Before engaging in any process, you must have a system in place to measure improvement within your business. This is known as setting your quality metrics (kpi’s), and doing so can be especially helpful when you’re evaluating your company and determining the next steps forward. As the old saying goes “what gets measured is what gets done” and this leads to the six different aspects of quality metrics: productivity/competency, training, through-put/quality costs, quality adherence, safety, and customer satisfaction.

Your people are typically what make up the backbone of your business. Understanding their role in your company and what you can do to capitalize on their strengths is very valuable as a business owner. Some primary quality metrics that can be used to evaluate people are turnover rate, rate of unplanned absenteeism, training success rates, rework/scrap, competency testing.

With regard to turnover rate, you’ll need to measure both involuntary and voluntary turnover. This is usually annualized by looking at the number of terminations within your company divided by the average period employment.

Unplanned absenteeism refers to the employees who were absent from work without having pre-approval to be gone. Pre-approval might include personal time, vacation, holidays, or long term medical leave. This is calculated based on the number of employees absent divided by the total number of employees working in your Lawton business. Using quality metrics can help you track future improvement.