Is My Team Working Hard Enough?

My clients frequently ask questions about their individual team members' accountability and productivity. This typically happens when they want more to be delivered from staff than they are currently seeing, and often manifests as questions like:

- "How do I know if my team members are working the hours they say they are working?"

- "How hard are they working?"

- "Are they spending the appropriate amount of time on each task?"

?These questions are symptomatic of not having clear goals and performance metrics in place. Hours worked, time spent, or work intensity don't matter. Meeting objectives is what matters. It's not sufficient for you to set arbitrary targets, though. You need to partner with your staff to determine reasonable targets that they can commit to, support them when they face obstacles, and hold them accountable to their commitments.

?Here's a simple way to get started with goals and metrics:

1:1 Meetings: If you don't already have them set up, schedule regular one-on-one meetings with each of your team members. This can be weekly, every other week, or monthly, depending on your needs.

Meeting 1: Brainstorm with each employee a list of all the work products (not activities) that they are responsible for producing. Some examples might be:

?? - Generate reports

?? - Respond to client inquiries

?? - Process support tickets

?? - Create graphics

?? - Review other people's deliverables

Ask the employee to pick 1-3 of the brainstormed items they can start measuring, and their first goal should be to start measuring these items. Give them homework to define a method to track them for discussion at your next meeting and bring some example numbers.

Meeting 2: Review the initial set of tracked metrics and approach, discuss, and make adjustments.

Meeting 3+: Review the metrics at each meeting. After a few periods have passed, look at the data and, for each item, ask the employee these questions:

?? - How many are reasonable for you to deliver each period?

?? - How many could be delivered if everything went right?

?? - What support do you need and what obstacles need to be cleared for you to be able to hit that level?

It's now your job to clear obstacles and make sure that they get the support they need. It's their job to meet their commitments.

Ongoing: Track the metrics on a regular basis and hold them accountable for delivering. When targets are achieved, celebrate and ask the questions again—hopefully raising the bar. When targets are not met, ask them why and then the above questions again. If you are clearing obstacles and providing support and your team member is not able to deliver, you now know that you have a performance problem.

?At the end of the day, it is incumbent on you, the manager, to hold your team members accountable, provide support and coaching.? It's up to the employee to do their part to measure what they're doing and ask for the support they need.