Why Measure Performance

After you have pinpointed the performance you want from your employees, you need to measure and monitor their progress to determine whether or not you are getting what you want. Measurement is the means by which you track the progress of your employees and recognize their successful accomplishment of the organizational goals. Measurement is how you know whether your employees are winning or losing.

Measurement milestones along the performance path allow you to track progress, recognize short-term successes, redeploy resources where needed, or make other course corrections when necessary. However, there are some additional benefits of performance measurement I wish to highlight.

Measurement Reduces Emotionalism

Using measurement data about performance reduces emotionalism and subjectivity. Employees need to see their progress relative to a fixed performance measurement. Employees get upset when they do not understand how well they are performing or why someone else may not think they are performing well. Workers want the means for evaluating their own performance by understanding the criteria by which they are being judged by their manager. Performance measurements helps communicate expectations in ways employees can understand.

Accountability management requires data. If you do not have specific data to support your assessments of an employee, you will appear opinionated, subjective, and irrational. When data is continually collected and openly shared, your workers can see how well they are performing and assess their efforts. They can adjust their performance when needed without the emotional conflict that arises from being evaluated against an unknown criterion.

Measurement Increases Constructive Problem-Solving

Measurement data provides workers with the information they need to make performance decisions. When workers see their progress relative to the milestones of where they should be based upon the established performance measurements, they can adjust their behavior to get back on track and perform as expected. When employees are provided with a clear scorecard, most are capable of making appropriate decisions to get themselves back on track.

Measurement data also gives you the confidence to make decisions regarding pay raises, promotions, suspensions, commendations, and performance appraisals. The credibility of your decisions, and the support you receive for those decisions, is directly proportionate to how accurately you can pinpoint your employees’ performance relative to clearly specified performance measurements.

Measurement Increases Your Influence

Data generates solutions and the person with the solutions tends to have more influence. The person who offers data to support one’s point of view tends to be perceived as more objective and is more persuasive.

When I worked for a large corporation, I made all of my employees keep a time log in fifteen-minute increments of everything they did each day at work. Though my employees hated doing it at first, they soon learned the value of having such finite data. During my tenure at the company, we went through several corporate downsizings. Even though our support department was one that was normally hit the hardest in a typical reduction in force, I never lost a single employee in a layoff. Because of the time logs. I had data that showed exactly how productive my employees were. I could confidently prove their value to the organization and firmly defend their positions when faced with pressure from upper management to reduce staff.

Progress Requires Measurement

Measurement is the means by which you track progress; it’s also is the motivation to progress. Human beings tend to remain static and stagnant when they cannot see progress from their efforts.

As you collect data on results and behaviors, solutions emerge that would not otherwise have been apparent. If you do not measure performance, you have no way of knowing whether you are going forward, backward, or going nowhere. Without measurement, any improvement, therefore, would result from chance rather than rational evaluation and planning. Measurement provides the means from which to assess, address, and progress.

Effective Feedback Requires Measurement

Objective feedback requires objective performance measurement. Effective feedback depends on data; data that is obtained by measuring relevant performance. It is impossible to give your employees accurate feedback if you have not been accurately measuring their performance.

The importance of your feedback is equaled by the importance of reinforcing good performance. The effectiveness of your reinforcement is increased when it is tied to specific, measured performance.

Data, or measurement milestones, also tell you when to reinforce. By watching the data, you can detect even small improvements and celebrate successes along the way. Likewise, when the data shows a deviation from expected performance outcomes, you can provide the coach, counseling, or discipline needed to get your employees back on track. §

?--------------------

Mac McIntire is the president of Innovative Management Group, a Las Vegas-based training and consulting firm specializing in strategic visioning and alignment, organizational effectiveness, management development, quality improvement, customer service, and teamwork. He can be reached at 702-592-6431 or e-mail [email protected]. His website is www.imglv.com