really excited to share it on the podcast. And the first thing, Sue, that you had kind of noticed happening through through the last couple of years actually is this idea of a really variable efficiency index with the clients we're working with. Would you would you be able to explain kind of what that means, why it matters?

SPEAKER_00: 2:55

Yes. So efficiency index is a concept really that looks at how much work the teams are doing. So it looks at whether that's customer facing or whether it's task and process work. So that will vary by sector, but it can be things like you know, crude prep or filling shelves, or it's things that have to happen to make the operation run, as well as the the actual value out of it. So we look at those, the amount of time, proportion of time that's spent on those, and multiplying it by the pace. Now the ideal pace is a hundred, and that's classed as switch and business like. Sometimes people will work faster than that, and you'll often see it people responding to perhaps a queue in a coffee shop. So people might work a bit faster. Um equally, if things are quiet, you might see people slowing down. So our team assessed the pace that people are working at as well as what we're doing. So if we take that concept of pace and multiply it by the time spent doing work, it gives you an overall efficiency index that actually gives you a feel for how stretched or loose, if you like, the resources versus the workload.

SPEAKER_02: 4:09

And sorry, I spoke over you, but I'm coming with that. The the way tell me if I'm thinking about it wrong, but it's almost like a percent. So if you have an efficiency index of 80, for example, that means for every 100% of available staff members, you're getting kind of like 80% of their of their time, effort, and and focus.

SPEAKER_00: 4:34

It's a bit more it's a bit different to that because it's got that pace element in as well. Yeah. So it's it's really about how stretched they are. So we'd say generally you'd be looking for an efficiency index of 80 or above, which means that the majority of the time people are working at a good pace and they're occupied on productive work. Is the kind of how we look at it.

SPEAKER_02: 4:59

Perfect. And you've seen variability in that recently.

SPEAKER_00: 5:03

Yes, we see variability. So where you get that variation, it means you can have one site that is really busy rushed off the feet, and you can have another site that are actually standing around with perhaps not a lot to do. And it's where there's this mismatch of resource versus versus workload. And it tends to be an indication that their workload model isn't working very well. And I think why we're seeing more of it and why it matters is over the past few years, businesses have been looking at being more productive and kind of getting a tighter connection, if you like, between the amount of budget that they put in and the workload. So if I go back to perhaps when I started my career a long time ago, there was generally a lot more slack in the system. People tell you there was more time for chatting and that sort of thing. You know, businesses to remain profitable and to to grow and hit their numbers have been tightening down and being working on being more efficient. And obviously, we've been helping them do that. What that means though is there's less slack in the system. So if you've got an operation that's kind of a bit too tight within your your outlets, and then you then tighten it, they're really going to feel the impact of that. And what we also see is that then if generally that store or restaurant or outlet is a bit tight. When they hit peak demands, then actually they're very stretched. And what's likely to happen is you're going to get customer cues or your service times will go up, customer quality will go down. So there's a real risk there. That peak time when the most customers see you, you're providing your least best service, and that's that's that's a risk that then people start to break away and go elsewhere. So it matters because it has an impact on the colleagues because they feel stretched, but actually it can have a direct impact on your customers and create this cycle of you know, people going elsewhere because they can't get served the way they want to be.

SPEAKER_02: 7:11

And so what what can businesses do about this? Is there is there kind of a quick fix to this?

SPEAKER_00: 7:21

Quick fix is tricky in this situation. Um there are a number of things. So we advise people to really look at their peak businesses. So when it it's it's peak time, and it's things that businesses will have done for years. So you know, have you really got enough people at your busiest times? When are you planning your breaks? Are people really there when your customers need them to be? Have you got the right rotor splits? Have you got the right pattern across the week? So have you got too many people on quiet days and not enough on busy dates? That sort of thing. So there's some cool things that that people can do. The real way to get on top of it and prevent it happening is to have a really good workload model and make sure that's used to allocate resource effectively. And then if that's linking into a workforce management system that's that that is used, then so you're actually able to really match your demand. The secret is to make sure you've got enough resource to cover your workloads and your demand.

