By Syed Balkhi
The success of an organization depends on the combined efforts of the entire team. So as a business owner, you need to encourage your team members to work towards a common objective.
The best way to ensure that your employees work productively towards these objectives and goals is to assign proper KPI (Key Performance Indicator) to each of your employees.
What is KPI?
KPI is a measurable value that is used to assess the performance and progress of an individual, team, department, or organization toward achieving specific goals or objectives.
By assigning proper KPIs, you can monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of your employees. For example, say you are to assign a KPI to one of your content writers.
You set him/her a KPI of 4 articles, each of 1500+ words per week. At the end of the week, you can measure the productivity of your employee by analyzing whether or not he/she has accomplished the set KPI.
You can set your KPIs on a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis, depending on your business goals. But how do you know if you’re setting your KPIs effectively?
In this post, we’ll look at a few ways to know how to assign KPIs to your employees properly and effectively. But before that, let’s understand the importance of KPIs for businesses.
Understanding the Importance of KPIs
Smart business owners who truly want their businesses to grow will definitely have KPIs for themselves and their employees. Now KPIs or Key Performance Indicators are important for businesses due to various reasons. Let’s take a look at some of them.
1. Goal Alignment
One of the most important reasons why KPIs matter is that it helps your team align their efforts towards a common goal. When you have assigned proper KPIs to your team, you are, in a way setting expectations about what you want them to do. You’re also letting them know what success looks like being on your team.
2. Accountability
Accountability is another major reason why you need to set KPIs for your team. This happens because by setting proper KPIs, you’re providing them a basis through which their performance can be evaluated.
And since the progress of the team is shared across the entire organization, it also encourages transparency and accountability among the team members.
3. Prioritization
Setting KPIs also helps your employees identify the key areas that need improvement. This helps them prioritize their tasks based on the requirement, thereby increasing efficiency to achieve the set goals.
Assigning Effective KPIs to Your Employees
Let’s now look at some of the most effective ways to assign KPIs to your employees for the best results.
1. Set SMART KPI
Before assigning KPIs to your employees, you need to ensure that your KPIs are SMART. SMART stands for –
- Specific – You need to know what exactly your KPIs will measure and why it’s important.
- Measurable – When your KPIs are measurable, it’s easier to track your progress.
- Achievable – Achievable KPIs help ensure that your KPIs are realistic and workable.
- Relevant – Your KPIs also need to be relevant to the company’s goals and objectives.
- Time-bound – Finally, it has to be achieved within a specific time frame.
2. Link KPIs to Goals
The next important factor to remember is to link your KPIs to your goals. When you set goals for your business, it means that you want to achieve certain results within a certain time frame.
Linking your KPIs to your goals helps you achieve these results more efficiently. This happens because by linking your KPIs to your goals, you make it easy to track your critical metrics. So you know which tasks need improvements or need to be prioritized for better results.
3. Get your Employees Involved
Whenever you’re assigning KPIs to your employees, make sure to get them involved in the process. Ask for their suggestions and feedback.
You should also ensure that they understand the KPIs that are being assigned to them. This motivates them to stay committed to achieving their goals.
4. Provide Support and Resources
Assigning KPIs to your employees is important. But what’s more important is to provide the support and resources to your employees to help them achieve those KPIs.
Create an open culture in which employees feel free to approach the management for any assistance or guidance they need. You should also offer the necessary resources to help them complete their tasks more efficiently. These resources might be in the form of tools, documents, or even training sessions.
Conclusion
As your business grows, it becomes impossible for you to track your employee’s contributions. Assigning KPIs lets you do it very easily.
It not only helps you track your team’s performance but also helps you motivate them to work towards a common business goal without repeated reminders.
So if you haven’t started assigning KPIs to your employees, start doing it now. Just don’t forget to evaluate and adjust them from time to time for better results.
About the Author
Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. With over 10 years of experience, he’s the leading WordPress expert in the industry. You can learn more about Syed and his portfolio of companies by following him on his social media networks.
