Beyond Balanced Scorecards: What Other Tools Do You Use for Employee Performance Measurement?

Hi all!

With the help of this site, I now have a much clearer idea about performance measurement. I just want to know about some other tools that are used for measuring employee performance apart from balanced scorecards and dashboards.

Thanks and regards,
Aastha.

Hello Aastha,

Balanced scorecards and dashboards are more commonly used for measuring and reporting the performance of the organization, rather than that of individual employees. However, employee performance measures will typically be included somewhere within the scorecard in one form or another.

Les Allan
Author: Managing Change in the Workplace
Website: http://www.businessperform.com

Hi Alan!

Thank you for the reply. I am basically from IT but now working on this performance management project. Could you please provide me with more information on how exactly the performance of an employee can be measured?

Thank you and regards,
Aastha

Hello Aastha! There are many different methods for conducting an employee performance appraisal, and which one you choose will depend on the purpose of the evaluation and the history, structure, and culture of the company concerned. This is a big subject, so to put it in perspective, here are some of the options available.

Some employee performance appraisal systems set and measure goal attainment, some measure behaviors as well, some are single rater, some are multi-rater, some list individual competencies, some list organization-wide behaviors as well, some include a numerical score, some include written comments only, some allow appraisee responses, some tie the appraisal to remuneration and bonus outcomes, etc.

You can find some more information on employee performance management at [http://www.businessperform.com/html/employee_performance_management.html](http://www.businessperform.com/html/employee_performance_management.html).

I hope this gets you started in the right direction.

Les Allan

Author: Managing Change in the Workplace

[http://www.businessperform.com](http://www.businessperform.com)

Dear Sir,

Thank you for the reply again. I have gone through the link and have found it really valuable. It has cleared many of my confusions and has given me a clearer vision.

Thanks and regards,
Aastha

Dear Sir,

I have gone through some books and articles to get a clearer idea of performance management. However, the problem I am facing is how to practically implement it. In your first reply, you mentioned that scorecards and dashboards are not usually used for employee performance management. Could you please provide information on how to report the data collected for employee appraisals? So far, the only reporting tools I have come across for employee performance measurement are the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and dashboards.

Please shed light on this topic and correct me if my understanding after all this reading is incorrect.

Thank you and regards,

Aastha

Hello Aastha! Balanced Scorecards give a high level picture of where the entire organization is at in achieving its strategic objectives. The “employee” section of the scorecard, at least in Kaplan and Norton's view, revolves around learning and innovation; not really so much around individual employee performance. Of course, this varies from organization to organization, as each organization creates a scorecard to suits its own objectives and situation.

As for reporting employee performance, how this is reported depends of the reason for reporting it. BSCs give aggregate results; however, I'm not sure whether you are talking about aggregate employee performance results or reporting the results of each individual. Aggregate results are usually collected with the aim of dividing up bonus payments from a pool or deciding salary increases or deciding whom to fire. Results can be reported as a normal distribution, or as a forced ranking, or by some objective assessment criteria.

I'm not sure where you are coming from, so you will need to tell us a lot more about what you have found out and what you still need to find out before I can help you further.

Les Allan

Author: Managing Change in the Workplace

http://www.businessperform.com

Dear Sir,

Again, my hearty thanks to you for sharing your valuable knowledge with me!

Sir, what exactly I am looking forward to is the methods to report the performance of the individual employee with the intention to know where he stands at the point of performing a performance appraisal.

I want tools/methods to collect data for the particular employee just to check if he is meeting the goals that have been assigned to him/her. If not, then what is the status? Can training help overcome the problem? Or is the performance not acceptable at all, so the only way out is to fire the employee?

I just need a broad idea of how the things that we are measuring can be reported so as to be compared with the expected performance.

Thanks & regards,
Aastha

Aastha, it seems BSCs and dashboards are not where you should be looking. It seems as if you are talking about individual performance appraisals: measuring and reporting systems to report back to the individual employee.

For tools to do this, there are a number of software programs around that will record, track, and report attainment of employee goals. If you do not have a large number of employees, a spreadsheet will work just as well. You only mention meeting goals, so I will give a couple of examples here. Of course, many performance management systems also appraise behaviors and competencies.

Say an employee goal is to attend at least 10 monthly meetings in the year. One cell of the spreadsheet will record the goal: 10. Another cell will record the actual number of meetings attended, say 8. Another cell will calculate the percentage of the goal attained. In this case, 8/10 or 80%.

As a second example, the goal is to assemble 300 defect-free products per month. The first cell records the goal, the second the actual number of products produced, and the third the formula that calculates the percent attained.

These are simple examples, but they are a start. I hope this helps. Any good book on performance management will illustrate more complex examples.

Les Allan

Author: Managing Change in the Workplace

URL: [http://www.businessperform.com/html/managing_change.html](http://www.businessperform.com/html/managing_change.html)

URL: [http://www.businessperform.com](http://www.businessperform.com)

Dear sir,

Thank you very much. This is what I was exactly looking for. I highly appreciate your patience to reach what exactly I was looking for. I think the way I put forward my question was not proper.

Thank you for understanding my need. I am attaching an appraisal form with this post. Please let me know if that is a proper way for recording the data.

Thank you and regards