An average employee is a hard worker. He shows up at work, performs his responsibilities, meets deadlines, and works with the team, delivering with little or no supervision. However, is the number of hours, time, and effort you use to complete a task or achieve a goal a measure of your KPI?
Does producing the same result translate to an improvement in your performance? How do you measure your performance on the last task with the latest task you engaged in? How do you personally rate your performance based on your goals, either short–term or, long-term?
What is KPI?
KPI – Key Performance Indicator is a measure of progress towards achieving a goal, task, or project. Most organisations have certain metrics for employee appraisal, customer satisfaction, product or service development, financial growth, operational systems, and many others. These measures help to track how well the organisation is doing and vice versa. For effective and efficient management, KPIs must be simple and SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely) to drive performance and enable one to make the right adjustments where deficient.
To get the best results, every employee must personally identify what is important to him, then track how well he is doing and this should cut across the profession, relationship, health, finances, and every other related matter. An employee should know if his growth and development in these areas are commensurate with set goals. While it is great to give your best as required of an employee, it is not enough. It is more important to apply the right measures to know if you are progressive.
Below are some suggested areas to measure your KPI:
Career Development
Just as your organisation would rate employee performance over some time, as an employee, you ought to do the same. Are your career goals been achieved? What new skills have you acquired to improve your work performance? How many books have you read to gain more knowledge in your field? Is the method you used on a particular project two years ago the same one you employed for your recent project? Are there newer technologies if adopted, that will aid the delivery of your task more efficiently? Are you cool with a traditional approach to hard work when you could work smart and be on top of your game? it is important to track your personal professional growth and make improvements when necessary. Maybe only then will your promotion letter arrive at your table.
Time Management
Maximizing time is an essential tool to drive performance. It is important to allow the right time to organise tasks in the best possible way. You may need to track how much time you spend reading or sending emails, making calls, having discussions with colleagues, watching a movie to relax, grocery shopping, or completing a task at work. This will help you ascertain how much time you have and how well you can utilise the time available and align them to tasks in order of priority. If you can manage your time well, you can organise your life better.
Remuneration
At employment, one of the major incentives is your remuneration. Your wages or salary seem right until you stay on the job for some time and have accomplished some great feats at your job. At this point, is your ‘take-home’ still what is obtainable for your job description or achievements? You might need to sit with your employer or HR Manager if the odds are different for your role or job description and brace up to step on the plate of what is required of you to get there. If it requires that you get a professional certification, become an accredited member of an association in your field, improve your skill or update your membership, get to it! It’s time to upscale your performance, dear employee!
Work-life Balance
The interface of work with other personal life will always be one area to check. A healthy balance of work with family, leisure, health, and other personal interests must be prioritized. How well have you been able to create, not necessarily an equal, but a healthy balance? It’s great if you meet all work deadlines and still have ample quality time for family and friends. Good sleep is also as important as winning a project. If you have to stop working overtime to attend to your beauty and exercise routine, then do.
Network
After all, is said and done, if you detach yourself from your organisation, do you still have relationships that add value to your brand? How many people do you have on your list that can impact your personal and career development? However, it is not the numbers but the quality of your network that determines how well you will thrive professionally? If you are devoid of the right people, it is time to connect and reconnect with such like-minded people. It starts with a mini introduction of who you are and what you do, but don’t stop there keep the engagement going physically or via emails. In the long run, you will have progressively grown your network, and improved your performance.
Self Development
Personal growth cannot be ascertained if not evaluated. You could be repeating last year’s pattern and assume you are doing great this year. If there are no measurable changes in your behaviour, lifestyle, diet, fitness, and sleep pattern, you might just have been busy, not effective. It is important to do an honest assessment and identify any area you have lagged and make adjustments where needed. Set new goals, plan, and develop strategies that can help you track your performance per time.
Just as you are good at meeting work deadlines, pay attention to meeting personal deadlines too. Your personal growth is a fraction of what you will deliver as an employee to the growth of your organisation.
Creating a balance for your personal development and work performance is key. Hence, the need to engage KPI periodically to give you an overview of your progress across your personal goals. An improved version of yourself is will eventually be the yardstick for your relevance and satisfaction.
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