A key performance indicator is a measure of whether an employee, a team, or an organization's agreed-upon performance goals or results have been achieved or not. They are clear and quantifiable measures for the critical factors of success for an organization. KPIs typically include any combination of reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and charts, and may include anything from personnel statistics and trends to supply management, and supply chain information.
A key benefit of a KPI program is that is often motivates your entire team to meet goals. The following are a few simple tips to assist you in implementing a KPI program within your organization.
- Link to company objectives. Look at the key critical factors of your business. What are the things that make your business successful? Those are the things you need to make a part of your KPI. Spend your time where it matters most.
- Involve your colleagues. Making performance a team effort simply works better for achieving your objectives efficiently. This is a collaborative effort that includes everyone who is involved, with a focus on learning and growing employees.
- Less is more. You don't want too many key indicators. Focus on the most important and most relevant ones. Only collect data that is useful. Data that strays from the purpose of your performance measures will leave you with data you neither need nor use.
- Make them measurable. Don't get carried away here. Keep it simple. Go for the basics, just be sure they mean something to your business. If it's meaningful to you, then you will be able to make better decisions.
- Analyze with a human touch. Data and reports can only tell you so much. Be sure you try to understand how outcomes relate to behavior.
- Get a weekly report. You should have your team reporting to you on a weekly basis. Don't wait until the end of the month to look at these numbers.
KPI programs are intended to improve accountability while being able to withstand organizational changes. With the above tips in mind, you can utilize your KPIs to monitor progress, set alerts if something is awry, and communicate the importance of reaching each goal.
To learn more about what KPIs you should be using to manage your team better please check out our white paper: Internal Metrics That Matter For MSPs