Completing a Virtual Employee Review That Holds Workers Responsible for KPIs

Are you prepared to give a productive virtual employee review? Use these KPIs that measure specific indicators for remote workers.

Managers of remote teams collaborate with people who don’t fit into traditional molds. Their teams work from home and make their own schedules. Although there’s been a clear rise in remote workforces, managers still gauge success with traditional indicators. Conducting a virtual employee review will prove challenging if you use key performance indicators (KPIs) that don’t relate to remote workflows, culture, and responsibilities.

Create a list of KPIs that speak to your team’s unique expectations. Once you have a template for a virtual employee review, you’ll be in a better position to review and give feedback.

How to nail down a productive virtual employee review: 7 KPIs to evaluate and discuss

A quick note: KPIs are customized for job-related duties. You may run a group of marketers, salespeople, engineers, or web developers. Each situation calls for unique criteria. However, the following KPIs are measurable for all, if not most, remote teams regardless of industry. With these indicators in place, you’ll have base-level measurements for your virtual employee review.

1. Attendance for video conferences

Does the employee regularly attend scheduled video chats and brainstorm sessions with your team? Attendance for these types of meetings is imperative. It’s the only time everyone gets to see each other. The meetings build a sense of community and foster stronger relationships when they visually interact.

2. Timely responses to direct messages

Your team uses a central communication tool every day. Whether it be Slack or other remote working tools, or even just email (which needs to change!), they provide an essential function—everyone stays connected. If you send a direct message to an employee, how long does it take for them to respond? Are they working or just signed in?

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3. Hitting deadlines consistently

Deadlines are insights for managers. If someone on your team keeps missing deadlines, they’re losing trust from you and your team, and something is wrong and needs to be addressed. There could be many reasons behind her lack of performance, and your virtual employee review is the time to figure it out.

She’s disenchanted with the work and needs more of a challenge.
Her work habits don’t mesh with remote workflows.
She wants to be reassigned to a new position that fits her skills.
She’s lazy, indifferent, or generally unhappy with the job.

4. Proper use of digital tools for business strategy and workflow

There are plenty of software companies today that make tools for virtual teams. Besides communication devices, there are also tools that keep your workflows moving. Trello, Basecamp, 0r a CRM are good examples. Your team uses these tools as a central hub for creating, working, updating, and collaborating on projects. Does everyone use these tools and participate in the workflows you’ve established?

5. Working within day-to-day timeframes

Even though your team is remote, there still needs to be a set time for everyone to work. Otherwise, every day will be chaotic. A good way to measure this KPI is to invest in a time tracking tool. You can see who has signed in for the day and what hours they logged. This is especially important for hourly employees.

6. Achieving agreed upon goals

You have worked with your team to create goals, milestones, and expectations. Now that you’re conducting a virtual employee review, what were the outcomes? You may have several KPIs within this one section depending on the scope of the goals. The bottom line is that you’re holding your employees accountable for achieving these tasks in a timeframe.

7. Hands in quality work the first time

Finally, what’s the point of hitting a deadline if the work is poor? Having to return an assignment because it was rushed defeats the purpose. This situation may happen sporadically, but consistent low quality can be a big problem. These patterns need to be addressed and come to a solution.

Do you have KPIs to add to our list? How do you conduct a productive review? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Photo by Austin Distel