I Spent 5 Months Testing and Refining a Spreadsheet Based Employee Grading System

[man_in_pain]

One of the biggest problems most business owners face is how do we track and increase the quality of our workforce?

This issue seems to be persistent in many small and large businesses. There simply isn't a great system to track how employees are doing on a factual level. I say factual because I've noticed that most of how an employee is graded is based on how a manager feels about them, an inherently fallible system.

For the past 5 months I built, tested, and refined a system on Google Sheets for the employees of my moving company. The system gives each of my employees a 1 to 5 score based off of 8 key metrics.

This enables management to track the score and score progression of each worker over time removing the emotional element.



How The System Works:

The system is a combination of customer feedback, general at-work scores, and on site grading. Each metric is graded on a 1-5 scale.

Below I detail all of the metrics we use, feel free to use these or tweak these as your see fit for your business.



Customer Feedback:

Each customer gets a call the day after their job is completed. Every single customer is asked to rate the job on a 1 to 5 scale for what we determined are out most important metrics. We ensure to ask each client the exact same three questions without placing any bias to ensure the reliability and consistency of the system. We want the entire process to be as scientific as possible.

Questions Asked:

1. How was the professionalism, friendliness, and attitude of your crew, 1-5?
2. Was your property cared for and protected, 1-5?
3. Was the move was performed efficiently, 1-5?

In House Grading:

Each mover is graded on 5 metrics by their management each day. There are specific guidelines for each metric in order to ensure consistency across the board and eliminate favoritism.

The Metrics and How They're Graded:

Timeliness (Arrival to customer's home):

• 1/5: 46min+ late
• 2/5: 16-45min late
• 3/5: 11-15 late
• 4/5: 01-10min late
• 5/5 On time or early

Timeliness (Arrival to work):

• 1/5: Call out
• 2/5: N/A
• 3/5: More than 15 minutes late to scheduled time
• 4/5: 1-14 min late
• 5/5 On time or early

Truck Clean/Supplies:

• 1/5: Back of truck or cab unorganized, covered in trash, or supplies missing
• 2/5: N/A
• 3/5: Truck nearly clean but not spotless
• 4/5: N/A
• 5/5: Truck spotless

Attitude/Team Player: (This metric isn't used every day only in case of extraordinarily good or poor performance i.e. a 1 or 5). This is used as a catch all. Due to the subjective nature of this score proof needs to be shown for any 1 or 5 grade.

• 1/5: Examples: Unwarranted anger/attitude, un-willingness to work with certain others, poor online review, failure to follow instructions causing extra work for other movers or office staff.
• 2/5: N/A
• 3/5: N/A
• 4/5: N/A
• 5/5: Examples: Willingness to help in any way, great attitude, customer spotlighted them, 5 star review, willingness to follow guidelines

Proper Customer Paperwork:

• 1/5: Insurance form or disclaimer not filled out or negligent billing issue
• 2/5: N/A
• 3/5: Small issue on paperwork
• 4/5: N/A
• 5/5: All paperwork filled out perfectly

On Site Grading:

Each crew receives one random check up by a manager while on the job per week. The metrics used on site are the same 3 questions asked on customer survey calls (professionalism, efficiency, and care of home and belongings).



Results:

For one month we tracked all scores without telling our guys. This allowed us to have baseline in which to measure the effectiveness of this system.

After that month we told the guys what we were doing and broke down exactly what they needed to do to get a higher score.

We were blown away by the results month 2.

There was a 40% increase in average mover score and a 38% increase in customers who gave a perfect 5/5 score during follow up calls.

By spending 1 hour a day tracking progress we were able to increase the perfect quality output by 38% all with the same employees.

Tips/What We Learned:

1. Make the system as fool proof as possible. Specific un-emotional guidelines for each metric are key.
2. You must be consistent with this every single day otherwise workers will not respect the system. We have yet to miss a day and now have data from nearly 1000 jobs. Our employees know every day matters.
3. Don't use too many metrics. While coming up with this system there were 20 things we wanted to grade on but the truth is 95% of the quality comes from the top 6-10 metrics. I wouldn't use more than 12.
4. Regularly go over scores with your workers. They can't improve if they don't know what they're doing wrong. We have sit downs with each person once a month.
5. Let the competitiveness of the system drive scores. Every employee wants to be #1. We post scores publicly.
6. You don't need to be tech savvy to make one of these.

Here's a link to a blank copy of the spreadsheet system I came up with. Feel free to upgrade it, tweak it, or do whatever you like with it. Warning: the system itself isn't pretty. I hope you have as much success with it as I've experienced, I'll be satisfied if this helps just one business stand out from the competition.

Video link with all the above information and a more in-depth analysis with examples: https://youtu.be/o_C_7KNhQx8

 

[embreezy]

@man_in_pain This sounds like micromanaging and I would hate to work for a company like this.

