The most critical part of a Role’s Structure is setting KPI’s and many businesses don’t get it right. A properly structured role must have at least 3 key elements:
- Clearly defined specific tasks to be carried out (which we covered in the last post)
- Clearly defined outcomes from those tasks
- Clear (ideally objective) measures of whether the outcomes have been achieved
The next step is to identify the critical outcomes from these activities. These are often referred to as Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and typically there are between 5 and 15 of them, depending on the role itself, your business type and the level of precision you want in your performance monitoring and management system. Some business owners are happy to settle for the top 3 main KPI’s of a role whereas others with higher expectations or control requirements will need to establish more detailed KPI lists.
It’s also important to note that developing KPI’s is a real skill and something that is always best done by an expert, but having said that, if there’s no budget for external advice you’re still better off to have a try yourself than to have roles without KPI’s.
If you’re developing your own, one essential key to developing good quality KPI’s is to make sure they can be measured. A good KPI is something you can look at and say either ‘yes’ that was achieved or ‘no’ it wasn’t. If you can’t measure it, it’s not a KPI.
Another key point to consider when setting KPI’s is how easy is to measure within the current framework of our business. When Setting KPI’s you should first focus on the information your business is already producing that tells you wether or not KPI’s are being achieved. One of the biggest challenges businesses have with setting KPI’s is being able to accurately and consistently measure them.