Company KPIs - Show ’em off

 

Today we’re talking company KPIs.

 

Imagine you’re at home one weekend, and you’re flipping through some channels on the TV.

You settle on watching a sports game, but they’re not displaying the score anywhere on the screen.

You’ve been watching the game for a while, but you can’t keep track of how each team is performing.

The score is the KPI of a sports game.

You won’t feel as engaged if you’re watching a game without a score versus a game with a score that’s easy to find because you don’t know who’s winning the game.

Your employees feel the same. If they don’t know how well their team is performing, they’ll have difficulty feeling engaged.

And they won’t understand how they are contributing to your company’s objectives.

If you share information about your employees’ performance and how their state of mind affects the company as a whole, they will feel like part of your team.

 

Your employees are your team

An alarming statistic in the State of the Deskless Workforce report shows that many deskless workers don’t feel loved by their employers.

In fact, 34-50% of deskless workers in industries such as logistics, retail, and healthcare feel as if their employers see them as disposable.

Sharing information about how your team is performing will help your employees understand how important they are to the company as a whole, and how they can make your company perform better.

This study has shown that companies that put employee happiness at the forefront of their business objectives outperform their competitors by 20%.

The daily experience of your employees is what drives your company, and their satisfaction increases accuracy and efficiency.

Happy employees result in increased retention rates.

Familiar faces will help your employees feel like they belong to your team, and the friendly environment will welcome newcomers with ease.

 

 

Give your employees a voice.

Listen to their needs, concerns, and preferences.

Showing your employees that their opinion matters, and that they are valuable, will make your employees feel appreciated.

If your employees feel like their opinion matters, they can communicate with you, and you can find solutions together.

Deskless workers may feel unable to communicate with their team leaders about their working conditions and the effect work is having on their health.

They may also be uncomfortable discussing sensitive issues such as problems they are experiencing with other coworkers and how their work schedule affects their personal life.

This can be changed by involving and engaging your employees with key performance indicators (KPIs).

 

 

How can KPIs help?

A KPI is a value that corresponds with a company objective to help measure performance.

To measure how successful your company is, measure if your KPIs meet your desired acceptable threshold or if your KPIs are making progress toward a company goal.

High-level KPIs concern the overall functions of the business, and often these are the KPIs that business owners or management are most interested in regularly tracking.

The majority of high-level KPIs are values that measure performance that employees do not directly influence.

Low-level KPIs focus on smaller processes in departments and will be of greater interest to your employees.

It is up to managers and business owners to create and monitor low-level KPIs and see how they affect the business performance as a whole.

Low-level KPIs can be as specific as you desire to match the needs of your business, as long as they are relevant.

 

 

Choosing Key Metrics for your team

Many companies make the mistake of sharing generic information in the form of mass, company-wide emails or bulletins.

This is one-way communication; your employees cannot join company conversations in this way.

With generic information, employees will not be engaged and will tune out most of what you share with them.

Instead, cater your communications to what matters most to your employees and their team.

Your employees will be interested to know how their team’s performance affects the overall KPI of your company.

They want to know answers to questions like:

• How do I contribute?

• Am I important to the success of my workplace?

Answering the first question should become easy for your employees if you improve communication channels;

they will be able to easily identify their daily tasks and how they fit into the bigger puzzle.

Each of your employees are one piece of the puzzle, and they fit together to create a cohesive picture.

The answer to the second question, “Am I important?” should always be a resounding “Yes!”

You can motivate employees by giving them access to company KPIs used to monitor daily tasks.

Always use two-way communication as a tool to help your employees feel engaged.

Seeing how your team stacks up to other teams on the same or different shifts can keep people interested in their daily work routine and invested in increasing their team’s KPIs.

You can also choose to share with your employees an overall KPI of how your company is performing on the market.

How the company is performing is often measured in revenue, or percentage increases/decreases based on revenue history.

Sharing data in the form of KPIs will keep employees feeling like they are part of your team because they are given access to special knowledge about the company.

When employees feel like they are a part of your team, they can freely communicate with leadership, and they can even begin to share knowledge with other teams.

This can alleviate skill gaps and enable a smooth flow of communication company-wide.

Innovations will be born.

Have you ever started asking a question or began explaining a problem and realized the solution mid-sentence?

Talking with one another helps foster new ideas to achieve a goal in the most efficient way.

 

 

 

Mood KPIs

While communicating KPIs that measure the performance of the business to employees helps open communication pathways about their role in the company, consider displaying KPIs related to the morale of employees.

Displaying a mood KPI shows your company’s investment in your employees.

If you are measuring your collective mood and have it at the forefront of your KPIs, your employees will see that their happiness and satisfaction matter to the functionality of your company.

It’s no secret that workers with increased job satisfaction perform better.

Include mood KPIs in each team’s daily huddle so you can quickly identify problems and address them.

If you communicate with your employees about both their positive and negative feelings toward their work, you can improve the flow of change management initiatives.