 

[jtm7770]

@embreezy The posted scores are the nail in the coffin for this for me. I’m sure OP and certain types of people would like this. Most wont. I’d fucking loathe it and actively looking for a way out the second I caught whiff of this. Certain companies thrive on a toxic environment and this absolutely what it could foster. I just don’t want to be around one.

 

[elizabethtebazile]

@jtm7770 It’s a moving company they hire people that probably don’t have a way out.

 

[jonathan787]

@embreezy Well most of us are in this sub because we can’t or are considered “unfit” to be anything other than their own boss.

 

[embreezy]

@jonathan787 Well, this is a good way to be a bad boss and annoy your employees.

 

[jonathan787]

@embreezy Agreed. Especially the monthly sit downs. Make it 6 months I’d say, unless they are doing horrible.

 

[gregswife]

@jonathan787 $null

 

[gracethroughfaith]

@man_in_pain You put a lot of work into what I think is a ridiculous concept.

Companies that make billions consulting like McKinsey and Company have tried systemizing managing employees for decades. The end result is that they learned that you create systems around the employee. You cannot systemize people.

For example McDonalds has a comprehensive system in place that is compromised of many individual systems. The system is built in such a way that very little training or development is needed for an employee to assume a set of tasks in that system.

You are either large enough that you have systemized your processes or small enough that you deal with employees on an individual level, as a mentor, coach, parental figure and sometimes therapist while managing objectives.

 

[man_in_pain]

@gracethroughfaith I'm not systemizing people I'm grading the particular attributes of the job I deem important and incentivising based on factual data and the individual's success in doing so. The quality score is judged by end quality not step by step process because their job isn't as consistent as building a burger at McDonald's where you do the exact same thing every time.

 

[gracethroughfaith]

@man_in_pain To what end? Maybe I missed it but what are you trying to accomplish? It does not seem like retention. Incentivizing is fine but study after study has shown that incentives are subjective, meaning that people are driven by different motivations. Most people are not incentivized by money to the degree that employers think. Kind of like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. As long as their bills are paid then they often seek self-fulfillment or challenges. I just don’t get what you are wanting the outcome to be. If it is to fire people then you don’t need spreadsheets to determine if someone is a shit employee

 

[gabjensnsn123]

@man_in_pain What a demoralizing waste of time

 

[mommy1234]

@man_in_pain Boy, you poured a lot of time into sharing something with us that you are passionate and proud about, and have been absolutely shat on. I understand why people have a knee jerk attitude against a scoring system, but I disagree.

I worked in a company that used a clear metric system for employee evaluation. I loved it. I was able to know where I stood all the time. I knew exactly what was expected of me, and I was able to make a strong argument for promotion based on my record of meeting the metrics.

Where my company went wrong was that some of the requirements for a top score were pretty unrealistic (I.e. creating an improvement for the company as a whole. It was a 50k+ employee company).

Thanks for sharing, and I hope I’d express that to you even if I disagreed with your system.

 

[man_in_pain]

@mommy1234 Thanks, your second paragraph is exactly the response I have received from all my employees. People, especially high performers, love knowing where they stand and clear cut ways how they can do better.

 

[mickey777]

@man_in_pain This sort of idea is something that would work really well short term, but have incredibly unintended negative consequences long term. I would say to only do this depending on the industry you're in, but even then this is going to pretty much going to guarantee your workforce slowly hating working for your company

 

[opaldigger]

@man_in_pain I can't believe how much hate this post has gotten. Props on creating an unbiased and quantifiable system OP. It will support your business's success, but most importantly, it will give your employees clear expectations of performance. In a lot of cases that greatly DECREASES stress for the whole team. Certain people hate being measured, and those are the people that typically don't make great employees. That's not a put-down to anyone. Not everyone works well on a team or in business, and business is a team sport. Great team members thrive on clear and aligned expectations + constructive feedback. My only suggestion for this system is to include a process to give solid-performing team members kudos, in the form of verbal praise, a bonus, or giftcard; whatever seems fair and fun.

 

[man_in_pain]

@opaldigger Yup! Everyone over 4.5 average in a monthly period receives significant bonus that equates to about 20% more income

 

[mag8166]

@man_in_pain Interested in seeing the results. I bet everyone was worried when implementing it but after understanding it, they realize it's a "fair" and unbiased look at performance. I bet some even make a game out of it.

 

[man_in_pain]

@mag8166 The results are awesome. Higher retention and nearly 40% increase in perfect customer satisfaction scores

 

[mag8166]

@man_in_pain So you successful implemented, roughly speaking, a sales team type performance testing system and applied it to blue collar movers. Did I get that right. It's actually impressive. Get better feedback, problems can be retrained, better results, and it looks like better income for employees too.