Identifying Performance Standards

Performance standards are target measurements for achieving quality in work. The guidelines for setting performance standards follow these three perspectives:

1. establishing criteria for quality-performance standards
2. clarifying quality-performance standard
3. providing positive reinforcement and recognition for quality-performance standards

Establishing criteria for quality-performance standards
Before you set performance standards, it's important to establish your criteria. You should consider quality, quantity, time, and customer requirements as criteria for establishing performance standards.

Clarifying quality-performance standard
You should clarify your performance standards once you have established your criteria for setting them. It's important to involve your employees in this process. The following provide more information on how to do this:

• Once you establish your criteria for setting performance standards, you should describe your criteria to your employees. You should work with your employees to prioritize the tasks according to the customer requirements, and the time, quantity and level of quality needed.
• You should meet with your employees to record all the tasks and standards that are required to meet your criteria. To make your standards meaningful, they should be measurable.
• You should develop a tracking system and hold regular one-on-one discussions with your employees about work in progress. Don't wait until you have problems to establish a tracking system.

Providing positive reinforcement and recognition for quality-performance standards
After you establish your criteria and clarify your performance standards, it's important to encourage your employees to follow them. You should:

• provide positive reinforcement for following standards
• recognize those who adhere to the standards.

Performance standards are target measurements for achieving quality in work. You can use them to help your organization.