Importance of Measuring & Managing Employee Performance

For someone trying to manage a business, it’s important to have all the facts needed to make a decision. If a manager doesn’t realize which employees are performing, they can’t reward those who go above and beyond, so eventually, those people will stop excelling. Perhaps even more importantly, it becomes impossible to tell who needs to be replaced. However, with the right tools to measure and manage employee performance, these problems go away, and the enterprise grows more efficient.

Assigning Responsibility

Once the company has identified targets based on Objective and Key Results (OKRs), make it clear who is responsible for carrying them out. Ask managers to prepare goals for individual staff members that support the objectives assigned to their departments.

Hitting new targets may cost some money, especially in the beginning. One of the most useful ways to spend money wisely is choosing an intuitive performance management system everyone can learn. Schedule regular reviews to boost motivation and to review and adjust individual goals.

Increase Employee Efficiency

It’s vital to keep tabs on employee performance and manage to agreed-upon indicators. This keeps employees focused on the most important goals so that productivity remains high. When expectations are transparent, everything from annual review to monthly or quarterly goals ties into the objectives of the company as a whole. Having a performance management system in place makes it easy for managers to pull reports for coaching and training purposes as well.

“You can implement top down or bottom up OKR planning. While planning, align your OKRs with your Manager’s OKRs. Highly aligned organizations execute with focus. You will change the way you plan, communicate and implement your strategies using the most intuitive activity planning software,” according to Profit, an enterprise Objectives & Key Results (OKR) platform.

Identifying Weak Links in the Chain

Using performance evaluations enables corporate leaders to evaluate the efficiency and productivity of employees and teams. Stand-out employees who outperform expectations can be tagged for promotions and spot bonuses. On the other hand, underperformers may need coaching and improvement plans, or demotions and termination.

Improving Workplace Productivity

Improving workplace productivity takes a steady hand and patience, as well as the ability to make tough decisions about the staff in place in an organization. However, it feels much better to have solid, quantifiable performance results to help guide the process. With the right software, decisionmakers can:

  • Identify the strong and weak performers
  • Compensate those who excel
  • Guide the organization with clear, measurable goals at every level

When those in the “middle” see that focus and productivity count, they will either emulate the successful employees or learn that sloppy performance results in demotions or worse.

Melissa Thompson
Melissa Thompson writes about a wide range of topics, revealing interesting things we didn't know before. She is a freelance USA Today producer, and a Technorati contributor.