Typically, when changes are newly introduced into your employee’s routines, the number of workplace accidents increases.

This can be reduced with proper communication channels.

Discussing your employee’s feelings toward changes will let them share if they have any questions, and you can take this opportunity to give them vital information.

 

 

Daily Target Indicators

You can use KPIs to evaluate daily targets to help your business identify deficiencies in employee workflow.

Some useful KPIs to consider could be the quantity of parts produced, orders filled, or the average customer wait time.

Prior to starting a shift, having clearly displayed targets will let your employees know what to aim for during their shift:

• How many parts are targeted for production that day?

• What is the target wait time for the ER?

You can even update progress in real time to let employees know if they are on track to meet their daily target for that day.

Unexpected things happen at work.

As with any company, there will be downtime due to a variety of reasons outside of anyone’s control.

You can have a KPI that measures reasons why daily targets aren’t being met, such as machine breakdowns or attendance.

KPIs like this help employees identify reasons why daily target numbers aren’t being met.

Clearly measuring faults in workflow or other external factors will let employees know why they missed a target and let them know if it was something beyond their ability to mitigate.

Having KPIs that allow employees to clearly see daily issues will prevent them from becoming demotivated if they have not been meeting daily target numbers.

When discussing daily targets, use this time to communicate about news in the company and any important changes to procedures.

This can help prevent employees from thinking that important information is not being shared with them at work.

 

 

Quality Control KPIs

Your employees are interested in knowing how many errors they have in their work on a daily basis.

There might be correlation between the percentage of defects or customer service to target numbers.

According to a report by Microsoft, 96% of customers feel like customer service is pivotal in ensuring their loyalty to a chosen brand.

If your employees are consistently providing stellar work because they understand how their role affects the team, they will provide better customer service.

Quality control ties in with daily targets; if target numbers are too high, employees might feel rushed and be more prone to making errors, even with repetitive tasks.

To prevent quality issues and find the source of errors, having gentle daily conversations with your employees about past mistakes will make discussing areas of improvement normal and welcome.

Ensure your employees do not feel threatened when you discuss quality issues with them.

Use a conversational tone and be open to what they have to say.

They may be able to provide reasoning behind what happened and together you can strive to find a solution.

Helping your employees be the best they can at work and showing them that you are there to support them will increase their motivation.

And, hey remember to celebrate when you reach a milestone (500 days without a lost-time accident, bring out the cake!).

 

Where to Display Company KPIs

Once you’ve chosen the most relevant KPIs for your team, you will need to find a place to display the data.

Since you have already been measuring KPIs, consider displaying KPIs where the discussions take place.

Your employees might not be able to readily access a computer or their email.

Lower the threshold to access information.

It is also likely that the majority of your company’s frontline workers don’t have a company email and don’t have access to any communication channels.

Think about high-traffic areas in your company.

These areas are the best locations for displaying KPIs.

Showing KPIs in areas where the daily meetings take place can bring this data into the daily lives of your workers and keep everyone informed.

Outdated bulletin boards can be replaced if you implement the right technologies into your workspace.

For example, you can use digital signage to display the KPIs in real time instead of having a manually updated bulletin board.

With screen sharing technology, a computer from the office or even off-site can display data in real time on a television screen or on a large monitor in accessible areas for employees.

Information can readily be updated as it changes and any changes to the daily routine of your workers will be easily accessible.

By implementing digital signage with screen sharing, you can integrate two-way communication into their work routine and encourage feedback loops.

When you are discussing daily targets for the day during daily team meetings, you can address your employee satisfaction at the same time.

 

Again, this will open the gates for honest and open two-way communication.

Discussing business objectives and KPIs and how your employees feel about them will help all your workers become involved and invested in the success of the business.

Having a team-focused work culture will help increase inclusivity in the workplace and identify areas that you, as a business, can improve.

As a company you should always strive to change for the better while involving all employees.

Change to improve KPIs is a gradual but methodical process.

 

 

Get Feedback!

Getting feedback about how KPI communication is handled will help you cater how you share your information to your employees and ensure that your chosen strategy is effective.

Maybe the area you chose to display your KPIs is not accessible during the majority of meetings, or maybe this information will need to be duplicated in various locations.

Make sure that you are measuring if communication has improved after implementing digital signage and discussing KPIs.

Help employees by having your team leaders opening up the conversations at work.

You might consider giving them access to anonymous ways of sharing their opinions about communication, and if implemented changes are helping your workplace move in the right direction.

Engage your team and increase worker job satisfaction by sharing valuable information about relevant KPIs and by giving them a voice.

 

Measure the impact of your leadership actions!

 

 

Nicholas Rubright is a digital marketing specialist at Mvix - a company that provides digital signage to improve business communications. In his free time, he enjoys playing guitar, writing music, and building cool things on the internet.

 

 

Image source here and from pch.vector over here.