An important part of our performance measurement system includes tracking individual achievement and performance. That’s where ROIs – the second component of our performance measurement system – come in. ROI stands for responsibilities, objectives and indicators. They track achievement on an individual level for all of our employees, including me!
An example of what an ROI might look like for an Account Manager
Creating ROIs
When we create ROIs, we ask ourselves the following questions:
- What are our individual responsibilities?
- How should we measure them?
- What are the goals and requirements?
The first “R” (responsibility) is revenue generation. Under this, the “O”s (objectives are listed), which in this case, are maintenance, billables and sales activity. The “I”s (indicators) are measures that tell whether or not the objectives are being met. The first “I” under the sales activity objective is “new meetings per month,” which has a goal of 20. If you look across that row, you can see that the numbers for months when the goal was achieved are coded in black, and if they were missed, they’re coded in red.
Tracking ROIs
We track and review ROIs monthly to look for trends. Service Express employees actually lead their own ROI reviews with their manager. We do this because we’ve found that employees take greater ownership of their performance when they report trends and results to their managers. By doing these monthly reviews, employees can look with their manager for ways to alter course if they get off track as well as celebrate their “wins” as they come.
Benefits of ROIs
Because we review ROIs monthly, all of our employees have regular conversations with their managers about job performance, rather than one big one. This means that they always know where they stand. No guessing. No wondering whether they’re doing a good job or if their manager is happy. And best of all, no surprises at an annual performance review.
Because we believe continuous feedback – both in areas where employees excel and in areas to improve – we can be proactive about managing job performance and recognizing staff throughout the year for a job well done. We can also provide support and training to boost effectiveness before unacceptable performance becomes an issue. By doing this, annual reviews become just that: a review of everything we’ve talked about using ROIs throughout the year.
What’s Next?
Watch for our next blog in which we’ll talk about the third and final component of our performance measurement system – 5/15s.
In the meantime, we’d love to hear about how you handle measuring employee performance at your company/organization.
ROIs have been an extremely effective tool in our performance measurement system and are a reliable indicator of performance. Watch for our next blog post in which I’ll talk about our third performance measurement tool – 5/15s.
