KPI - Key Performance Indicators and managerial intricacy

KPI, which in other words Key Performance Indicators are the necessary instrument to measure employee performance in any company. Here, to make it easier, I shall resort to 'call centers' as an example. This article is not meant to detail the KPI but an employee - employer behavioral explanation. A basic summary of this process is as follows:

• Analyst team will perform the complete production of KPI, start till finish. Usually it is only one person in analyst team who performs the complete process for a call center. This benefits in many ways to centralize this process, not only accuracy but also confidentiality and integrity of the data produced.
• Once the KPI production is ready with all the scores then the respective analyst forwards the hard coded scores to management for delivering to employees. This way the data cannot be tampered.

Now, that's in a nut shell. Production of KPI is highly complicated and requires enormous amount of eye for detail and control away from operational management. In years of experience, I had situation when a manager requests to lower an agent's score because he/she does not want an agent to get an exceed on the Performance Appraisal based on personal liking. There were situations when the manager wanted someone else to be rewarded on sales performance and requests to lower the score of another employee so that the manager's favorite gets on the reward wall.

We should remember that the real life in the working world is not a fair game as in FIFA or Olympics. There are lots of undercurrents that can affect not only the quality of business running but also the social life of many talented citizens. While as a leader you should learn the true leadership rather than somehow trying to be a manager to earn more money and rule subordinates, but also as an employee you should know how to remain honest and fair to your colleagues with proper respect in order to benefit the organization you work for; also you should be strong enough to fight against the odds and be cautious of dishonest boss.

When it's time for KPI - the yearly performance appraisal, always verify your results. Especially, in some call centers, where employees appraised based on the personal relationship, you should not be afraid to question the results given to you. If you do not agree with the outcome, you do not have to sign the Performance Appraisal. You may be an agent, a supervisor or a manager. Your boss cannot fire you without a justifiable cause. The benefit of not being in the management, is that they cannot build fictitious cause against you, whereas, if you are part of the management and you are not politically strong enough then you superior has many ways to be able to show cause to get you fired.

Agents or the front line employees will have to remember to verify the numbers of their results, if you have done a good job, you would not have to be afraid of anything. The Performance Appraisal you sign goes into your file with an agreement from you. This PA, every year, determines the future of your existence in the company and it determines the most important part, which is 'raise' that the whole year you have worked for. In case of conflict you can resort to company policy, if they are good enough and appropriate legal advice.

In case of supervisors or managers, performance do not carry much of a value in these type of challenged call centers. I have seen, strong supervisors with high potential for the business operations got fired because they didn't agree with some dishonesty of the managers/directors. Now what type of dishonesty I am referring to? Based of common criteria of the KPI if a team does exceptionally well, it will mean more "Exceed" rating which mean more "raise" which means more money to give out increasing budget for the call center. This, would attract lot of arguments, but I would not blame you. It goes back to my article on clever management and intelligent management. Clever management try to follow a shortcut to reach their respective personal goals to be able to sustain in a company with minimal effort.

Hence, there are exercises that take place to balance the KPI scores of the employees through massaging the numbers. Hence, in this kind companies, it is imperative that the KPI production is not management influenced and should be in the hands of capable and strong leadership who has the guts to refuse wrong approach. It is important that the analyst know what he/she is doing while producing the KPI. If the person responsible for KPI do not have enough knowledge and expertise in this field, can simply ruin an employee's career and this happens quite often.

Data is simple and also data is complicated. If not handled correctly, can produce faulty results without anyone noticing. The same data is massaged before presented to board of directors. e. g. the senior manager who is close to CEO, takes the risk of doing it, at the expense of say, 400K salary.

All these being said, my advice to CEO is, always keep your data and analyst department separate from Operations. That way, you will be able to strive to the pool of the best managed companies around the world.

You may be an agent, a supervisor or a manager, irrespective of your position, I recommend the following:

• You should be able to agree with your performance review before you sign.
• You should be able to express your disagreement and ask for evidence when in doubt.
• Your performance can only be reviewed on things you have agreed upon at the beginning of the year.
• Scoring system and the performance metrics has to be well explained at the beginning of the fiscal year. Hence if that did not happen at the beginning of the year, you cannot be judged on that at the end of the year.

Remember, performance review is a way of positive reinforcement to improve employee performance and hence progress in the business. It is not a tool to punish an employee at the end of the year. Performance Review should always end up with positive results that the employee would like and love it as this provides energy and motivation to work better in the following year.

Unfortunately, there are management professionals who are part of the socioeconomic crime and somehow followed the 'clever management' method to rise to a senior position, do not believe in that. You may ask me how these professionals get a senior position. Answer is very easy. Firstly, they believe in easy 'clever management' method, mind you, 'intelligent management' is not an easy task and requires true intelligence and knowledge to implement. Secondly, they do not have repentance for committing a crime that they may not have to go to Jail for unless someone heavy duty faces them, which is not that common in easy going Canada. And thirdly, they resort to ample lies during the interview or they know someone in the company who would believe what they say. Most times these professionals are fired from other companies for just reasons. But isn't it quite easy to make up stories. But nevertheless, these people are exceptionally good sales people who can sell themselves very well.

Hence, when I hire someone, I do not often rely on how well someone sells themselves unless I am hiring for sales and marketing, but I look inside. Check out my answers on recruiting a CEO at LinkedIn.