3 Ways to Increase Your Team’s Productivity with Streamlined KPIs

I talk with busy business owners almost every day, and one of the topics that comes up on a regular basis is how to increase productivity (and therefore, profitability). Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, allow you to increase communication, productivity, and job satisfaction – along with your profitability!

KPIs are likely something you track in areas like Sales and Marketing, and these numbers can help you determine a strong Sales and Marketing strategy. However, KPIs also perform another purpose: equipping your team members to help drive your business forward.

Departmental and positional KPIs give you the ability to clarify expectations with your team and give your team the opportunity to prioritize their tasks according to what will best drive revenue. In order to do this, however, you have to be intentional about creating and streamlining your KPI Scorecards – not every task can or should be listed.

Here are the steps we take when streamlining my team’s KPIs.

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#1: Start with Your Goal and Work Backward

Often, when business owners try to create their KPIs, they’ll start with what they want the weekly numbers to be and work forward. This makes sense on the surface, but it can actually be counterproductive.

Instead, we encourage the business owners we work with to start with their end goal in mind and work backward. This might be a specific revenue goal, number of sales, or percentage of increase on social media. It might include administrative tasks such as percentage of emails answered, percentage of A/R collected, or reports filed on time.

When you start with your quarterly goal in mind, you can then “reverse engineer” what the monthly and weekly numbers need to be – and by doing so, you’ll know that the KPIs you have assigned are tied directly to your desired ROI.

#2: Determine the Actions that Will Make a Difference

As I stated above, you can’t include every single task a team member will perform on their KPI Scorecard. Not only is it a waste of time to track some tasks (that’s what checklists and SOPs are for), but not all tasks will bring in an ROI. Some simply need to be performed because it’s part of the job. You may want to know that your Executive Assistant has confirmed all upcoming calls for the week; your bookkeeper, not so much.

Instead, take the time to determine which KPIs will actually make a difference. This can be done while you’re working on Step #1 – which actions are required to meet the goals you set? This will give you a good start toward creating your KPI Scorecards.

#3: Play to Your Team’s Strengths

There is something to be said for following the job description – and you should, as much as possible – but sometimes, adjustments need to be made. You may have a team member that is amazing in all areas of their job except one; it really is ok to assign that task to someone else who has the ability and bandwidth to take it on.\

However, you may also find that certain team members have strengths that go beyond their job description, that are able to benefit your business in ways you hadn’t even thought of. By all means, utilize them! If your Receptionist loves to make TikTok videos or your Marketing Assistant adores curating swag, you can add those to their KPIs!

By creating effective, streamlined KPIs, you can not only equip your team to work on the tasks that will bring the highest return – and therefore, drive your business forward to higher profitability and stronger client retention.

Departmental and positional Scorecards bring another benefit, though: they allow you to see, at a glance, where your team is working smoothly and where either additional personnel or training, stronger systems, or improved workflows may be needed. This allows you to keep a pulse on your business without having to micromanage and equips you to effectively mentor your team!