Employees are the main asset of any company, and their influence on the business is invaluable.
However, sometimes people don’t use their time at work efficiently, and their potential is wasted. To prevent that, one must measure employee performance to ensure the team is working productively, contributing to the company’s success.
And metrics are not only important to the employer. Employees who are well-managed and have a clear understanding of what’s expected of them tend to perform better. So, by developing a well-thought-out effectiveness measuring system, companies create a win-win situation.
Measuring employee effectiveness in IT
The IT world is fast-paced and requires constant innovation and iteration in order to thrive. And it is especially true for technology startups. Below we’ve listed the key metrics that every IT team can be measured with.
#1 Employee Net Promoter Score
Let’s start with a metric that is very easy and barely requires any calculation – the Employee Net Promoter Score. Ask your team how likely they are to recommend your company as a working place to their friends and family, where 10 is highly likely and 1 is a hard pass. The higher the number that employees submit, the happier they are with their current employment. And happy employees are efficient employees.
#2 Customer feedback forms
Customer feedback is another great form of collecting data about your employee’s effectiveness. It’s not always relevant because some clients will not be objective and choose to complain even if they were provided with great service. Still, by gathering feedback from many clients you will be able to see the trend. If 70 out of 100 customers say that your employees were great, they likely really were.
#3 Quarterly MBOs
MBOs, or management by objectives, are specific targets that are assigned to an employee together with the manager. Those targets go on top of employees’ main goals and can be used to understand how motivated and devoted to the company they are. An example of an MBO for an IT specialist could be to get a programming course certificate that will help them code better.
#4 Self-evaluation
One of the ways to rate how effective employees are is to ask them to rate their own effectiveness. This should not be the only way to measure them that you use, but self-evaluations can shed light on how satisfied someone is with their job which, as we know, correlates with their effectiveness.
Outstaffed employees and effectiveness
Not everything can be measured and not all measurements are helpful. Besides the numbers, companies should focus on seeing their teams satisfied, engaged, and driven. Those parameters can be hard to keep on high levels with an in-house team due to inner politics, long-brewing burnout, or being bored within their current roles.
When working with outstaffed employees, drive and engagement is rarely an issue. Companies, such as Emphasoft, provide outstaffed team members to their clients to work (almost) exclusively on projects. Such employees are well-trained and highly skilled. And because they move from client to client every few months or years, they maintain the best performance. New projects are intriguing and exciting, and they are motivated to show good results and maintain their reputation.
Outstaffing part of your team is a smart and efficient solution. You get top professionals to work on your product without having to worry about their motivation or focus.