KPI: either right or wrong. What is a KPI for an employee and how to evaluate it correctly What is a KPI for an employee and how to evaluate it correctly

KPI is generally a great thing, but as soon as it comes to its implementation in creative teams, questions and doubts immediately arise. Indeed, is it possible to objectively evaluate the work when its result is essentially abstract, when it is just some kind of creative concept? It is possible, they believe in the ART4you art and production studio, and as proof they talk about how they implemented KPI for designers in their work.

The KPI system for evaluating the work of designers in ART4you appeared not so long ago - this year. There were enough reasons for its development: it was the desire to introduce an absolutely transparent wage system, and the need to additionally motivate and stimulate employees, and simply increase the staff due to the growth in production volumes. In general, all these reasons were subordinated to one idea - to create a comfortable atmosphere in the team.

The requirements for KPI were as follows: maximum transparency for employees and management, the ability to refine the system and quickly make changes to it, the participation of not only bosses, but also performers in labor assessment.

At the beginning studio ART4you considered ready-made solutions, but still refused them, because these options were too versatile and did not reflect all the nuances in the work of the studio. “There are a lot of specific moments in the design,” says art director of the studio Andrey Kokeev. - Take, for example, graphic design and product design. They are very different from each other, in fact, only the word "design" unites them. We have a narrow specialization, and it was difficult for us to find something ready-made or at least find a consultant who would be aware of the specifics of our work.”

The fact is that the art and production studio ART4you produces awards, prizes and exclusive souvenirs. All production is experimental, a unique design is developed for each product, and the flight of design imagination is limited only technical capabilities studio, and her industrial base one of the best in Moscow.

So the employees set about creating their own KPI system. A huge contribution to this matter was made by the leading designer Tamara Tebekina. The most important thing was to formulate criteria for the analysis of the creative component of the design work.

Clients come to us because we have an interesting design, and an interesting design is not calculated,” Andrey Kokeev explained. However, soon the criteria were formulated, it was possible to take into account the opinion of all designers.

A few months later, they began to implement the system in practice. We started with four evaluation criteria and began to gradually increase their number.

Now the work of designers is evaluated according to the following parameters:
- volume and complexity of work: simple single-tasking, simple multitasking, medium (standard), complex, very complex (special case);
- constructive / manufacturability of work: how technologically and structurally interesting the project is, original and easy to implement;
- creativity of the presented work;
- innovations: the use of new materials, components, technologies;
- urgency of work;
- the occurrence of difficulties during the implementation of the proposed project;
- processing due to production needs, with the exception of situations that arose through the fault of the designer.

There were no particular difficulties during the implementation, because everyone wanted it, everyone was interested. All issues that arose were resolved immediately, and necessarily collegially.

“When KPI was developed and implemented, we immediately agreed that this is not a constitution or a sacred cow, but a system open to constant modernization. We removed something from the list of criteria, added something, work was constantly going on, and finally we came to a harmonious, objective version,” says Andrey Kokeev.

In general, this collegiality has become a kind of feature of the KPI system that was created in ART4you. It allowed not only to make the system as transparent as possible, but also to abandon the computer program, which is a definite plus, as it saves money and time. Every month, designers and ART4you management just get together to evaluate the work done. There are many designers in the studio, there is a lot of work, meetings last two or three hours. For a long time, but everyone is happy, because everyone can speak about their own work and about someone else's too: design tasks are registered in Bitrix CRM and are available to all users.

“Today, we have a very effective KPI system for designers in our studio,” sums up Andrey Kokeev. - It is as transparent and discussed as possible. Employees do not just see the assessment of their work, they themselves put it. The design team is happy and easy to manage.”

Tips from ART4you:

1. Don't be afraid to take on KPI development and implementation with little or no budget.

Lack of funds is no reason to postpone it. From their own experience, the studio was convinced that you can get by with minimal costs.

