Stage 2: Developing performance measures

How to set effective performance measures

Performance measures are the yardsticks by which you assess whether you have met, or have gone some way towards meeting, your objectives.

They can be a mixture of quantitative and qualitative measures but should be scoped to fit your objectives and resources for monitoring. It is no use having 25 measures requiring daily data collection if you don't have the time to collect the data or to analyse and make use of the results.

Don't waste resources collecting elaborate statistics that are never used.

Tips to remember

Measure what you need to know, not what you would like to know.

• What gets measured gets done – a favourite management slogan.
• Incorporate monitoring into routine operations.
• Don't set too many performance measures – you may not have time to properly analyse information.

Different types of performance measures are used to measure the 'three Es':

• economy
• efficiency
• effectiveness.

Deciding what to measure

What you measure will depend on the objectives you have set. Usually, it's good to have a mixture of measures that cover the three Es.

What you measure will also depend upon the level at which you want to do this, for example, the high-level records management program, a business unit, a particular recordkeeping process or service.

Using other business performance measures to monitor recordkeeping

Many business processes are underpinned by good recordkeeping and poor performance in these areas can sometimes indicate that there are recordkeeping issues to address.

Examples of areas where it may be worth monitoring include financial management and procurement, GIPA responses, customer services and customer complaints.

A high-risk area where poor performance is often related to recordkeeping is the ability of the public office to manage any legal challenges (for example, locate subpoenaed records). Of course, not all failures in performance will be caused by recordkeeping.

Establishing the baseline

Baseline data is an example of the close link between planning and monitoring. If you don't know where you are, how can you plan for where you need to get to?

You need to understand where the program, service or system under scrutiny is in order to monitor any improvements. This 'baseline' should be established before any new activities are implemented and program monitoring commenced. The baseline generally incorporates the minimum results or outcomes required of the program or processes.

This gives you the starting point for setting appropriate targets and for assessing how effective changes have been. The baseline data you collect will depend upon the performance measures you have decided upon.

For example, baseline data may be an assessment that 50% of business units are using the corporate records system at the start of the financial year. The objective would be to ensure that this percentage was increased to 70% of business units by the end of the year.

Setting performance targets

Set performance targets against the objectives that are achievable, measurable and time limited. Performance targets should reflect where the organisation is currently in relation to recordkeeping, and where it needs to go.

For example, it is unlikely that a performance target of 100% of staff receiving records management training in a year will be achieved if the number of staff in your public office is large, there is a high staff turnover rate or if your training program has limited resources.

Examples performance targets

• 95% customer satisfaction
• X number of boxes of hardcopy records sentenced
• X number of records sentenced in the EDRMS
• $ amount reduction in storage costs due to the disposal of records
• All user permissions reviewed and updated
• Business units have rules and procedures in place that identify business processes that must be documented and/or records that must be made and captured into business and recordkeeping systems.