To think management shouldn't do this

[Pippin1239]

I work in a customer service roles where there are a lot of KPIs and we're heavily monitored.

Every week our KPIs/stats are sent to us to see how we've done, which is fine. However management have started sending out a list of everyone's KPIs to the whole team for us all to see.
I was told me and someone else were doing the best in the team, which is good for me, but on Monday our stats were sent and mine and the other persons were obviously higher than everyone else's.

I didn't say a word but we were in the office and I could hear people saying, "Look at Pippins KPIs, how on earth has she reached that?!" One said well done, which is great.
I just don't think this is right as everyone works differently, I'm a faster typer but doesn't mean I'm better at the job.

I know if mine were lower and I saw that I'd feel inadequate.

Are they individual KPIs or departments?

If individual they shouldn’t be sharing in that way but if a team/department then it’s possible they’re using them as in they think the others aren’t giving the same effort and using as tool to say look how much You are doing better.
Possibly a naive manager.

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I have been petitioning for this at my work for years. We don’t sent them round because of the reasons you say, but honestly if your KPIs are bad then work harder to improve them. If you don’t know where you are relative to your peers you don’t know what’s achievable or what to reasonably aspire for.

I said this when I was top of the league table (in an old role) and still now when I’m towards the bottom.

But I thrive on healthy competition and I know it would make me perform better if I could set myself clear realistic targets in line with my peers.

Managers should manage the behaviour towards you though, and support anyone who wants to improve - but I’m always on the side of sharing factual data.

So you do more than other people but is the quality as good? Presumably there are other metrics that are measured not just output?

But, not very good for team morale I would have thought.

They used to be department KPIs but now individual. They have a list of the person's name and their individual KPIs. I'm surprised it's allowed..

My workplace started this and then stopped after a challenge by the Trade Unions.

Think it was due to reasonable adjustments for some colleagues who had lower targets and potentially highlighting to everyone they were 'different'.

There may be reasons someone is lower rather than poor performance.

A departmental one would be fine to see the average to work towards, but individual is wrong.

Surly this could result in resentment and bad working relationships.

That has happened to me in every customer service role that ive been in. They all do it.

I'd quit immediately if my work did something to try and pit team members against each other like that. It sounds like it would only really work on incredibly childish immature people too ("I need to come first!!!" enjoy your egg and spoon race lol) - and none of my team are like that, so I don't imagine any of them would be motivated by it either.

I know how well/badly my team does individualky. I know how to check. Beside the superviser, I think I'm the only one that does. Curiosity gets the better of me sometimes, so I do check.

I do best in quality. I'm second from last in quantity (when hours worked are taken into account). I have no desire to improve my quantity knowing this. Life is too large for that to be worth it, considering the effort it would take to increase my quantity but keep the quality. I'm perfectly happy for someone to work faster than me. Because I'm an adult.

So if work started treating us like kids, I'd be out.

Everywhere I’ve worked has done this (law firms). It’s shit, but they do it to shame people into working harder. Luckily for me I’m not a slacker, but it definitely affects morale.

I also think it points to bad management - if your stats show somebody isn’t doing enough, ask them why and support them. Don’t just shame them, and piss off everyone else in the process.

If they think it incentives people, can't they share them anonymously? So you'd know that this week, KPIs ranged from 50% - 80% of tickets closed, but only you would know that you got 75%.

Yeah, it's not fair on people who are doing less well for whatever reason. I am looking to move on, in any case

Yeah, it's not fair on people who are doing less well for whatever reason. I am looking to move on, in any case

It would be better if they shared group data anonymously and then told you your “rank”. It’s also pointless if they aren’t doing a best practice /improvement initiative too.

But if everyone has different targets based on reasonable adjustments then %to your own target could reasonably be shared imo

Of course it’s allowed. It’s basically team performance, shown at an individual level. As long as it’s not ranked as a ‘league table’ or has a RAG status, it’s ok.

it’s not personal data and it shows the team how their individual contribution stacks up.

Any call centre that i worked in did this. It is not great and i do feel that it breaks gdpr.

In one of the call centres, i remember that one of my colleagues had a solicitor in the family.

She got legal advice and she did complain about everyones kpis being sent around publicly.
She said that it broke data protection acts.

They should not be sharing individual KPI’s!

They can share overall team/department KPI’s to anonymise the data but still provide a meaningful comparison for individuals to know if they are achieving above/below average.

KPI’s should always be a team effort.

I used to work in a contact centre and had the same issue. Quick typer and got through a lot more email queries than others (was longer on the phones though as I gab too much 😂).

My ‘buddy’ I was put with to learn one of the new lines took me aside one day and told me to slow down as my numbers were making others feel bad. So your instincts are probably spot on - what management see as a motivation tool will be making some of the below average peeps feel inadequate.

Thats not fair on you. Why should you slow down to make them feel better.

Someone is always going to be slower and someone is always going to be faster

This is how I used to do it for sales teams. We did award the monthly winner (but usually it was obvious who that would be as you can't miss the gaining of a massive account)

I completely agree with that - but like the OP, my issue is with making the results public. Team-based KPIs are fine but my speed (and success rate in resolving issues first time so I had fewer repeat contacts), meant that those who couldn’t type as fast felt worse. Any attempt to break down by individual is going to lead to that.

I didn’t slow down in the end but I did get them to aggregate the times etc by sub-teams instead.

We use them every week and have a monthly target. Boring as shit but hey, let's play the game.