2. Involve in the development of KPI those whose work will be evaluated using this system.

These people, like no one else, are interested in a fair and transparent assessment and know very well what factors affect the quality and speed of their work. Besides teamwork above KPI will show that you value your employees and respect their opinion.

3. Feel free to refuse ready-made KPIs if the situation requires it.

Perhaps you don't have the funds right now to buy a complete system; perhaps ready-made systems do not meet the specifics of your work - the reasons for failure can be very different. Soberly assess the situation. It may well be that giving up and working on KPIs on your own is the only right option for your company.

4. Study someone else's experience.

This way you can find out where to lay your straws.

5. Share your work.
Firstly, it's just fair: the experience of other companies has allowed you to avoid mistakes when creating your own KPI system, so you help someone too.

Secondly, your developments may well bring profit. At least reputation. Weight in the professional community has never bothered anyone.

To write this note - it was spent:

68338 kilometers for travel.
72 man-hours for mail correspondence.
423 man-hours for experiments with a team of 30 people.
88 hours for preparation of reports and presentations at conferences.
17 cups of coffee for a conversation with wise people at an after-party.
About 25 hours to type this text and fix bugs in it :).
A tortured copywriter to death who was forced to parse my drafts, audio recordings, and generally thanks to him.

Lots of money and time. Perhaps the most costly (in terms of nerves, time and money) was the experiment on my own team, which I feel extremely embarrassed to remember. But more on that below.

Sooner or later, probably, every director has a desire to pay fairly. For the work done. And a lot of people are now trying to implement KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). It works like this: you, as a business owner, appoint specific goals for staff. They achieve or do not achieve their goals in the process of work. Those who have reached - are given a bun (cash bonus).

The point of this approach is to pay fairly. How much you have earned - so much you have received. It's honest, it's logical, it's wonderful!

Well, it makes sense that:

Sellers - assign a percentage of turnover. Wolves must be hungry. (Yes, there is an alternative opinion that applying such an approach means “imposing an additional tax on yourself.” But as for me, everything is fair here :-)).
Office plankton - set a salary. Stability for them is a very important condition for existence.

But with creative units (designers, programmers) - everything is much more complicated.

We recently conducted a survey of the heads of leading digital agencies and web studios in the country on the topic “how do you use KPI in relation to the work of creative units”, as a result, we got this picture:

Some companies (15%) use KPIs to evaluate the performance of programmers and designers.

About 25% of companies implement KPIs in this moment/ meet resistance within the company or work according to a simplified scheme.

Approximately 30% of companies pay employees based on the subjective assessments of managers. Or rather, 30% - confess to it ;-) Do not confess - the remaining 30%.

The most interesting thing is that many have tried to implement KPIs or are trying now. And not very successful. This does not mean that “KPI is bad”. Poorly cooked food is impossible to eat. Maybe we just don't know how to prepare this KPI?

But statistics show that the overwhelming majority have difficulties with implementation. And there is a suspicion that the same problem is common to all. Let's try to figure it out.

The first thing you will have to face when implementing KPI is the resistance of the team

The question arises: What hovers developers the most when implementing KPIs?

After conducting several experiments and surveys among colleagues, we identified 6 main reasons:

Fear of novelty. Everyone is totally afraid of innovations, thinking that it will get worse (less money, more work, etc.).
Opaque scheme. By using a compensation scheme with multiple parameters, we increase the risk that workers will not understand it. People get frustrated and demotivated when they don't understand exactly how they can achieve the best results or why they suddenly get less money.
"Why so many?" Yes, this happens too. If the scheme is built in such a way that the result of this month will appear only in two or three. “This month I worked worse, but I got more. So, last time I didn't get it. Management are idiots, they don’t understand anything about my work!”
The employee's heart rate. It is almost impossible to get into a person's sense of self and give him a "fair" bonus.
Incomplete dependency achievement criteria from the worker. For example, it is not entirely up to the designer whether the design he draws will be sold or whether 50 edits will have to be made.
Reports. I don’t know anyone who likes to write reports, put down the time spent, promise “exact dates”.

