Employee Performance Metrics For 2015

Performance reviews serve the purpose of identifying and measuring performance in the workplace to enable an organization to assess the performance of an individual or team against a standard they believe is necessary to meet their organizational goals and needs.

In theory performance reviews are useful for an individual employee who can gauge both how he/she is doing and where he/she needs improvement. In practice it can be difficult to measure or establish a standard against which to measure performance and it can be equally challenging to determine what performance and organization both wants and needs to measure.

First Determine What Matters To Your Organization

As an organization determining what performance metrics you want to measure is fundamentally about what is important to you. What is important to your organization should include both what contributes to your business bottom line and what contributes to sustaining and embodying the values you want your organization to represent. For some on-time-delivery of a product may be less important then delivering on a commitment to social responsibility and for another 30 minutes or free Pizza is more important then another factor.

Before you can measure an employee’s performance you have to understand what your organization needs and expects from employees. As a key step in this process your organization should take the time to develop a strong and clear mission or goals statement and then work back from there to identify what is important to achieve those goals.

Employee Performance Factors

There are many ways to measure performance and many lists of performance factors that are useful and relevant. Using these as a source of ideas from which to begin building your own performance metrics can be a useful way to begin.  After reviewing the list below consider how they apply to your organizational and create your own performance metric factors.

1) Delivering Value To Customers:

  • how quickly employees respond to customer requests and questions
  • how thoroughly employees respond to customer inquiries and requests for information
  • the quality of the products and services employees provide to your customers

2) Social Responsibility:

  • Participation in community or social responsibility activities

3) Productivity:

  • Creating efficiency in the work process
  • Efficient use of time
  • Reduction in errors
  • Amount of work output

4) Effective Use Of Resources:

  • Cost savings tied to effective use of resources
  • How efficiency resources are being utilized (reduction of waste or duplication)

5) Compliance:

  • How well employees comply with policies and procedures
  • Attendance at work

6) Innovation:

  • Contributions to ideas and actions that deliver creativity or innovation in the workplace

7) Leadership and Team Work:

  • Demonstration of leadership on tasks or with other employees
  • Contributions to working efficiently as a team member
  • The quality of contributions to team work
  • Conflict management and resolution

8) Use of Technology or Equipment:

  • Awareness of relevant and upcoming technology relevant to work
  • Effective use of technology/equipment for work tasks and communication
  • How well organizational technology is used/utilized

9) Communication:

  • Effectiveness of communication for work processes
  • Active participation in communication with colleagues and supervisors

10) Behaviour and Emotional Intelligence:

  • Self-management including being self-directed, making decisions and managing emotions independently as appropriate
  • Acceptance of others who have different opinions, view points or approaches
  • Taking ownership and action to manage career and skills development
  • Engaging in appropriate relationships with others in the workplace

Measuring Employee Performance

Once you identify your version of performance metrics you need to determine the methods to assess performance against your standard of expectation. This is where the process can become over complicated. Performance can be measured using minute details and gathering big data analytics but you can lose sight of the reason you are measuring performance. Sometimes simple provides more useful information.

For each of the factors you are measuring consider a measure that can easily be collected, assessed and explained. Consider providing a 5-point scale to assess how well your employees have achieved your standard of performance. Is it difficult to rank someone as a 1 or 5 on the factor of Innovation?  It depends on how well you understand and define your expectations. If you are measuring your employees against an imaginary standard it can be difficult to make an assessment. If you consider that your best employee will perform at the level of 4 or 5 and your poorest employee a 1 or 2 you have established the performance metrics you want to begin and end with. Then establishing what you consider components of the best employee and the poorest requires identifying specific aspects and outcomes of performance and tracking those on a regular basis.

The best performance metrics measure relevant and useful factors that enable your employees to make a tangible contribution to your organization. Consider which factors are important and worth your time to watch, train for and measure and don’t just measure items for the sake of measuring them.