There are two numbers that have a huge impact on workplace productivity and costs that every HR/Operations professional needs to know about.

In a busy work environment, it can sometimes be a little hard to see the forest for the trees, as the expression goes. With so many important numbers and business metrics flying about the room, it can be tricky to identify which are the more important ones. But sometimes, keeping on top of the human resources and business operations side of things can be a simple matter of knowing a few important metrics and ensuring they are in the right range to suit your business.

Two of the more important ones to consider are absence rates, and job/ labour costs. Here’s why…

1) Absence Rates

An absence rate is the ratio of workers with absences to total full-time wage and salary employment. According to recently published research by the Conference Board of Canada, Canadian employees take an average 9.3 days per year each per year. The public sector take an average 12.9 days, while the private sector take 8.2 days. Absence rates are critical for a successful business to keep control of, as repeated, unwarranted absenteeism can be extremely costly. Not only are there wages owing to a missing employee, but sometimes there are costs of hiring staff to replace them and declines in productivity associated with it too.

2) Job costs

Human Resources Managers, and particularly Operations Managers need the ability to track the performance of all aspects of a job (including time, labour, profitability, etc) to be able to properly cost jobs. Job costing data, such as provided by Mitrefinch software, helps illustrate the capacity and efficiency of departments and employees and ensure company decision makers come to the right decisions.