Performance Metrics & Feedback Systems

Performance measurement and feedback are central to achieving breakthrough results. We help clients develop those important measures, across the different levels in the organization, to support their strategic and tactical goals. Feedback systems provide the correcting loop to incrementally improve results for the enterprise, department, and individual. As the saying goes: “You get what you measure”.

Strategic Planning: Clients should have an understanding of their important business drivers if they are to successfully link them to their reward systems. We can provide streamlined strategic planning to ensure that external and internal contributing variables are indentified for consideration to link to the reward systems. Our approach utilizes a balance scorecard model to capture important considerations beyond financial metrics.

Executive Incentive Plan Metrics: Balancing short and long-term organizational goals and their related measures is an important step in aligning executive reward systems. Different measures are appropriate for different measurement horizons. We take into account the industry, culture, and business life cycle positions of our clients. We assist companies in considering absolute and relative measurement approaches and create methodologies that link to important business outcomes of stakeholders.

Employee Incentive Plan Metrics: We often recommend an approach for employee plans that favors clarity over complexity. Plans that contain concise metrics translate to participant understanding and improved results. Recommended approaches can contain financial (profit sharing) production (gain sharing) or a combination approach (goal sharing) depending on the client situation. Additionally, metric consideration should address whether measures are individually based, group based, or a combination of the two.

Sales Incentive Plan Metrics: Revenue is always top of mind for sales professionals. However, companies should consider other important outcomes that sales staffs can influence when crafting incentive metrics, as well as their importance to the business strategy. We analyze the sales cycle to determine the sales professional’s prominence in the process to suggest level of aggregation for the different measures selected.

Performance Feedback Systems: Feedback systems that identify successful behaviors and highlight those that need to change are central to improving performance. This can be accomplished through appraisal systems or other feedback tools that communicate performance results. We work with clients to consider the different sources of performance data and the best approach to communicate results based on their current or desired culture. If a technology based system is appropriate, we can help clients analyze the different systems available to meet their needs.