Over the last decades, more and more organizations have broken the boundaries of traditional, financial-based performance measurement, and started using KPIs for monitoring other activities as well. Furthermore, assessing individual and team performance has become a common practice in organizations where leveraging talent can represent a competitive advantage. Evaluating board performance is important, as this entity is responsible for ensuring that the organization’s desired state of evolution is successfully reached.
The concept of organizational culture is believed to be one of the most discussed topics when studying organizational performance. By calibrating an organization’s culture to the values and general principles encountered among its employees, a company can set the context needed for employees to perform and thus, to obtain the expected results.
Applied performance management sub- processes, tools and techniques within an organizational environment are a powerful driver for business development. However, it is not enough to operate randomly with these tools, they have to be aligned and integrated within a performance management system. When such aspect is not a priority in performance management inputs, outputs and outcomes will aim for different goals.
The Government of Kerala closely monitors the performance of its departments in a system known as the Performance Monitoring and Evaluation System (PMES), where each department has to prepare a Results-Framework Document (RFD).
RFDs are performance reports that show how well departments have managed their performance during the previous year. They are structured into 6 parts:
Nowadays, key performance indicators (KPIs) are common management tools that enable managers to better understand their business and improve performance. Although their terminology may vary from one company to another (performance indicators, performance measures or KPIs), in essence all these terms have the same meaning. According to The KPI Institute, a key performance indicator is a measurable expression for the achievement of a desired level of results in an area relevant to the evaluated entity’s activity.
The field of performance management is a relatively new area, where tools and techniques may not be very well structured and terminology is sometimes ambiguous. Bringing more clarity in regards to key concepts can reveal a more efficient way of using KPIs.
Selecting KPIs is an important step in the process of measuring performance. In order to ensure the right KPIs are chosen for each objective, managers should have a wide understanding on what KPIs are. KPI typologies present various ways to look at performance indicators and create logical clusters. Grouping KPIs on specific criteria provides more clarity in regards to what is measured in relation to the objective assigned.