If you look at this list carefully, you will find that most of the claims are related to choice, consideration, transparency and the adequacy of the criteria.

OK. So, you just need to come up with Good Criteria!

Well, those who will understand everyone, who will not soar anyone, who will be easy to explain even at an interview. And so that everything was honest, and I wanted to work more and more.

In general, let's try to find Good Criteria. (By the way, "Good" - for whom?). We have three key affected stakeholders: the studio owner, the customer, and the developers.

What can be a Good Criteria from the customer's point of view? Usually it all comes down to money (well, or some actual results):

ROI- Roughly speaking, this is a "return on financial injections." The indicator derived by economists is not entirely applicable to developers: after all, they cannot control the return on their work and measure it in money on the go. That is, they cannot directly affect the indicator.
Low cost of the feature. It is beneficial for the customer to have a low cost feature. And for the developer, this is a pattern break (“How is it: I get more money because I work cheaply?”).
Degree of satisfaction. I don’t know how to calculate it, but if we take into account that people want happiness or at least take a steam bath less (© Dmitry Satin), then we can even offer the following formula:

However, the realities now are such that to come and offer, for example, a designer, the dependence of his salary on the ephemeral "satisfaction" of the customer is a guaranteed way to be left without a designer. A very serious crisis is needed for this topic to start working. Or a lot of good extra designers.

Date of release. Everything seems to be logical: we hand over the project on time - we get a lot of money, we hand it over ahead of schedule - we get even more money. The indicator is suitable, but it has an already identified problem: not everything depends on the developer. Deadlines most often arise from the client-management side. (Hence the fair: “Why should I lose in salary, although this manager did not knock content out of the customer?”).

OK. These Criteria, which are Good for the customer, will obviously not be Good for the developer. (I have no illusions, now you can easily come up with another 200 pieces of different criteria that are significant for business. Write and discuss in the comments :))

But you can measure PERFORMANCE! It's so simple!

Or not? How to measure it? If I painted the fence, then everything is obvious. But there is a catch. There are many thinking, creative, talented people in our industry, and no one paints the fences. Let's look at the example of programmers. So what Good Performance Measures come to mind?

KSLOC. Do you know what it is? And what is the Hindu code - you know? Implement - find out. KSLOC is the number of thousands of lines of code. If you link this indicator to salary, then wait for thousands of lines of copy-paste. A friend of mine received a completed order somewhere in Bangalore - a php script, for only ten dollars, but for as much as 20 MB. And he worked!
The amount of some shit per hour (WTF/h). The number of pages drawn per day, the number of features implemented per hour, etc. It seems to be a normal metric - something can actually be calculated and used to distribute goodies. However, a problem similar to the previous point arises: a drop in quality at the expense of quantity, an increase in technological debt. Motivation, interest, satisfaction - everything is rapidly falling down. As a result: turnover and low qualification.
The number of bugs. The fewer bugs, the more we pay. Everything is logical, isn't it? Not really. Is there a bugtracker implemented in your studio? If yes, forget it. Your testers will very soon agree with your programmers on how many bugs to write and how many not, so that it is not to the detriment of both parties.
Processing.“If you stay late at work, you don’t work well.” Is that also logical? We fight overwork, for example, turn off the electricity after 18:00. However, here you need to remember that the psychology of a developer is fundamentally different from the psychology of office plankton: and if he sits until the evening, then he is interested (and this should be encouraged).

People work in our field mainly because they are interested in it.

Do not interfere with stupid corporate rules.

focus factor. This metric came to us from my favorite Scrum. Shows how much the task should have taken ideally, and how much it ended up being. "Concentration" of the team on the project. Is it possible to pay money based on this criterion? Quite, but if your managers are not "techies", then programmers will deliberately overestimate the time estimates, minimizing their own risks. The consequence of this approach is that the terms are stretched, the customer is indignant (or does not buy from you). Yes, and every meeting will turn into squabbles and arguments in 10 minutes.
Velocity. Also from Scrum. The notorious "performance". It is rather non-obvious here, the humanities can skip the paragraph.

