The Top KPIs In Performance Management

When you have an efficient performance management system, you help your employees and your entire organization reach new heights and levels of achievement. However, it can be difficult to convince your leaders that your PMS program is critical and has a significant effect on the overall success of your team.

Team leaders want to feel that they’re the driving force behind the improved performance. While this may be a natural feeling, and all leaders want to be recognized for a job well done, it’s also important to remain humble.

Instead of leaders denying the importance of your PMS platform, they should embrace it with open arms. If they learned how to effectively utilize it, working hand in hand with your performance management system, it would make them that much stronger.

So, how do you convey this message to your managers and leaders? The only answer is by using data – the same way you convey the message to your employees about their performance.

Additionally, it doesn’t have to be the management you’re attempting to prove these benefits for. Anyone you want to be aware of regarding the effectiveness of these platforms can be made aware by using the same strategy.

KPIs, or key performance indicators, allow you to measure performance in a more accurate manner and deliver reports regarding this performance. The reason this is done so effectively is because of the accuracy of the methods used.

360-degree feedback and other data collection allow you to present a more detailed picture of your team’s performance. Additionally, having extra perspectives that this feedback allows gives more credibility to your assessments.

So what are the most important KPIs you can use to get your point across? Let’s examine this in the following section.

Using KPIs to Demonstrate the Value of Your Platform

Using KPIs is the most effective way to demonstrate the value of your PMS platform. Using before and after models as well as continuous tracking, is the only way to prove how big of a change PMS has been making within your organization.

The following section gives you an idea of the most important KPI metrics that allow you to demonstrate the most important data sets.

    1. Output

Do you understand what an employee’s output is? Their output is a direct measurement of the work that they’re doing throughout the day.

However, it’s important to note that output isn’t the same as productivity. Productivity would include tracking a designated metric in a specific area during a set amount of time. This would include a certain type of product and how much of that product they’ve distributed.

The output doesn’t equal work hours either. Employees can spend countless hours at their desks, but this doesn’t mean they’re getting anything done. Instead, the output can be defined as the overall variety of tasks they’re getting done.

It’s important they’re versatile in what they’re completing. The wider range of tasks they’re performing, the higher their output measurement will be.

    2. Quality of Work

Your employees’ quality of work is another important KPI that can demonstrate your platform’s huge difference. Sometimes measuring quality is easy – and sometimes it isn’t so easy.

If you’re in the manufacturing sector, quality is easily measured because you have a quality control department. Other areas may be a bit trickier.

Let’s say you want to track the quality of your marketing team. You could measure the quality of the leads they’re sending to the sales team.

If you want to track the quality of your sales team, you could measure it by the number of refunds or complaints their clients are having. It might take a little brainstorming, but coming up with a metric that tracks quality shouldn’t be too difficult and can be one of the most important KPIs that you can use to your advantage.

    3. Efficiency

How is efficiency defined when it comes to performance management? Basically, efficiency comes down to how well your team members manage their time. Are they completing work on time?

Are they scheduling all of their tasks in an appropriate manner? Monitoring deadlines is probably the most effective way to measure the efficiency of your employees.

The measurement of these three areas will be the most telling when it comes to proving the effectiveness of your performance management system. But it shouldn’t stop there.

You should provide insight into your PMS’s additional benefits for good measure. What other areas should you highlight?

Additional KPIs to Track

Track the following HR metrics when you’re trying to prove the effectiveness of your PMS platform:

• How satisfied are your team members with performance reviews? Using surveys and 360-degree feedback is perfect for this situation. Ask employees if they feel like the new performance management software is helping them. Do they feel like they have a better opportunity to achieve their goals? If your employees feel like they’re benefiting and they express this sentiment, it’s difficult to argue with this type of data.
• What about management in different departments? How satisfied are they with the performance review process? Consider managers from every department and find out how they feel about the platform’s benefits. This is critical, especially since they’ll be the ones using the platform the most to assess employees. When you have certain managers that aren’t sold on the PMS, getting their peers on board can be the best way to get them to buy into the idea.
• Turnover and retention can be oother important metrics to track. If your performance as an organization has increased, your turnover rates and retention levels should reflect this. Comparing these numbers to figures from past numbers will make the side-by-side data impossible to argue with.

When you’re attempting to get managers within your organization to buy into the PMS platform that’s driving results, these KPIs are the most effective ways to do it. It’s often the ones that give you the most trouble who end up taking advantage of the platform the most.

If a manager is confident in their abilities, when they finally realize how much the PMS platform can benefit them, it can really take your organization to the next level.