What Are Key Performance Indicators for Employees: Types & Examples

Key performance indicators (KPIs) for employees are measurable values that allow you to determine how effectively workers are achieving business objectives. It also lets you monitor worker productivity and efficiency, enabling you to spot potential problems and make the necessary adjustments to help you stay on track with team or organizational goals.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the different types of key performance indicators for employees. We’ll also provide employee KPI examples and tips for creating good KPIs for your business.

Categories of Key Performance Indicators

There are different types of key performance indicators for assessing employee performance. Here are the common categories:

Qualities of Good KPIs

Setting clear key performance indicators for employees is critical as it helps to create transparency over what needs to be done and the expected results. To help you create a good KPI, use the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) approach.

• Specific: Staff KPIs should have simple and clear descriptions of the goal you want your employees to achieve. Don’t use broad descriptions, such as “improve customer response time.” It should have a clear target and timeline for completion.
• Measurable: Add measurable values to employee KPIs to help you monitor progress against goals. This can be a specific percentage, number, or amount. For the above example, a better KPI is: “Improve customer response time by 10%.”
• Achievable: While you’re free to create ambitious KPIs for employees, these should still be achievable. Work goals that have unrealistic expectations will likely make employees feel physically and emotionally tired from the work-related stress. Setting reasonable and attainable KPIs will help prevent employee burnout.
• Relevant: The list of key performance indicators you select for your employees should align with high-level department goals or business objectives. Further, an employee’s KPI should be connected with the task or project assigned to them. This will make it easy for a team member to track and meet the KPI for employee performance if it is related to the work that they do.
• Time-bound: Set a reasonable timeline to achieve a KPI. This can be by the end of a month, quarter, or year. KPI timeframes can also be short or long, depending on the complexity of the task. For example, if a team is assigned to deploy a new accounting software for your business, you can mark this as a two-year project with completion milestones for each month or quarter until the system’s target go-live date is achieved.

Apart from following the SMART framework, you should regularly evaluate the KPIs for employees to ensure that these are still relevant to your organization’s goals. As your business grows, your objectives may evolve. You may end up tracking KPIs that your business no longer needs.

You may also need to readjust some of your staff performance indicators. While this is typically done at the end of the KPI timeframe or if you have new business objectives, don’t hesitate to make changes as needed especially if your targets have changed.

Employee KPI Examples

Depending on the staff performance you want to track, you can use a variety of key performance indicators for employees. Here are some KPI examples for employees based on the different departments or functions in a business.

Customer Service Employee KPIs

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Sales Employee KPIs

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Finance Employee KPIs

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Marketing Employee KPIs

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Human Resources Employee KPIs

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IT Employee KPIs

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Operations Employee KPIs

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General Employee KPIs

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Importance of Setting KPIs for Employees

Key performance indicators for employees play an important role in driving organizational performance. By identifying and setting an employee KPI for each team member, you can assign work goals and clearly communicate the expected results, including how performance will be measured.

Employee KPIs are also important for businesses because these help:

Increase Goal Ownership

Employees with realistic goals and clear KPIs are likely to feel more accountable and responsible for tasks or projects assigned to them. It also helps if you communicate how the KPI for employees connects with the overall business objective. This increases their sense of ownership if they know that their contributions can impact the company positively (or negatively, if the KPIs aren’t met).

Identify Gaps & Improvement Areas

Employee key performance indicators are a good source of insights on what’s working and what isn’t in terms of achieving work goals. If workers are having difficulty with a project, you may want to check if they have the necessary tools to do the job or invest in training programs to enhance workforce skills. You may also need to assess the staff KPI that you set—it might be unclear and unrealistic.

Improve Worker Productivity

Employees are likely to be more productive at work and actively participate in projects or tasks if staff key performance indicators are clear, measurable, and attainable. For tips on tracking productivity, check out our guide to measuring employee productivity.

Boost Employee Morale

Workers who meet or exceed KPIs receive satisfaction from doing their job excellently. This contributes to high employee engagement and morale.

Bottom Line

Managing employees and tracking how efficiently they perform their jobs can be challenging. Having SMART work goals and key performance indicators for employees can help you monitor whether or not they’re completing the assigned tasks as expected and within the set timelines. It also provides valuable insights into worker productivity and efficiency, allowing you to come up with strategies to address gaps and problems before these negatively impact both employee and organizational performance.