Velocity = Focus Factor x Evaluation of new tasks

Allows you to predict how many tasks the team will be able to score in the next stage, depending on how many they completed in the previous one. The problems are the same as the Focus Factor, plus one more is added. Often a manager (especially an inexperienced one) who senses that team performance can be "measured" begins to use this tool "in the other direction." But Velocity cannot be an accurate criterion, because shows how long the same task can take, performed by the same team under the same conditions. However, after completing the task, the team has already changed: it has gained experience on how to solve this particular task. And the metric won't work again.

cycle time. How quickly time passes from the moment the idea arose to implement a feature on the project, until the moment it was done.

I personally really like this metric. One of the key ones that should be measured and optimized. But developers do not directly influence this factor. This is a very high level metric. If you start paying the team a salary based on their Cycle Time, it means that you, as a leader, do not seek to solve the problems of the team and understand the processes, but simply transfer everything to the team.

An attempt to make a developer's salary dependent on a high-level metric is evidence of managerial impotence

So, is it possible to measure the effectiveness of a team? Yes, you can, especially since we have written about a dozen indicators for this. And another dozen or two can be thought of in the comments. Another question - is it worth making the developer's salary dependent on indicators? Now this is risky.

I start working, and I do my job - good, because I'm a professional and I'm interested in it. But if they start to spread rot on me with stupid metrics, I will optimize these stupid metrics. I will write 1000 lines or draw 10 shit designs a day. And my interest in work will dry up very, very quickly, I will stupidly want dough. It's called substitution intrinsic motivation- external.

The story of a madness

Once, “a good friend of mine”, the head of the studio, got excited about the idea of introducing a very fair wage, where a bunch of parameters would be taken into account. Naturally, the matter was approached on a grand scale. Wrote a whole bunch of criteria, such as:

monthly plan for worked man-hours and actual hours worked;
quarterly sales plan;
the number of wards and their salaries;
the amount of positive communication from customers (satisfaction);
the number of repeated requests from the client with new projects;
awards at specialized competitions;
negative communication with the client;
the number of bugs found by QA;
growth of receivables;
the number of bugs found by the client after the start of the project;
reading books, writing articles.

And 20 more pieces. ( useful list take it ;-).

All this was brought into one system. Naturally, the system had to be balanced. Therefore, in the first few months, it was decided to calibrate it on virtual "wrappers". A large board was invented on which a list of employees was drawn. Various “wrappers” were posted on the board - as soon as the payment was received, the project ended or some good (or bad) event occurred that would affect the salary in the future.

At first, the studio considered ready-made solutions, but they still abandoned them, because these options were too versatile and did not reflect all the nuances in the work of the studio. “There are a lot of specific moments in the design,” says Andrey Kokeev, art director of the studio. - Take, for example, graphic design and product design. They are very different from each other, in fact, only the word “design” unites them. We have a narrow specialization, and it was difficult for us to find something ready-made or at least find a consultant who would be aware of the specifics of our work.”

The fact is that the art and production studio ART4you produces awards, prizes and exclusive souvenirs. All production is experienced, a unique design is developed for each product, and the flight of design imagination is limited only by the technical capabilities of the studio, and its production base is one of the best in the capital.

So the employees set about creating their own KPI system. The most important thing was to formulate criteria for the analysis of the creative component of the design work.

“Design is largely subjective, and it is not always possible to measure or evaluate it using standard schemes. At the same time, it is also impossible to discard the creative component when evaluating work, because it is creativity that is our competitive advantage. Clients come to us because we have an interesting design, and an interesting design is not calculated,” Andrey Kokeev explained. However, soon the criteria were formulated, it was possible to take into account the opinion of all designers.

A few months later, they began to implement the system in practice. We started with four evaluation criteria and began to gradually increase their number.