SPEAKER_02: 8:19

So there's some tactical things you can do as well as some really underlying important strategic things to and where we've worked with clients on on this type of challenge, because we're seeing it frequently. When they make these changes, what kind of impact does it have?

SPEAKER_00: 8:37

It's interesting. So at the conference, we had a couple of clients talking about the impact of them putting in a new model. And whenever people put in a new model, we find that they then end up reallocating resource. Because exactly this situation's been happening where over time some of them have got too tight and that others have just got that they've got more resource than we need. So very often people don't spend a different amount of money, but they end up looking at where they where they put it, and they end up with different shapes of their investments. They're having to move invest move salary budget from one place to another to make sure they've got this much better, more even approach to the efficiency of investment.

SPEAKER_02: 9:20

And what you end up with is every location is kind of equally nicely busy and able to serve customers at a peak in the ideal world. That's what we're aiming for, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00: 9:30

That's it, yes. Yeah, you don't want to cut things too tight because I say it has this negative impact on on your customers. And it can, in the worst instances, it can mean that if you've got a location that's got potential for growth, if you just have a lot of people in there that you're not able to provide great service when people want it, then you kind of almost cut off that growth and strangle strangle your growth.

SPEAKER_02: 9:55

Yeah, we have we all know how frustrating it is as customers and with Christmas fast approaching, something for people to think about, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00: 10:02

Yes, this time of year it's really important for those people seasonal businesses. Kind of everything gets gets exaggerated really in this situation.

SPEAKER_02: 10:13

Now, kind of changing tag a little bit, one of the one of the other themes that we've seen quite a lot and that you did that you shared with our clients was about not kind of variable efficiency indexes, but how managers behave and how managers spend their time in in their businesses. Because one of the methodologies that we that that that we use with our clients is we we call role study, which is where we'll follow a manager for a day, a couple of days a week, and actually record what it is that they spend their time doing. And within businesses, we've been seeing high variability in how managers are spending their time and quite quite a lot of variability in how much time they actually have to lead. Is that something you can talk about as well, Sue?

SPEAKER_00: 10:58

Yes, it's interesting because whenever we do any of these leadership role studies, we always ask our clients to a copy of the job description. And because that should tell us where people are going to spend their time. And uh, you know, we always get you know kind of job descriptions one document, and you would think that there'd be some kind of a good connection between that in an ideal world. And what we find is a lot of variability, and that variability is often driven by the managers putting their own slant on the job. And I'm not saying that they've gone out and purposely changed it. I think what happens is that when a role is clarified and a job description is written, it's all very clear then. But actually, if that job description was written five years ago and new people come in and come out, you then perhaps get variability in what area managers or other leaders are asking people to do. And you start to get this difference. And if what your outlets and your managers are there to do is deliver the company strategy ultimately, then you would hope for some better alignment. So we started we see a lot more of this variability. And generally what we'll recommend people do is well, you need to clarify the role and go back to people to to understand where they you know where you want them to spend them time and often address the things that are stopping them from doing what they what you want them to do. So it's it's this real drift that happens over time, I think.

SPEAKER_02: 12:26

Yeah, it's we're gonna talk in a second about kind of what stops them from doing what what they what what they ideally would be doing. But in terms of something that I heard heard you say at the conference, you know, it relates to the variable efficiency index and the the way the variability and how managers spend their time. Like working in two different outlets in the same brand can feel like working for a completely different business because in one you're standing around doing nothing, and the other you're rushed off your feet. And or because the manager is focused on completely different things in different locations, it means that the employee experience is variable from location to location, which ultimately must mean the customer experience is variable as well.

SPEAKER_00: 13:08

Absolutely. And I would say really, you should be able to just go out of, you know, one operation and drop into another one, and it should feel the same. And where we've got this variation in what leaders are doing, the variation in efficiency index, they will feel like they could feel like as different as different businesses, you know, instead of you being able to just drop in and fit in, it could be one that actually this just doesn't feel like my home branch at all.

