How to Best Utilize Work Management Tools to Improve Employee Performance
Continuous communication and collaboration are essential for achieving company goals
May 13, 2022
Why Measure Employee Performance?
Measuring performance helps managers understand the strengths and weaknesses of team members and the team overall. It’s an essential component of the goal-setting process because you need to gauge progress in a way that both quantifies results and guides strategy moving forward. By identifying areas that need improvement, you’re able to provide training or guidance in order to help improve overall efficiency and help employees grow professionally.
Choosing Metrics for Evaluation
The most important element of the evaluation process is transparency. Managers should be transparent with employees about what the evaluation metrics will be, and employees should feel comfortable expressing any questions or concerns about the process. This ensures employees are able to focus on goals rather than the evaluation itself, and shows a clear path forward for both success in reaching goals and improvement in better managing time and resources.
The exact metrics you choose to incorporate will vary by industry and company size, but ideally they should include a combination of data and insights. Balancing your evaluation from both these categories helps make your decision data-informed rather than solely data-driven. Keep your individual performance evaluations tied to how well the performance is helping to achieve overall company goals.
Data
This category represents any measurable result, such as volume of calls made, amount of revenue generated, or number of unique visitors to your website. When looking at data, the metrics you choose to use should measure employee productivity (how much work is completed in a set amount of time) and efficiency (how much effort is required in order to be as productive as possible).
Using this information as a part of your evaluation is important when considering goals that are tied to numbers, like new customer acquisition, engagement levels on social media, or monthly sales quotas. By using project management software, you’re able to get a clear overview of progress at every stage and see which team members were involved with each initiative.
Insights
Some metrics may be subjective in order to fully measure how much value an employee brings to your company. This is a more intuitive category of metrics, such as teamwork, professionalism, acceptance of feedback, or positive customer reviews. If an employee performs in a way that maintains customer loyalty or helps to devise a process that helps others work more efficiently, they are actively working to improve the business and meet goals in a way that may not be precisely measured.
Incorporating a chat function into your workflow is a helpful way to measure these communication and engagement input factors, rather than relying only on task-based performance evaluations.
Work Management
The key to successful performance measurement is using a work management platform that offers all the essential features for collaboration. Swit combines project and task management with team chat and critical integrations in a single app, providing you with the visibility and transparency required to perpetually monitor work in an intuitive way. Because this information is easily accessible, your team can preserve efficiency by eliminating the need to generate reports.
This accessibility works in both directions, ensuring that your task-based collaboration is conducted in a way where managers are visible and approachable as teams strive to meet goals.
Supporting Performance Goals
When your employees have the work management tools they need to meet goals, you’re setting them up for success and supporting a positive employee experience. As a manager, this also means you’re connected throughout the task process and available to offer guidance and answer questions.
Milestones
Establish milestones over the course of a project in order to show the individual steps needed to meet goals. By adding a checklist to a task card, you create a detailed and trackable outline that all project participants can use to stay aligned.
Swit is the only collaboration software of its kind that lets you add both an assignee and a due date to each item on your checklist, making it easy to divide responsibilities between multiple project participants and set clear expectations for the timeline. With additional features such as custom organization of checklist items and the ability to convert an individual checklist item into its own task, your performance goals are well within reach.
Deadlines
Set clear deadlines for projects so that everyone involved knows when deliverables are expected and whether future project phases are dependent on completion of their work first. This also gives you measurable data when evaluating performance that can help inform new plans and shape future goals.
Within Swit projects, each individual user is able to choose which view best suits their workflow. You’re even able to cycle between multiple view options to meet different needs in tracking and managing goals. The Timeline view, also known as a Gantt chart, allows you to see all project deadlines at a glance and adjust workload before a project is delayed. You can even view the timeline for each bucket separately, letting you compare and manage related tasks more efficiently.
If you’re working on a larger project that requires portfolio management, the All Tasks feature provides the overview you need to coordinate cross-project collaboration.
Make a Plan
Having a project management plan shows employees from the start that you are prepared to support their progress and communicate the necessary steps for success. When a project is successful, this plan can then also serve as a template with a proven track record for subsequent projects.
Use the Tabs in Swit Channels and Projects to attach files for quick reference and make sure teams never lose track of the plan. Thanks to our integrations with both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, you’re able to open and edit documents, spreadsheets and more directly within the platform for ease of access.
Improving Performance
Performance evaluations should happen regularly and be used to gauge progress toward both team and individual goals and make suggestions for improvement. Frequent communication and collaboration can help staff members voice their opinions and feel more valued as a contributor to the goal-setting process. This increases engagement by giving your team a greater sense of unity and purpose and also allows the company to benefit from employee ideas and feedback.
Having multiple Swit Workspaces with cross-workspace communication keeps different departments connected while also giving them the space to focus on their own projects. This combination of interaction and autonomy supports Enterprise-level collaboration that is both efficient and productive as you continually strive to build the business. It also ensures that there is a consistent and cohesive company culture throughout your organization.
With a combination of clear goals, the right work management tools, and the willingness to learn and grow, any size company can set out on the path to success. Contact us to find out how Swit can help you measure and improve employee performance in your business.
Natalie Litofsky, Copywriting Manager
