What We Measure Matters

Getting a sense of purpose across the employees is one of the key elements to helping them engage in the work and feel a sense of belonging. They feel trusted and valued and as such, will work to their highest level and feel a connection between what they are doing and the bigger business objectives of the organisation.

When they do not have this connection, they tend to be uninspired and lack a sense of pride in their workplace.

It is therefore a major part of the leaders work to provide this purpose and find ways of connecting their team members with the business and their team. It gives them a “why” as well as a “what” on the tasks that they are doing.

Start with connecting the company objectives with the team KPIs.

- If you want a clean workplace, measure it and report it in the team meetings.

- If you want a safe working environment, measure how you make the most of incidents and near misses to learn (and share the learnings) across all teams.

- If you want a specific output (whether it is a service or product), show how each team contributes to it.

- If you want exceptional customer service, measure the feedback that you get, and feed it back to the team.

In the Team Meetings, invite suggestions on how to improve on the results of these measure.

- Ask open questions about why these scores are what they are.

- Recognise good performance and look to build on it, or consolidate the behaviours that have helped achieve it.

- If the result is not as good as you’d hoped, look for the reasons which affected this. What could be done differently. A connected and inspired team will have ideas on this.

- Check that what they are doing affects the KPIs. Everybody should have an impact to some degree.

Communicate how other departments are dependent on their output.

- Invite members of other teams to outline their work.

- Make the connections between the work of this department with your team’s KPIs and the business objectives.

- Demonstrate how your team can help their team’s KPIs and visa versa. Collaboration can benefit both teams and the organisation as a whole. Too much competition between teams can be counterproductive to the overall business purpose.

How is your team performing? Do they know why they are doing what they do? Do they feel a sense of Purpose and Belonging?