SPEAKER_02: 13:35

And that has huge implications for for hiring, for kind of reallocating resources and all kinds of stuff, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00: 13:42

Yes, it does. And people's experience and development and you know all the rest of it. And employee experience is rightly a lot more important than it used to be. And there's lots of tools to help people talk about their employee uh experience as well. So people are encouraged to share publicly via various sites and things what their experience was. So I mean having a good consistent employee experience is something that's that's gonna help deliver that more consistent customer experience and strategy delivery as well.

SPEAKER_02: 14:14

That's great. And and as you say, it's rare, it's rare that this is by design, this this variability. It's just something that kind of happens over time. People drift. And you talked about n needing to understand or or working to understand what it is that prevents people from focusing on what the business wants them to focus on or what they should be focused on. And there are a number of things that get in the way of that. I know our analysts, trained in industrial engineers, are out in businesses making observations all the time that help our clients in terms of did you know there's variability in how people do this process, or you know, this could be more efficient. But we've actually introduced a new way of trying to get at some of these barriers recently. And Simon, I don't know if you wanted to come in on that as well.

SPEAKER_01: 14:58

Yeah, so it it it's an an interesting, I call it 360 approach now, where we're starting to do more interviews with some of the people that we study in those leadership roles. So very structured, very engaged with the client in terms of what they're looking to achieve by doing it, but gives us some really different information that Sue and James have then started to piece together to bring a more holistic view to the the story and the insights from the data. I don't know, James, maybe you want to start and then Sue talk about maybe some of the process and some of the additional benefits that's starting to drive.

SPEAKER_02: 15:34

Yeah, I mean, from my point of view, the first 10 years of micro or as a as a market researcher, thinking about how you ask people questions to understand what's getting in their way or preventing them from being successful. And so bringing some of that experience to bear on structured interviews with managers, like I think it's fascinating because we have our analysts giving you the external view of of what's happening. You have your internal view of what the challenge is from your head office point of view, but actually talking talking to managers and team members and asking them kind of what they love about their job, what gets in the way of them doing that, what they should be should be doing, what are ways they could improve the customer experience. You know, some really some really targeted questions. And we've been training our our analysts um to listen actively and ask follow-up questions kind of just opens up a whole new area of of insight for us, some real valuable qualitative information that can take our analysis into kind of new levels of of insight and add additional value for clients. And from my point of view, kind of somebody who loves data, having all of this qualitative data to play with is really exciting when when we've been doing it. Um Sue, kind of what would you add to that?

SPEAKER_00: 16:51

Yeah, I think it adds that extra dimension of um we can we've obviously have things like the job description, and we'll have you know the the organization's view of what a role should be and is doing. We can then observe and then to hear the words of the people either in those roles or the people that work alongside those roles about what are their challenges, what are their barriers, what are the things that annoy them, what do they absolutely love doing, what do they like best about their job, where and can they see opportunity to think differently. Just really adds this extra level and allows us to get much clearer about the insights in terms of, and this is how to fix some of the issues. So it's really fascinating to see the the interplay between all those different types of data and you know where how we get to a set of recommendations for people.

SPEAKER_02: 17:47

Yeah, and it's kind of we've been to some unexpected places. Like one of the things we recommended to doing on one of the projects was asking kind of a a really easy question just to get people into the into the to get our interviewees into the mode of of talking about their jobs. So we it was a sales organization organization, and we're asking them uh what's your favourite product to sell? And that question alone yielded so much insights about kind of people's mindsets and why they do and don't like to sell certain products that were so helpful to our to our client. It's it's yeah, it's fascinating opening up a whole whole different set of uh of insights for people. So yeah, loving loving this work so far.

SPEAKER_01: 18:24

Good. So plenty, plenty more to come in that area, and I'm sure it'll crop up in future conversations in the Pulse podcast each month. So we'll we'll pause there for episode one. So thanks for joining us, James and Sue, and reflecting on the forum and look forward to speaking in episode two about what we've learned since we recorded this one. Thank you both.

SPEAKER_02: 18:45

Thank you, Simon.