Making Performance Visible
The company had plenty of warehouse performance data. The challenge was turning it into something employees could actually understand and use.
Situation
Chris worked directly with the Executive Vice President and Vice President of Operations of a large distribution company on a six-month initiative focused on improving performance, engagement, awareness, and morale among warehouse operations employees. He met with the executive team weekly throughout the six-month project.
Problem
The company already collected a significant amount of operational data. Leadership had numerous metrics available and could explain how the warehouse was performing at an organizational level, but simply having more data wasn't helping individual employees understand their own performance or know what they could personally do to improve. There was also a broader challenge around morale and engagement.
Chris's role
Research, discovery, analysis, brainstorming, program design, implementation, and continued refinement based on what the team was learning. Chris met with the executive team weekly throughout the six-month initiative.
How Chris approached it
Rather than immediately creating another incentive or recognition program, Chris began by working with leadership and people within Operations to understand what was already being measured, which measurements actually mattered, what employees could personally influence, what represented meaningful performance, how employees currently understood their own performance, what might improve awareness without creating embarrassment or shame, and how recognition could motivate people without making financial compensation the primary incentive. One of the most important parts of the project was simplifying the company's existing analytics. Leadership initially shared many different operational measurements and performance indicators. Through conversations with the executive team and people within warehouse operations, Chris worked to narrow those measurements down to three core performance indicators. The objective was not simply to find three easy metrics. It was to determine which three measures best represented meaningful individual performance and could also be clearly understood and influenced by employees. Once those three measures were established, the team could evaluate where each individual warehouse employee currently stood and establish meaningful goals around each one. Chris's contribution was not simply creating a scoreboard. He helped leadership determine what should actually be measured and communicated in the first place.
What Chris built
A performance system that used the three measurements to give warehouse employees much greater visibility into their own performance. Each employee's results across the three measurements contributed to an overall performance ranking. A digital scoreboard was created and displayed on screens throughout the warehouse. The concept borrowed intentionally from the way video games communicate performance. In a video game, a character, vehicle, team, or player may have ratings across several attributes that allow someone to quickly understand strengths, weaknesses, progress, and relative performance. Chris applied a similar concept to warehouse performance. The ranking was deliberately designed to avoid publicly identifying people as failures or creating shame. Instead, the objective was: Visibility → Awareness → Improvement → Recognition. Employees could understand where they stood, watch their own performance change over time, recognize areas where they were particularly strong, and identify areas where they had an opportunity to improve. Performance data was updated weekly. The digital warehouse displays highlighted the Top 5 performers in each of the three core performance measures, the Top 10 employees in overall performance, and updated performance information so employees could see changes and progress over time. Recognition was not centered around cash bonuses. Employees could instead earn or receive items connected to their work and workplace identity, including workwear, decals for forklifts or pallet jacks, and other similar recognition items. This helped create something employees could participate in and talk about without turning every improvement into a financial transaction.
Result
The program turned operational analytics into something employees could actually see, understand, respond to, and use. An unexpected benefit was peer learning. As employees began paying attention to the measurements, they naturally started comparing performance. Importantly, much of that comparison became healthy. Employees weren't only comparing themselves with one another. They could compare their current performance to their own previous performance and see whether they were improving week to week. The system also made strengths visible across the team. If an employee was struggling with one of the three measurements, they could see who consistently performed well in that area. That created an opportunity for informal peer learning: "I'm struggling with this, but that person is really good at it. What are they doing differently?" Instead of all performance improvement needing to flow from management down to employees, people could learn from other strong performers within the operation. The deeper lesson: leadership didn't need another dashboard full of data. They needed to determine what actually matters, what employees can control, how to simplify the information, how to make performance visible, how to create awareness without creating shame, how recognition can improve engagement, how people can see their own progress, and how strong performers can help make other people better. Chris worked with senior leadership and operations employees to understand the problem, simplify the data, create the system, implement it, and continue working with the executive team throughout the six-month initiative.
Skills involved
Related types of problems
- • We track tons of KPIs, but nobody knows which ones really matter.
- • Our employees don't know how they're performing until their manager talks to them.
- • We need to improve accountability without destroying morale.
- • We have all this data but aren't doing anything useful with it.
- • We need a better employee recognition program.
- • Our frontline employees seem disconnected from the company's goals.
- • We want people to take more ownership of their performance.
- • Our dashboards are useful to management but meaningless to employees.
- • We have a performance problem, but I don't think another bonus program is the answer.
- • We want to create some healthy competition without making the culture toxic.
- • We need to figure out what we should actually be measuring.
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