Key Employee Performance Metrics That Every HR Should Know

Tracking and analyzing the performance of employees is important to ensure all employees and teams are aligned with the business’s core objectives. Whether you are a small business owner or an HR manager at a large enterprise, you need to be aware of how effective your business operations are. And with employees being the drivers of a business, it is essential to measure employee productivity to identify potential shortcomings and scopes for improvement.

However, tracking performance metrics is easier said than done. There are a number of parameters that can be used depending upon an employee’s role to measure their performance.

Let’s take a look at some key employee performance metrics you should know for effectively measuring the performance and efficiency of your employees.

 

Employee Performance Metrics: An Overview

Employee performance metrics or key performance indicators are used to measure the performance of employees in the workplace. These metrics can vary from organization to organization, depending upon the organizational and business goals. It easily measures using the best human resource management software. In a nutshell, these indicators show how well an individual, team, or the whole is performing against a predetermined objective. Human resource teams and business owners should readily measure the performance of their employees to ensure business productivity, along with pitfalls and scopes for upskilling and improvement. 

Some critical benefits of calculating employee performance metrics include:

• Performance visibility: It provides a clear view of who is performing and who is not. 
• Performance evaluation: It promotes a fact-based performance approach and enables an organization between working smart and being busy. 
• Behavior direction: If employees know how their performance is being monitored, they are more likely to perform according to the measurements. 
• Improved decision making: Measuring KPIs enables companies to utilize factual data to make intelligent decisions more quickly. 
• Comprehensive performance overview: In-depth reports and analysis regarding the performance of employees, teams, and the organization as a whole provides critical data for adjustments and improvements. 

 

Key employee performance metrics

Companies use a wide variety of performance management systems and versions to measure employee performance and productivity. Analyze your organizational objectives and business requirements to identify what attributes and metrics can be useful in measuring the performance of your employees and provide you with scope for evaluation. That being said, here are a few key employee performance metrics used in all modern-day organizations. 

Word quality

The quality of work produced by employees is arguably the most important metric to measure employee performance; however, it can be the most challenging to define. It’s more complicated than simply looking at the number of sales secured or calls made, but more about the quality of the results produced. 

Are the connections made by the salesperson meaningful and helpful for the organization in the long run? Were the calls attended by your customer support executive at par with customer expectations? 

The quality of work of an employee can be measured on the basis of performance errors, customer feedback, the number of defective products, etc. Some ways to measure work quality of an employee are:

Appraisals: Annual or monthly appraisals by the immediate manager should be used to assign employees a rating for both potential and performance. It enables you to identify where to upskill, course-correct, or promote an individual. 

Feedback: Get in touch with stakeholders who regularly interact with the employees for feedback on particular areas of performance. Feedback can also be collected on a specific project to get a broad view. 

Promoter score: The net promoter score is a clear indicator to measure the ability of account executives, business development associates, and sales personals to get new clients and build meaningful relationships.

 

Work Quantity

Work quantity is another one of the vital employee performance metrics; it includes the number of products manufactured, sales, invoices, or any other attribute that can be quantified. These include:

Sales/units produced: Work quantity is more than just measuring the numbers of customers won by a sales rep. This can consist of a wide range of employee performance metrics, such as the number of calls attended, lines of code written, reports created, etc. 

Active tasks volume: Nowadays, most work environments require employees to take up multiple projects at a time, with the ability to do multitasking and handling timelines being the critical employee performance metrics. 

Units per time period: An employee’s potential to solve a customer or business query quickly is another important KPI. In call-centers, for example, the number of calls taken is a direct indicator of productivity. 

Employee work efficacy

Team members should complete their work on time. They need to be good at handling deadlines and time limitations and utilizing the resources available to get things done in an efficient manner. Missed deadlines can be a detrimental factor for an employee’s efficiency. 

This performance indicator helps you determine the value an employee is providing to your organization. Employee performance metrics to measure the work efficiency of an employee include:

Overtime rates: Overtime rates are not perceived the way they were five years back. Now, employees working more than their scheduled time can lead to higher overheads and impact your EBITDA margins. 

Error frequency: One of the crucial employee performance metrics to measure employee accuracy in determining error rates. If errors occur more frequently, it will impact the project quality and available timelines. 

Time to close leads: The time and effort required to close a lead is an excellent metric for calculating the resources invested at each step.

 

Organizational efficiency

This metric indicates the return an organization is gaining on the human capital invested in an employee. Some key organization efficiency indicators are:

Revenue per employee: How much you are earning per employee on an average is a straightforward way to measure the overall efficacy of an employee. However, this metric can vary greatly. Organizations like Apple have per employee revenue up to $1.5 million, whereas companies like organizations manage to generate $250,000 per employee. 

Human capital ROI: Calculating the benefits gained from human capital investments like employee advantages and compensations act as an accurate metric for calculating employee performance. HR investments should translate in the form of company revenues. 

 

The bottom line

HR managers need to set measures and metrics to evaluate the performance of their employees. But at the same time, it is crucial to comprehend that employees are humans and not mere resources. Therefore, qualities like helpfulness and relationship building, which might not add directly to the business objective, are valuable and should not be overlooked. 

At the same time, it’s crucial to keep up with the changing trends in the modern-day working environment. Maybe a shift in team or employee performance could indicate something more substantial. 

HR teams need to establish clear communication when measuring employee performance. Employees should be certain of the employee performance metrics on which they are being measured.