For some roles, performance is easy to count. Sales has quotas, and production has output. It’s harder with the designer whose best work starts as an idea, or the office manager whose success shows up as problems that never happen.
Roles like these still benefit from clear expectations. The challenge is finding measures that reflect real contribution, so the job doesn’t get reduced to whatever happens to be easiest to count.
Why Some Roles Are Hard to Measure
Creative, support and operations roles share a few traits. Much of their impact depends on quality and judgment, and their results often blend into the work of other people. A support specialist might resolve a complicated issue that never shows up in a dashboard. An operations coordinator might quietly prevent a dozen small fires each week.
When metrics don’t fit the role, two problems tend to appear. The first is measuring what’s easy and missing what matters. The second is a well-known pattern often summed up as Goodhart’s law: when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. If a support team is judged mainly on how fast tickets get closed, for example, some tickets may get closed before the customer’s problem is actually solved.
This shows up in how employees feel, too. In a 2018 Gallup report on performance management, only 21% of employees strongly agreed they have performance metrics that are within their control.
Start With What Success Looks Like
Before choosing any metric, step back and ask a few questions about the role:
- Why does this role exist, and what would go wrong without it?
- Who depends on this person’s work, and what do they need from it?
- If this person had a great year, what would be different?
The answers usually point to outcomes, which make better anchors than activities. “Posts 12 social media graphics a month” describes activity. “Brand materials are delivered on time and need few rounds of revisions” describes an outcome the business actually cares about.
From there, look for two or three indicators that show progress toward those outcomes. A short list keeps the focus on what matters most.
What This Can Look Like by Role
These are starting points to adapt to your business. The best measures will depend on what each role is there to accomplish.
Creative roles
For designers, writers and marketers, quality and reliability usually matter more than volume.
- Projects delivered by the agreed deadline
- Number of revision rounds needed before approval
- Feedback from the internal teams or clients they work with
- Progress on a skill or project goal set at the start of the year
Customer support roles
Speed matters in support, but it works best alongside measures of whether customers actually got help.
- Customer satisfaction ratings after an interaction
- Issues resolved without needing a follow-up or escalation
- Response time, tracked as a team standard
- Contributions to help articles, training or process improvements
Operations roles
Operations work is often judged by what runs smoothly, so look at reliability and improvement.
- Key processes completed accurately and on schedule
- Errors or delays caught before they caused problems
- Feedback from the teams they support
- Improvements made to a process, such as time saved or steps removed
Combine Numbers With Judgment
Not everything valuable fits on a scorecard. Feedback from coworkers and the people a role supports can capture things numbers miss, like how someone handles a difficult situation or how easy they are to work with. A balanced approach pairs a few measurable indicators with regular, specific conversations about quality.
Be specific, even when the work is creative. Decades of research by psychologists Edwin Locke and Gary Latham found that specific, challenging goals consistently lead to better performance than simply asking people to “do their best.” A goal doesn’t have to be a number to be specific. “Develop three concepts for the spring campaign by March 1” is clear and measurable.
Consider learning goals for complex work. Locke and Latham also noted that when a task is complex or new to someone, goals focused on learning, like mastering a new skill or testing a new approach, can work better than goals focused on hitting a specific result.
Set goals together. The people closest to the work often have valuable insight into what good performance looks like. Gallup found that employees whose managers involve them in goal setting are 3.6 times more likely to be engaged than other employees. Locke and Latham’s research adds a useful nuance: assigned goals can work just as well when the reasoning behind them is explained, and much of the value of involving employees comes from the knowledge they bring to the conversation.
Review and Adjust as You Go
The first version of a role’s KPIs is rarely the final one. Check in on them regularly, at least quarterly, and ask a few honest questions:
- Are these measures reflecting the work that matters most?
- Is anything being gamed, or encouraging the wrong behavior?
- Has the role changed since the goals were set?
Feedback on progress matters too. Locke and Latham found that goals work best when people get feedback on how they’re doing along the way, so build regular check-ins into the process.
Measuring What Matters
Roles that are hard to measure often hold a business together in ways a spreadsheet can’t fully capture. Clear, fair goals help these employees see how their work contributes and give managers a better basis for feedback and recognition. Start with outcomes, keep the list short, involve the employee, and expect to refine the measures as you learn.