Workshop 11: Using Productivity Measurement and Feedback to Improve Organizational Performance

Measuring and improving organizational performance is a key organizational process. One way to do this is the development of high-quality output measures organized into a feedback system specifically designed to improve motivation and performance. The workshop will focus on approaches to doing this with special emphasis on one technique, the Productivity Measurement and Enhancement System (ProMES). ProMES was designed to be a practical method of measuring organizational productivity and to use these productivity measures as feedback to help people improve their productivity. Results using the system indicate that (a) it generally results in large increases in productivity which last over long periods of time, (b) it can be used in many different types of organizations with people at all levels of the organization, (c) the system is highly cost effective to use, and (d) attitudes and stress improve under the system. The workshop will focus on practical issues in doing such an intervention and will simulate the steps in doing ProMES using the workshop participants as members of the design team. The focus will be on the practical issues that a ProMES facilitator must deal with in actual projects. Participants will also be provided with materials that are concrete guides to using ProMES in actual organizations. This workshop is designed for practitioners and researchers interested in better understanding how to use performance measurement and feedback to improve organizational performance.

This workshop is designed to help participants:

• Summarize the value of output-based feedback systems
• Identify key issues that must be resolved before starting such a project
• Learn how to facilitate a ProMES intervention
• Assess the progress of a project including criteria for the measurement and feedback system

Robert D. Pritchard is currently a professor of psychology and management at the University of Central Florida. His primary interest is measuring and improving organizational performance. He has published seven books and approximately 75 articles in this area. His approach to measuring and improving organizational performance has been used in over 200 settings in several countries, and he has given workshops, symposia, and other presentations on his work in the U.S., Canada, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, the Czech Republic, Sweden, and Russia. He has received several research awards including the SIOP Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. He is a Fellow in SIOP, APA, APS, and has been president of the Houston Association of Industrial and Organizational Psychologists. He was also a member of the Governor’s Commission on Incentives and Productivity for the state of Texas. He received his PhD in 1969 from the University of Minnesota.

Gary P. Latham is the Secretary of State Professor of Organizational Effectiveness in the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and a past president of the Canadian Psychological Association. He is a Fellow of APA, SIOP, AoM, the Canadian Psychological Association, the Royal Society of Canada, and the International Association of Applied Psychology. Gary is the recipient of the awards from SIOP for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology as a Profession (1998) and as a Science (2003). In 2004, he received the Scientist/Practitioner award from the Academy of Management. In 2007, he received the Michael Losey Award from SHRM for his research contributions to the science and practice of HRM. He received his PhD from the University of Akron.

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