Working in a pleasant environment
We are living in times where getting things done faster and faster is the main priority. To this list, we can add meetings with colleagues, more than 20 mails a day marked as urgent, interactions with other departments to complete a project and more and more reports to send to our bosses. These are stressful times, and stress can have a big impact on our lives.
Even though some employees are working at “full capacity”, there are some which work in a healthy environment. The American Psychological Association (APA) will have its 10th Psychologically Healthy Workplace Awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, March 14th 2015, where 6 organization will be recognized for their efforts to promote employee well-being and organizational performance.
APA has selected American Express as the inaugural winner of its new Organizational Excellence Award, a national recognition designed to highlight the effective application of psychology in the workplace. Five other organizations will receive APA’s Psychologically Healthy Workplace Award for their comprehensive set of practices that support a healthy work environment – Beehive PR, LaSalle Network, Team Horner, Beach Cities Health District and Hilltop Community Resources.
The awarded organizations reached certain targets, such as 84% for employee involvement, 86% for work life balance, 91% for training and development and 91% for employee recognition, 92% for well-being. The results are based on employee responses, which were asked if they feel their employer places values on each of the above 5 elements.
In order to create a more efficient and pleasant working environment, organizations can use similar Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), such as:
- # Employee engagement index;
- # Training hours per full time equivalent;
It is recommended to use KPIs in order to evaluate certain objectives. This objective can be clustered under the Balanced Scorecard Perspective, “People, Learning & Growth”. To have a clear picture, the BSC is a concept that allows organizations to measure and monitor performance in an evened manner. Basically, the BSC provides the framework for monitoring KPIs results in a balanced fashion, by monitoring performance in the four established perspectives: Financial, Customer, Internal Processes, and Learning and Growth. Hence the term Balanced Scorecard.
When deciding which KPIs should be measured on the 4th perspective, several examples can be found on www.smartkpis.com. Here one may find KPIs examples from functional areas, like HR, ordered by their popularity (number of views). The top 5 KPIs, for this category, are:
- # Employee engagement index
- # Time to fill a vacant position
- % Employee turnover
- % Performance appraisals completed on time
- # Training hours per full time equivalent (FTE)
A performance system is mandatory for achieving a higher performance in any organization. An important part of this system is using the Balanced Scorecard with relevant objectives and clear KPIs. This will ensure that a competitive advantage is gained and will increase the chances for a business to have success.
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Tags: Individual Performance
