Guidelines v. Benchmarks
Worklytics offers high-level guideline ranges to all customers and has a formal benchmarking dataset that is available to participating companies.
Overview of Guideline Ranges
Worklytics establishes guidelines for work activity metrics with the goal of providing organizations with recommended ranges for common values. The guidelines provided are based on industry best practices and the direct experience of the Worklytics team. They are not an industry benchmark.
The Guidelines are intended to reflect an estimate of the ideal range of activity for a typical knowledge worker. These types of employees would be expected to have ample time for deep thinking and focused work, as well as be less likely to experience burnout. Ranges are based on average weekly values per person over a 12 week period.
Here is a sample of guideline ranges for frequently-used metrics:
| Metric | Guideline | Context from prior driver analyses |
|---|---|---|
| 4.5-8 hours per week | Employees that attend more than 8 hours of meetings tend to report difficulty getting things done |
| 5-15 messages per week | Employees that receive more than 15 after-hours slack messages tend to be at higher risk for stress and burnout, especially if those messages come from a direct manager |
| 3.5+ hours per day | People with fewer than 3.5 hours of daily focus time tend to report feeling less productive |
| 7.5-9 hours per day | Teams that consistently work long hours are at risk for burnout. Very high values may also be a signal that there is a high prevalence of after-hours work |
| 0.5-1.5 hours | While some weekend work may be needed at times, consistently working long hours on the weekends was associated with burnout risk |
| 60-150 collaborators per week | Employees that interact with very few people tend to report feelings of isolation |
| 5-12 collaborators per week | Employees that have to work with more than 12 people each week tend to report perceptions of slower decision making and difficulty getting things done, while those who work with fewer than 5 people closely may have issues gaining visibility for their work |
| 0.5-1.5 manager 1:1s per week | The number of weekly manager 1:1s is one of the biggest predictors of manager satisfaction and employee engagement, and we recommend a 1:1 every 1-2 weeks |
Overview of Benchmarks
Benchmarks offer more specific insight into how your company's work patterns compare to those of other companies. Benchmarks are available to participating companies and represent tens-of-millions of records and tens-of-thousands of employees across six different industries.
We chose our analysis approach to offer maximal clarity, while respecting a diverse set of participating firms' privacy, security and data protection expectations. Ultimately, we estimate benchmarks using Monte Carlo simulation and report fifth-quantiles for a subset of metrics at the manager, IC, and all-employee level. Future versions of the benchmarks product will incorporate additional cuts of data, among other improvements.
See the illustrative example below.
Note: If you are interested in exploring benchmarks for your organization and are not already a participating company, please contact info@worklytics.co.
When to use each
We typically use the guidelines to highlight "what good looks like" and how that compares to the reality at a company.
Benchmarks can be more specific and offer a point of comparison between your company and other organizations. However, as we see with focus time (example from our latest Industry Report below), most employees do not get the ideal amount on a regular basis. At a glance, having an org-wide value close to the 50th percentile of our focus time benchmark may seem like a good thing, but it would actually suggest your company needs more focus time if compared to the guideline range. We therefore recommend using the guideline ranges and benchmarks in combination with each other.
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