How to calculate technician efficiency (the honest way)

Most workshops either don't measure technician efficiency or measure it in a way that doesn't mean much. Here is the honest version.

The formula that matters

Efficiency % = (Standard hours billed / Actual hours worked) × 100

• Standard hours billed = the labour hours on every job card the technician completed, as published in the manufacturer or labour catalogue.
• Actual hours worked = the actual time the technician clocked on the shop floor (start to end, minus breaks).

A technician who finished 9 standard hours of work in an 8-hour shift is 112% efficient. A technician who finished 6 standard hours in an 8-hour shift is 75% efficient. That's it.

What counts as "actual hours"

• In: tool time, waiting for parts, internal QC rework, training.
• Out: breaks, personal time, non-workshop tasks.

If you count only tool-time, you'll get misleadingly high numbers. If you count every minute they're on premises, you'll get misleadingly low ones. Pick a definition and stick to it.

Benchmark ranges

• < 70%: there's a process problem (parts, dispatch, supervision)
• 70–90%: typical healthy workshop
• 90–110%: very good
• > 110%: suspicious — double-check your labour standards aren't outdated

Don't misuse it

1. Don't use it as a headline KPI for customer-facing team members (advisors, service managers). Their job is not to be "efficient" in this sense.
2. Don't reward high efficiency with bonus without also measuring QC pass rates. A fast technician who does rework 20% of the time isn't efficient — they're expensive.
3. Don't compare specialists to generalists on the same scale.

Automate it

Measuring this manually is a disaster. A modern GMS should calculate and chart it automatically, per technician per day. Our own WMS does exactly this — see how.