Objective performance measures

One trend I’ve observed over time is high performing employees are particularly drawn to quantifiable and objective measures of performance. That seems intuitive. You sort of expect those who take pride in their work and want to excel at it to want measurable proof as validation. I initially assumed this to be driven by external forces: those who are great want to be able to show they are great and receive the external recognition and validation that comes with that. While there’s probably some truth to that, the desire for objective performance measures goes far beyond. Below are additional reasons I’ve noticed.

  1. Clarifies expectations and accountability. When targets are clear and measurable, there’s less room for misinterpretation between an employee and boss. Great employees want to know what is required to be excellent.

  2. Validation of improvement. Using a measurable performance metric over time can validate you’re consistently getting better. The same way it’s satisfying to set a new best personal best half-marathon time, it’s satisfying to validate you are consistently improving your output at work. That is for intrinsic reasons.

  3. Relative performance. Using consistent, objective measurement ensures a manager is aware of who is performing on a team and who is not. From my experience, it’s extremely frustrating when you have a colleague, or worse a boss, who is performing really poorly and you aren’t sure if anyone else realizes. Having more objective measures provides some relief that poor performance will be surfaced and hopefully addressed.

  4. Facts over feelings. When performance is being measured objectively, there’s less concern that favouritism or feelings are strongly influencing performance outcomes on a team.

It’s not always possible to quantify success measures in every role. In those cases, the more objective you can make the qualitative measure (e.g., think “SMART” goals), the better.


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