16 Ways to Measure Employee Performance
By David Hakala on February 19, 2008
Once an annual ritual, performance appraisal has become a continuous process by which an employee’s understanding of a company’s goals and his or her progress toward contributing to them are measured. Performance measurement is an ongoing activity for all managers and their subordinates. 18 Productive Ways to Use Your Free Time at Work
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Performance measurement uses the following indicators of performance, as well as assessments of those indicators.

1. Quantity: The number of units produced, processed or sold is a good objective indicator of performance. Be careful of placing too much emphasis on quantity, lest quality suffer.

2. Quality: The quality of work performed can be measured by several means. The percentage of work output that must be redone or is rejected is one such indicator. In a sales environment, the percentage of inquiries converted to sales is an indicator of salesmanship quality.

3. Timeliness: How fast work is performed is another performance indicator that should be used with caution. In field service, the average customer’s downtime is a good indicator of timeliness. In manufacturing, it might be the number of units produced per hour.

4. Cost-Effectiveness: The cost of work performed should be used as a measure of performance only if the employee has some degree of control over costs. For example, a customer-service representative’s performance is indicated by the percentage of calls that he or she must escalate to more experienced and expensive reps.

5. Absenteeism/Tardiness: An employee is obviously not performing when he or she is not at work. Other employees’ performance may be adversely impacted by absences, too.

6. Creativity: It can be