The success of your business depends on the productivity, efficiency and engagement of your employees. As a business owner, it’s not possible to personally monitor employees at all times to see how well they are working. As a result, it’s necessary to put systems and processes in place to ensure your employees are contributing their best work.

Establish Clear Expectations

To help your employees perform effectively, it’s critical to have clear job descriptions for each role. These help your employees understand what they are responsible for and what their colleagues are responsible for. Be sure to draft a detailed job description for each employee that includes a list of duties they need to complete as part of their role. Also provide a description of what responsibilities they have.

Share the job description with each employee. Have them review it and sign off on it, confirming their understanding of their role and accepting their duties. This is an effective way to establish a baseline for performance metrics, as the job description clearly outlines what needs to be done by each individual.

In addition to job descriptions, have your department managers or senior employees create daily or weekly task lists for each area of the business. This helps your employees understand what needs to be done by a particular time. For example, have a list of duties that customer service needs to complete each week and a list that the warehouse needs to complete each week. If necessary, format the list with a space for checkmarks, so employees can note when each task is done.

Set Performance Goals

Strategies to monitor team performance include setting expectations and key performance indicators. During the annual performance evaluation meeting, set goals for the next year for each employee. This may include sales targets, campaign metrics or customer service feedback. Provide quantitative benchmarks that each employee needs to hit.

During your monthly check-in meetings with each employee or department, be sure to track the progress of each of their performance metrics. This way, you can ensure employees are on track toward meeting their goals. If they are far behind or far ahead, you may need to review performance or targets.

Implement Self-Monitoring Tools

Help employees to monitor their own performance as well. This helps them build the initiative to do well at work. It can also increase employee engagement and personal drive. Provide employees with project plans they can follow.

Coach them to create checklists and activity logs for their work so that they can set their own schedules while tracking their progress towards larger business goals. By giving them the tools to monitor their own performance, you help them build new skills such as time management, problem-solving, conflict resolution and leadership.

Use Technology for Monitoring Staff Performance

In order to make tracking progress and monitoring performance more efficient, implement technology solutions in your business. Tools that enable monitoring staff performance include:

  • Basecamp: Management can see which tasks each employee has and how many have been completed.

  • Trello: Employees and management can visualize the workflow for projects, seeing which areas are backlogged.

  • Teamwork: Companies can track how much time employees are spending on each task, in addition to viewing progress.

With many project management and performance tools available, you can select the one that provides the features you need for your business.

Focus on Building Trust

No one wants to work with their boss constantly looking over their shoulder. That creates a hostile environment and can show employees that you don’t trust them. Instead, empower your employees to do well at their jobs by providing them with the tools, training and expertise they need to excel.

Monitoring performance in the workplace includes enabling your staff to have a hand in tracking their own performance with self-monitoring processes. This shows them that you believe in their abilities and want them to succeed.