Now the work of designers is evaluated according to the following parameters:

volume and complexity of work: simple single-tasking, simple multitasking, medium (standard), complex, very complex (special case);
constructive / manufacturability of work: how technologically and structurally interesting the project is, original and easy to implement;
the creativity of the submitted work;
innovations: the use of new materials, components, technologies;
urgency of work;
the occurrence of difficulties during the implementation of the proposed project;
processing due to production needs, except for situations that arose through the fault of the designer.

There were no particular difficulties during the implementation, because everyone wanted it, everyone was interested. All issues that arose were resolved immediately, and necessarily collegially.

In general, this collegiality has become a kind of feature of the KPI system that was created. It allowed not only to make the system as transparent as possible, but also to abandon the computer program, which is a definite plus, as it saves money and time. Every month, designers and management just get together to evaluate the work done. There are many designers in the studio, there is a lot of work, meetings last two or three hours. For a long time, but everyone is happy, because everyone can speak about their own work and about someone else's too: design tasks are registered in Bitrix CRM and are available to all users.

Tips from ART4you:

Don't be afraid to take on KPI development and implementation with little or no budget. Lack of funds is no reason to postpone it. From their own experience, the studio was convinced that you can get by with minimal costs.
Involve in the development of KPI those whose work will be evaluated using this system. These people, like no one else, are interested in a fair and transparent assessment and know very well what factors affect the quality and speed of their work. In addition, working together on KPIs will show that you value your employees and respect their opinion.
Feel free to refuse ready-made KPIs if the situation requires it. Perhaps you don't have the funds right now to buy a complete system; perhaps ready-made systems do not meet the specifics of your work - the reasons for failure can be very different. Soberly assess the situation. It may well be that giving up and working on KPIs on your own is the only right option for your company.
Learn from the experience of others. This way you can find out where to lay your straws.
Share your work. Firstly, it's just fair: the experience of other companies has allowed you to avoid mistakes when creating your own KPI system, so you help someone too. Secondly, your developments may well bring profit. At least reputation. Weight in the professional community has never bothered anyone.

So the employees set about creating their own KPI system. The most important thing was to formulate criteria for the analysis of the creative component of the design work.

A few months later, they began to implement the system in practice. We started with four evaluation criteria and began to gradually increase their number.

Now the work of designers is evaluated according to the following parameters:

volume and complexity of work: simple single-tasking, simple multitasking, medium (standard), complex, very complex (special case);
constructive / manufacturability of work: how technologically and structurally interesting the project is, original and easy to implement;
the creativity of the submitted work;
innovations: the use of new materials, components, technologies;
urgency of work;
the occurrence of difficulties during the implementation of the proposed project;
processing due to production needs, except for situations that arose through the fault of the designer.

There were no particular difficulties during the implementation, because everyone wanted it, everyone was interested. All issues that arose were resolved immediately, and necessarily collegially.

Tips from ART4you:

Don't be afraid to take on KPI development and implementation with little or no budget.. Lack of funds is no reason to postpone it. From their own experience, the studio was convinced that you can get by with minimal costs.
Involve in the development of KPI those whose work will be evaluated using this system. These people, like no one else, are interested in a fair and transparent assessment and know very well what factors affect the quality and speed of their work. In addition, working together on KPIs will show that you value your employees and respect their opinion.
Feel free to abandon ready-made KPIs if the situation requires it. Perhaps you don't have the funds right now to buy a complete system; perhaps ready-made systems do not meet the specifics of your work - the reasons for failure can be very different. Soberly assess the situation. It may well be that giving up and working on KPIs on your own is the only right option for your company.
Learn from the experience of others. This way you can find out where to lay your straws.
Share your work. Firstly, it's just fair: the experience of other companies has allowed you to avoid mistakes when creating your own KPI system, so you help someone too. Secondly, your developments may well bring profit. At least reputation. Weight in the professional community has never bothered anyone.

KPIs are Key Performance Indicators. The indicators are different. The key ones are those that affect the profit. The indicator itself can change quite a bit, but the profit can be noticeable.

