Whether operating remotely or on site, making sure your team is working towards the right goals and is actually making progress is still a difficult task for many managers and leaders.

As misaligned goals and lack of supervision may lead to wasting time and resources on goals that may not benefit your company attaining their long-term objectives.

In this article, we’ll discover how successful remote teams stay on track using KPI and how you can leverage it enhances your team’s productivity and impact.

What Does KPI Mean?

Managing and supervising the remote team can be challenging, especially for new remote startups.

As without a system to track your team’s performance, there’s no sense of progress and whether your team is putting efforts towards the right goals.

That is where KPIs can be one of the most effective ways to track team progress and make sure you’re working towards the right goals.

KPI stands for (Key performance indicator). It tracks your team’s progress towards a specific goal, and can extend or limit to long-term goals or simple projects.

How To Measure KPI Of Your Remote Team?

There are various ways to measure KPI, but it all depends on the project, role and department you’re measuring it for.

For example, developers have a different form of performance metrics compared to sales. While developers, performance relies on the quality of the tasks.

Sales would be the number of clients their department were able to get.

While there are various ways to measure KPI, one of the most effective ways to take advantage of KPI is to use “SMART” method, which stands for:

S: Specific.

M: Measurable.

A: Attainable.

R: Relevant.

T: Timely.

Specific:

It’s far too common among companies to set vague goals that can’t be tracked or measure to collect insights on the progress, and its effectiveness.

Which makes these goals unattainable as you have no sense of clear direction.

That is why your goal must be specific. Specific enough to measure and track it.

In a simple example, Instead of saying, “Improving teamwork”, setting a more specific goal like “achieving 90% completion rate on collaborative tasks.

And reducing communication time to within 2 hours”, would be more achievable.

Measurable:

To get the best results out of your KPI, it’s essential to have a goal that’s measurable. Not too vague or ambiguous that you can’t even measure it.

In a simple example, completing 90% of collaborative projects within a month would be more measurable, as you know if you complete 10 collaborative projects within a month.

Your team must complete 9 collaborative projects within a month. Now that’s something you can measure to see how far your team made progress.

Attainable:

When setting team goals, whether long term or short, it’s important to keep them realistic and achievable, as too ambitious a goal or KPI could lead to burnout, and lack of proper results.

Which results in harm to overall productivity and company resources.

In an example, this is what a more realistic goal/KPI would look like, “Improving team collaborative efficiency from 60% to 80%” Than setting a goal of reaching team collaborative efficiency from 60% to 100%, as it may take time for your team to adapt and improve.

Setting unrealistic goal can greatly harm your remote team and their well-being.

Relevant:

Setting specific goals is not enough to ensure your team is on the right track, as it also includes taking both long and short-term goals in mind.

And make sure you’re putting effort towards the right goals, which in the end help your company grow or achieve whichever main priority your company has at the moment.

In the similar example, improving team collaborative efficiency to 80% to increase team overall productivity and streamline the working process fast would be a more relevant goal/KPI than setting a goal like be friendly with other team members.

Timely:

Without a set of deadlines, your team might lose track of time and may spend more time than needed for the task.

Which is why it’s important to set time specific goals. Making it practical to measure progress and how effectively your remote team could execute them.

In the same example, “Reducing team response time to within 3 hours to improve team communication” would be a specific and time bound goal.

Here Are A Few Ways You Can Measure KPIs:

1)Performance:

Managers can determine their remote team KPI based on their performance within a specific time frame.

Such as assessing their performance towards their assigned task, how long did it take them to complete it, did they miss the deadlines or did they complete it within their deadline?

What was the end result of the deliverables? Were they effective in their work, or did they fall short?

These different angels can help determine your remote employee progress and make changes where needed.

2) Quality:

Some tasks’ performance can’t be measured in numbers, and require other methods of measurement. Such as the quality of the task to determine their KPI.

In an example, developers performance many rely on their code success metrics, such as number of bugs found after the deployment, or the feedback of clients on the work.

Were they able to complete the project without any additional revision and met team coding standards.

3) Communication:

Consistent communication is part of remote employee overall performance, as most of team progress relies on it.

Consistent communication with the manager and other team members keeps working pace smooth.

And with consistent feedback and check-ins, managers can ensure the quality and performance of the project efficiently.

The average response rate, the percentage of attending team meetings and contributing, is another way to evaluate employee performance and engagement in the team.

4) Deadlines:

Deadline KPI tracks employee task/project completion percentage, how long it took them to complete the task and what’s the rate of projects they were able to complete within their deadline.

Measuring employee progress, based on deadlines and how effectively they were able to manage, is another excellent way to ensure your team is productive and working on the right goals.

Relevant Read: 5 Effective Ways To Manage Time When Working Remote.

How KPI Can Help Improve Remote Employees’ Productivity?

Clarity:

Clear company goals give employees a sense of direction and where they should focus their energy on.

When you have a clear system of measuring progress. It helps employees with productivity and efficiency to contribute to the overall goals.

Urgency:

Time limited projects give employees a sense of urgency, and ensure your employees are consistently working despite being remote.

This urgency keeps employees proactive and responsible to engage and stay motivated in spite of being remote.

Accountability:

Having their goals clear and a specific gives employees a sense of responsibility, as there’s no room for procrastination, and concentrate on their assigned tasks.

Being remote, this sense of responsibility keeps employees accountable for reaching milestones within a specific time frame, which in ultimately increases employees’ productivity.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, KPIs are an effective way to measure and track your remote employee’s progress, although KPI may vary with the form of task, project and the role.

But using it ethically and properly will help you stay on track and work towards the right goals that in the end help your company reach the ultimate objective of the project or company.

While it also helps with productivity and ensure, despite the distance, your team stay connected and productive.