Be forewarned. This is not a techie post. I am a nerd but not a tech geek. I am clueless about those IT terms that they simply make me go ” what was that term again?! ”
All right, warning in place. Now for the title. I read about productivity in a lot of business books or articles or what nots and I ” get it, ” a bit. I understand that it’s a form of measuring how people or processes or technology perform within a given timeframe. I was in the BPO ( business process outsourcing ) industry for five years and they put a lot of weight on this. Oh, a lot! The seconds that would take you to finish something matters to them, them being the account managers or the operations team. They were a few who were more considerate and yep, humane enough to realize that their workers are after all, living, breathing creatures and not robots. Nuninuninuni… Even WALL-E ( from the Disney movie ) acted more like us than some of the management people. To give you an idea, there were some of our KPIs ( key performance indicators ):
AHT – average handling time ( number of minutes we’d talk to a customer to solve a problem or whatever issue they have )
CSAT – customer satisfaction ( often randomly automated surveys answered by customers.. oh, some,most of those excited their feedback were the irate / angry ones..uh-oh! )
ATTENDANCE – we have to be at the office / center.ALL THE TIME.
and others I’ve forgotten.
Now, the crunch. I’ll try to define it.
crunch – when you need to do something so bad that it almost gives you a hyperventilation attack
I may sound too dramatic but yep. I experienced all those. Those, meaning the stress of crunching to be productive at work.
Before the BPOs, I was with medium sized trading companies which involved importation and much hustling and bustling with a lot of people of different personalities. I survived. And I thrived in that environment. Sad to say that it was cut short by a mismanagement from the key people in the firm.
Productivity crunch.
Staying at home for the last five years, being a hands on mother to four energetic and strong-willed kids, I have to say, I never rested. Productivity always mattered. More than the output I did when I was ” working. ” How so? Looking at these four now, while they’re quiet and asleep ( after endless bouts of arguments and whining and pointing fingers and…you get the picture right? ), I get to see myself from another perspective. I was not just a mom. I am a parent. A hardworking one at that. A loving one at that ( definition: loving-affectionate,disciplinarian,firm,funny and everything in between ). One day, when they get to read all my posts in this obscure blog, and they stumble on this one, they’d see how mommy loves them to pieces. That even when mommy would raise her voice to emphasize a point or just be plain mad, mommy loves them, yes, to pieces.
