John Jonas explains why virtual assistants prioritize speed over quality when managers track daily output. Teams report hitting numbers like 1064 messages or 748 accounts verified, but the pressure to show volume makes careful work impossible. He recommends dropping numeric quotas to let people work slower and better.
Chapters
Quantity over quality why your OFS sometimes work works Mindlessly first of all, this is episode three of five to eight about why ofs work mindlessly, and this one is often a result of systems the employer has put in place, or it's your fault. Often quantity is emphasized over quality. Now, you may say it's really important that we do quality over quantity, but your office knows that. You're going to see how many support tickets they responded to in the day, and you're probably not going to see how well they responded to any of them. Or you may see how many images they edited, but not how well each specific one was done. Or you may not notice little tiny details about it. Or you're going to see how many articles they've written. Or you set an expectation for how many articles are written, but it's hard to set an expectation for how well they're written. So quantity has been emphasized over quality by you, which means that your OFS is probably going to focus on just getting it done versus getting it done well often. Also, it's just easier to do a mediocre job of a lot of things rather than a really good job of few things. This is also pretty common in online work where, like employers are going to look at how many X did you do today? Which emphasizes quantity. In an office, that's not necessarily true because you're going to see the person sitting there. You know how long they spent. Employers use time trackers, which emphasize number of hours worked. They create metrics to track productivity. How many things did you do? All of this leads to a lesser emphasis on getting it done well and just an emphasis on just getting it done. Plus, when you combine this with the Power Distance index at play, you get someone who feels like it's the boss's job to make sure things are done right and it's their job just to get it done. So here are a couple quotes from my team that indicate this. The quantity issue. I feel that too. I feel a bit of pressure to deliver more because I'm getting paid more. But it's not just the quantity, it's the turnaround time. Like, we all have regular tasks that fill up most of our workday, but when a special project comes in, there's this pressure to get it done as soon as possible on top of our regular work. Here's another one. But maybe some factors causing it is thinking that I need to accomplish more. I need to respond fast. I need to impress my boss that I have done a lot of things. So sometimes the daily report encourages this. And you know, I'm guilty of this. I require a daily report from my people. And I noticed that some people will say I responded to customer messages. Other people will say I responded to customer Messages in parentheses. 1064. Like they'll, they'll say how many they responded to because that's a big number. Or today I looked at, I verified new accounts and I verified 748 of them and they'll put that in there. Or other people will say I did customer support and I verified accounts and someone else will list will have has those two same responsibilities, but they'll list a whole bunch of things that they did inside of that in their daily report, probably to show quantity. So that's partly my problem. The question of what did you do today and how many things did you get done today? Lessen is lessening the quality of the work because they know that you're going to see how much, how many they're not. You're probably not going to see the actual work. So to try and solve this, here are a couple thoughts. Let your OFs slow down. If you're requiring them to do six of these things per day, take away the requirement and say, hey, I don't care how many you get done in a day, but let's get them done better. And if you need to spend an extra double time on one in order to ensure that it's done correctly or to ensure that it's done the best, let's spend double the time and do half the work. Half, half the quantity. You can emphasize that doing it better is more important than doing it more often. Now, this isn't always the case. Maybe more is more important to you than having it be perfect. It's a tricky situation and every, every situation is kind of different. So how you handle this is going to depend on what's more important in your business.
