Benchmarking Helps Improve Employee Performance

Q:I noticed a building-supply company in my area is benchmarking employees in certain areas to improve customer satisfaction. Why shouldn’t a contractor do the same? I don’t want this to be another program. I really want employees to buy into it. I think the key is benchmarking the right things, like number of reportable incidents. What else should I benchmark? Should I make this a competition among employees or would that alienate some?

A: Benchmarking is a great way to help measure and motivate your employees.
The costs to you will be the time taken in establishing the program, tracking performance and issuing any recognition or awards. It will be up to you to track whether the costs are worth the benefits, but the improvements in customer relations, safety and other areas of your business should make the effort a positive one.

First, it would be good to involve your key management staff and field staff in determining the behaviors and factors to be benchmarked. Identifying the key factors that are components of a quality worker/employee collectively will help engender buy-in when the program is rolled out company-wide.

I would anticipate that some of the factors that would be identified would be attendance, safety performance, finished product quality, meeting project budgets and co-worker and client relations among a few. I would caution against tracking items that really make no significant difference in the overall performance of a particular employee.

Work to keep the list of items to be benchmarked at a minimum of the key items that will be the differentiators.

Second, work with this same team to quantify measurements in each benchmarked area.
What level of attendance is acceptable or unacceptable?
What are the appropriate methods for quantifying and measuring quality standards?
How can you best obtain accurate information about customer relations?

Each of these will probably require a different measurement strategy. The accuracy and validity of this data will go a long way towards ensuring the credibility in your employees’ eyes of the benchmarking process.

Recognize High Performers

Third, agree on an informational distribution method that recognizes high performers and helps poor performers see where they are falling behind.

The benchmarking process can be a continuous quality improvement program for your employees if the communications process is viewed as a developmental tool, rather than a punitive process. Give the high performers recognition in the most appropriate manner. Confidentially inform poor performers of areas where they can improve and present some strategies for doing a better benchmarking job.

Finally, review the benchmarking measurements on at least a bi-annual basis.

Things change. Keep the program fresh by involving your benchmarking team in regular reviews of the benchmarked items, measurement system and informational distribution program.

It may take some time to do it right, but the initial effort should pay dividends when properly implemented.

Do you have questions on construction human resources or safety?
E-mail them to Leonard Toenjes at ltoenjes@agcstl.org or
craig_barner@mcgraw-hill.com.

(If Len picks your question,
he will answer it in a future issue of Midwest Construction.)