Q. What are the key indicators a company should measure?
A key factor is measuring individual performance. The individual measurements of them meeting their goals, and them improving constantly, is a key factor to us.
Because we are in what I would consider data processing, we measure performance on efficiency, meaning how quickly can jobs get done and what are the time frames that they’re completing those work orders in.
We’ve set up a system where we measure everything that they do, inputting on a client’s Web site information, the time it takes to do that, from the time it takes for our processor to put our information on our Web site.
We create a total efficiency score and then, we look at, ‘Is this employee generating a profit center for us?’ because we try to treat each employee as a profit center. They have to be making us money; otherwise, we need to review why aren’t they making money and what are the improvements we need to make for them.
Q. How do you decide what to measure?
It’s been challenging. It’s taken some time to really get a grasp on what we’ve had to do. Internally, these are some of the things we needed to measure, how much time is a job taking to process.
We always tested them for at least a 30- to 60-day period, because in anything, if you lay down the law and say, ‘This is what we’re going to do,’ and someone doesn’t perform well, you have to make sure that that measurement is working properly for you.
We’ve usually given either a 30- or 60-day time period before we’ve said we’re watching this live. We start it off with a few individuals maybe the first two weeks, and then we roll it out to a few more individuals, so we do it in gradual progressions.
Definitely test it out. Have your employees understand so that they understand what’s being measured. That’s a key factor right there, so that they know what they’re being graded on. Because if they don’t know what they’re being graded on, then the measurement isn’t really going to stand up.
Q. How do the measurements connect to the overall growth of a company?
What this does is it really raises the level of our performance internally. It really engages employees to participate in an active role in the company, that they’re just not coming in for a job. They get to see that they make the difference in the company.
How to reach: Maxim Enterprises Inc., (330) 499-9289 or www.maximent.com
