Step 2: What got you here, won't get you there

Several years ago I was asked to update the Whistleblowing policy at the company I was working for. Several international scandals made the regulator worried about the culture within the industry. Of course we had a whistleblowing policy in place, but it was time to see whether it met the new and stricter standards. Not only was it important to rewrite the document, it was also expected to ensure a culture in which whistleblowing is possible.

Together with my team we updated the policy, created an awareness campaign, published everything on Intranet, and incorporated the policy in existing Compliance trainings. We created several KPIs to measure whether our activities were effective and if the expected culture was in place. It was decided to measure these KPIs several months after the implementation was finished. Here are some examples of the KPIs we used:

• How many employees did the Compliance training?
• How many employees know about the Whistleblowing policy and procedure?
• Were employees able to find the whistleblowing policy and instructions?
• How many employees actually used the whistleblowing policy?
• How many whistleblowing cases were registered (before and after the campaign)?

Many employees did follow the compliance training, but this was no surprise. These trainings are mandatory for all employees. When we did a questionnaire it turned out that many employees did know that whistleblowing was possible, but only a few people knew about the policy and procedure. Even worse, almost no one was able to tell where the instructions could be found on Intranet. But the most surprising results came from the last two KPIs. Only a handful of cases were filed in one year. The KPIs were telling us that we had failed.

But then we realized that we had been using the wrong KPIs all along. The goal of a whistleblowing policy is that is used as little as possible. An organization should have a culture where employees can openly report incidents, without fearing repercussions. And it is of course not strange that most people did never found themselves in the situation and therefore didn’t know where to find the procedure. We decided to change the performance indicator. We looked at the number of incidents that were openly registered with the Security department. Turned out that employees did indeed file cases and did so openly. 

Choosing wrong performance indicators inevitably leads to wrong conclusions. You could measure the world if you want, but measuring the right behavior is key. This leaves you with a paradox. On the one hand you want as less KEY performance indicators in order to keep things simple. On the other hand the world is a complex place and many factors might be influencing the outcome of your succes. How are you ever gonna know whether you chose the right one(s)?

Lets say that your goal is to have satisfied employees. There are plenty of ways to make them happy, but you should ask yourself what behavior is actually showing you that they are. Less sick leave? Employees saying that they are satisfied? Less people leaving the organisation? Increased customer satisfaction? It might even be the case that the actions you took to make them happy, are not the ones that actually make them happy. That might result in choosing a Key performance indicator, that relates to your actions but not to the actual satisfaction level. For example, let's say that you made internal "job hopping" more easy (because in general that makes employees happy). But measuring the number of people that actually hopped to another job, might say nothing about the actual level of satisfaction.

Choose your KEY performance indicators wisely. Go back to your goal and think "out of the box". Once you have decided upon (no more than a couple) KPIs, stretch yourself and try to think of three completely different ones. What got you here so far, won't help you getting there....

Next time step three: Develop the indicator that measures the performance