It’s just about the end of March, almost time for your first quarterly business review. Each business may use different metrics to evaluate their progress through the year, but we have three basic actions that you can implement today to make your next quarterly review easier - and allow you to correct problems before they crash your entire quarter.
Create metrics that measure each employee’s production
As the year progresses, it becomes more and more important to understand how each employee fits in with the overall goal of your company. One way to do this is to create metrics that measure the production of each of your employees. These metrics would be specific to their job - and would show how their production is benefiting your overarching goal.
Let’s say that you have a toy company. Your company goal could be to provide loveable and educational toys to children around the world. Now, how does your receptionist contribute to that goal? Perhaps his friendly voice and efficient manner gives a great first impression to every caller. The measurable part of that function would be the efficiency with which calls are sent on their way to the right department. So, your receptionist’s metric could be “calls forwarded to the correct destination.”
Building these metrics can become a team activity. You can ask for feedback from each employee and their managers on what they do and how to track their production. Additionally, this project will help you see where the sore spots of your company may lie. If neither you or the manager can figure out how the actions of a particular employee contributes to the overall goal of your company, their duties may need to be shifted to a job that provides a quantifiable benefit.
Get department heads to track production on a weekly basis
Each employee has the responsibility to track their daily production metrics. At the end of the week, they can provide their weekly production numbers to their department heads. Many companies find it easiest to graph this information using a line graph to see if production is increasing or decreasing.
With every employee providing this information to their managers, department heads can see how production is going at a glance.
Require employees to provide a solution for lower-than-expected production on a weekly basis
Your employees are some of the best people to solve problems relating to their jobs. Not only does making their production measurable allow you to easily track the health of your company, it provides each employee with the power to do better at their job.
With employees taking responsibility for the growth of the entire company, they not only feel that they are part of a true team, they understand that their actions have an impact on the whole company. Creating real metrics for every employee and asking them to be accountable for their own production can help you make your second quarter a great one!
Do you want more information about how we create and measure employee metrics? Contact us today!
