Because enhancing the Employee Experience must start from a renewed leadership management.
When we see the acronym KPI, we automatically think of “Key Performance Indicator”, a set of objective measurements that guide our control systems. For any company, these are measurable and rule-based values that demonstrate how effectively key objectives are being achieved.
This is why leaders, i.e. the people who have to facilitate collective efforts to achieve common goals, have a culture focused on results and performance. For those leading a sales team, for example, key metrics might be turnover and the number of orders. For those in production, time-to-market or order fulfilment time. And so on, I could go on and on. It is an objective measurement system on which very often the MBOs (Management By Objectives) of personnel are also tied.
But missing from this equation are the metrics of employee interest, information, involvement and inspiration: the employee experience, which is the driving force behind the team itself and the essence of the services provided, cannot be the sole preserve of Human Resources (HR) because it includes every possible touch point of the career path, from induction into the company to the actual production of results.
Several studies have shown that putting people at the centre supports business continuity and growth: one of the biggest challenges for CEOs is precisely to retain and attract talent. Yet, companies seem incapable of linking performance data (operational, financial, sales, etc.) with people-related metrics at every stage of their careers.
Enhancing Employee Experience must start with renewed leadership management: the five 'I's' of Employee Engagementt (Inform/inform, Inspire/inspire, Instruct/instruct, Involve/involve, Incentivise/incentivise) resonate with everything managers strive to achieve from employees every day - results.
Think of the benefits to be gained when the measurement of task execution is coupled with the measurement of a leader's focus and ability to work at the highest level while keeping people constantly engaged. Ensuring that at all times in their professional lives they understand and embrace company strategies and realise how their work contributes to the achievement of goals.
In order to measure leadership from a human-centred perspective, we need to include new elements within the three perspectives of evaluating a leader's effectiveness.
When measuring the effectiveness of STRATEGY, that is, the effectiveness of a leader in formulating shared goals and explaining them to the team, we must bear in mind that the leader has onboarding accountability. He must ensure that every member of his team, from the moment he joins the company, is involved and updated in processes of:
In this sense metrics such as the percentage of deviation between strategy and action plans or from required compliance can help to improve one's onboarding processes in order to be able to transfer objectives even more effectively.
This brings us to the second perspective of evaluating leader effectiveness, TEAM, i.e. the ability to retain the right people and motivate them. In a context where companies find it difficult to fill specialised and technical positions, it is essential to implement strategies to retain them.
Establishing a culture of dialogue can prevent possible problems and stimulate participation and involvement. The same goes for the shared definition of accountability and reward principles that can reduce friction and facilitate expectation management. Moreover, benefits should not be a mere supplement, but a real investment in the individual: welfare, flexible working policies, etc. can be part of a long-term vision that focuses on personal care well beyond rigid working hours.
In this perspective, metrics such as time spent in team management, turnover rate analysis, feedback results, etc. can be an effective threshold to review team engagement activities.
Finally, the third and last perspective, GROWTH, is used to measure the leader's effectiveness in reacting to current and future challenges. The leader is responsible for the team's growth and career plans and for stimulating lifelong learning, which is not necessarily vertical.
The focus on team (and also personal) growth can be 'tested' with indicators such as PESTEL analysis of external factors to define missing competencies, analysis of the team's behaviour patterns and responsiveness... all of which serve to define more precisely the professional growth plans to be applied to the people in the team.
In measuring the KPIs of the new leadership, the role of digital is decisive in equipping top management with a dashboard that can relate 'traditional' KPIs (let's call them that) to Employee Experience metrics, and can also be enriched with other evaluation elements (analysis of the experience at remote workstations or ease of access to services , etc.).
Article by Francesco Clabot, CTO of WEGG and lecturer in ITSM at the University of Padua
Insights
OUR OFFICES
OUR OFFICES
PADUA
Via Arnaldo Fusinato 42, 35137
MILAN
Viale Enrico Forlanini 23, 20134
ROME
Viale Giorgio Ribotta 11, 00144
Copyright © 2022 WEGG S.r.l. • P.I 03447430285 • C.F. 02371140233 • REA 311023
Certified company ISO 9001:2015