For example, the owner of a barbershop calculated that if he increased the average bill of a barber by 100 rubles, the annual revenue would increase by 300,000 rubles. If costs remain the same, profits will also increase. Average check barber for a barbershop is a key indicator.

Why KPIs are needed

The task of KPI is to make life easier for the head of the enterprise, the owner of the business and ordinary employees. I implemented the KPI system when our team grew from two people to 22. Too much time was spent on the decision operational tasks, began to miss him for direct directorial duties. Thanks to KPI, I delegated authority and responsibility to the level of department heads and ordinary employees, but nevertheless I control everything.

When KPIs are not useful, the point is that the company is not working with them correctly. This is exactly what happened to the co-owners of the cosmetology clinic. They worked with the sales funnel, collected indicators, but did not know what to do with them next. And when we figured out which indicators affect and who should be responsible for each, in three months they made the business profitable from unprofitable.

How to work with KPIs

We implement KPI

The authors of management books portray the implementation of KPI as a multi-step procedure: write organizational structure companies, financial structure, business processes. With this approach, the process threatens to drag on for at least six months. Big business this is possibly feasible. But small businesses cannot afford to stagnate for so long.

But there is a simpler fast way. You will need to determine which metrics have the biggest impact on profits and who in the company influences those metrics. There is no universal set of indicators. For each business they are individual. For sales via the Internet, the key indicators are the cost per click and the conversion of the site. For a call center - the duration of the agent's conversations.

We singled out an indicator that affects profit, understood who it depends on, and appointed a responsible person.

We motivate staff

The next step is to create a personnel motivation system. A popular option, when an employee's bonus is tied to the overall result of a company or division, does not work well. The employee is responsible for own result. But how will it affect the results of colleagues? Therefore, you need to know what a particular subordinate influences and is responsible for, and tie the bonuses of each to his individual result.

It must be taken into account whether the employee directly or indirectly affects financial results. Our team includes an editorial team that produces content for the site. Content works to increase demand, but indirectly. Revision is the cost center. Therefore, it makes no sense to tie the motivation of the editor-in-chief to profit. But the sales department has a plan for the number of calls and the conversion of applications into sales. They directly affect revenue.

A sign of a good KPI motivation system is when an employee sees in the middle of the month how much has already been done and what needs to be done to get as much as he wants.

Drawing conclusions based on KPI

Employees don't always reach their targets. And not always their own fault. When you see that something is going wrong, do not rush to shoot the staff in the corridor. First, figure out what is the reason. If the employee is not guilty, then it is necessary to help him and create conditions under which he can achieve the target indicators.

If an employee does not fulfill the plan from month to month and the point is precisely in him, all that remains is to replace him with someone who will cope. Neither charm nor a good attitude of management will save here. Against indicators, these factors are powerless.

We audit the KPI system

Implementing and setting up a KPI system is not all. You need to understand: the system that you have implemented is not once and for all. In business, things are constantly changing. With each change, the KPI system may need to be adjusted. You have to be ready for this.

When you need to adjust the KPI system, figure out which indicators are no longer relevant, which ones need to be replaced, and who should be responsible for the new indicators. Correcting a system is easier than building one from scratch.

The motivation system also needs to be adjusted. It is best to do this with the involvement of employees. Each employee has personal goals. And the motivation system works best when both you and the employee understand what he wants and what he must do for the company in order to realize his personal goals. If an employee wants to earn 150 thousand a month, let his salary be 75, and the rest - bonuses. So he will understand that he is worth 75 thousand, but he can earn 150 if he is a successful professional.

Remember

Understand what indicators affect profits and who in the company influences them.
Select key indicators that have the strongest impact on profit, and assign responsibility for them. Set 2-3 clear KPIs for each department.
Motivate employees by their key performance indicators.
Monitor whether employees are meeting targets.
When the indicators are not achieved, figure out what is the reason. If an employee needs help, help. If that's the case, replace it with another one.
Constantly audit the KPI system and motivation. Make adjustments when you realize the system needs them.