There is no doubt that measuring your team’s potential and performance is important. It can help to assess training needs, provide meaningful feedback to employees, test training processes, as well as helping learn ways to lead your team more effectively.
Talented team members will want feedback to help them grow and improve, particularly within situations where they haven’t performed to the best of their abilities. Managing a team is tricky and while the potential of your team is limitless, there are key valuable metrics that can help you to measure your team’s potential.
1. Attendance
Above all, when it comes time to measure your team’s potential, their attendance is vital. Keeping track of whether your employees show up to work or not can be a great performance metric. If a team member is consistently leaving early, showing up late, taking an extreme number of sick days, or just not showing up at all, this usually signifies job dissatisfaction. It’s likely that they are not showing their true potential, making your job as a leader a little difficult.
Poor attendance can mean any number of things: maybe a lack of employee motivation, burnout, dissatisfaction in a position or health issues. Increased amounts of absenteeism can place extra pressure on other team members who in-turn have to cover the slack, this can result in any number of negative outcomes for the organisation as a whole. If your organisation is understaffed and team members are overworked, it is best to address the issue as it arises to avoid any other employees feeling stressed and to prevent your employees from quitting.
2. Willingness to help
An employee’s willingness to help is important when fostering a culture of teamwork, allowing employees to work better together when tackling various tasks as a group. If some team members are constantly putting their hand up for tasks, it proves their willingness and determination for the entire team to succeed. It’s a great metric to measure your team’s potential, as well as individual performance.
While it might be difficult to measure helpfulness, it might be easiest to ask yourself, who in your department has been the most helpful to you within the last six months? This can help you pinpoint the tasks in which people enjoy and are constantly putting their hand up for, as well as the employees that are shining the brightest within your team.
3. Efficiency
In order for a team to be functioning successfully, employees need to be completing their tasks on time. Provided they have been in their position for a substantial period of time, they should have a good handle on their strengths and limitations, as well as the resources available to them. They should know what is expected of them, allowing them to prioritise and get things done as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Effective teamwork can be measured in a number of ways: look for missed deadlines or work that has suffered at the hands of an employee being overworked. If you see a team member clocking excess overtime, you may need to speak to them about their time-management skills, or potentially reducing their workload in order to increase your team’s productivity.
4. Initiative
While it’s nice when employees complete the tasks asked of them, it’s nicer when they see a need for something and take the steps to complete it on their own. Taking initiative is a definite sign that a team member is satisfied and engaged with the work they are doing, constantly going the extra mile to see that their work is of the highest standard possible. Team members who take initiative can also help you to determine who can adapt and be proactive, which is particularly important for growing businesses that are rapidly changing.
While it can be hard to measure initiative as a metric to measure your team’s potential, it helps to look at employees that are constantly looking to better themselves and their work. One example is if a team member is externally studying or conducting courses to refine or improve their skills. Say you work in Human Resources; an employee that takes initiative could be working to acquire a degree on the side. Perhaps they are enrolled in a Diploma of Human Resource Management. This kind of action is exactly the kind of thing that should be rewarded and encouraged within your team, particularly when they are doing things outside of office hours.
5. Quality of work
Perhaps the most crucial metric to measure your team’s potential is the quality of work that is being put out by your team members. Satisfied and engaged employees are likely to perform better at work, completing tasks to their greatest potential. A decline in quality could signal any number of things, which is why it’s a good idea to reward positive achievements by your employees. Highlight the team members that are constantly delivering work to a high standard, proving that you value their potential and contribution to the team. Clear communication will allow everyone to know where they stand, helping you to better achieve the mission, vision and values of the organisation.