Do you know if you are making progress on your most important organizational goals? Do you know how many of your performance metrics are trending in the right direction? How often are you analyzing your metrics? Designing a weekly performance check-in, accompanied by a “win your week” program, can help you answer all three of these questions, boost motivation, and advance your organizational mission.

Our recent blog argued that weekly performance check-ins help staff understand what to focus on short-term, spot and correct issues more quickly, and accelerate impact. Read this blog first for a sample weekly check-in agenda.

An excellent method to boost your weekly progress is to incentivize weekly performance improvements. When implemented correctly, incentives can improve performance anywhere from 25 to 44 percent. But you have to determine the right incentives for your staff.

Here’s a quick way to develop a “win your week” program to compound the positive effects of your weekly performance reviews:

First, consider creating a weekly scorecard with 1-4 measures for each staff member or function within your organization. You can try Clear Impact Scorecard for free here to get a head start on developing your metrics.

Next, develop an incentivization program that rewards weekly performance improvements. Ensure you get input from your staff to determine which incentives are the most attractive and most likely to make a difference. Also, make sure your benchmarks are ambitious yet achievable. We will share some examples of what we do below.

If more than half the measures on our scorecard are trending in the right direction, we have won our week. Conversely, we haven’t won if less than half are trending in the right direction. If a team wins the week more than 75% of the time for the quarter, they get an extra day off.

You can celebrate winning your week in an all-staff email or celebrate milestones and create awards when you have won a certain number of weeks in a row.

Sample Scorecards:

Below are two sample scorecards you could use to measure weekly performance. We also included sample measures that each team member could report. Below each description, you can see what this scorecard would look like in Clear Impact Scorecard.

It is important to note that each individual is not solely responsible for the performance of the metric. Instead, each individual should be considered a lead “accountability officer” for that metric. They are responsible for reporting weekly progress and setbacks.

1. A Weekly Leadership Team Scorecard

    1. Team member 1: Finances Director
      1. Metric 1: Cash on hand
    2. Team member 2: Fundraising and Development Director
      1. Metric 1: # of meetings with potential donors or funders
      2. Metric 2: # of proposals submitted, or requests made
    3. Team member 3: Afterschool Programs Director
      1. Metric 1: Program attendance Rate (aggregated across programs)
      2. Metric 2: % of program staff who are certified (aggregated across programs)
      3. Metric 3: % of program graduates who believe that the program had a positive effect on their wellbeing (aggregated across programs)

(click image for interactive experience)

weekly leadership scorecard

2. A Weekly Afterschool Program Scorecard With Three Staff  Working on Different Days

    1. Team member 1: Tiffany (Monday program)
      1. Metric 1: Program attendance rate
      2. Metric 2: % of attendees that finish their homework
      3. Metric 3: % of attendees that demonstrate a positive attitude
    2. Team member 2: Bob (Wednesday program)
      1. Metric 1: Program attendance rate
      2. Metric 2: % of attendees that finish their homework
      3. Metric 3: % of attendees that demonstrate a positive attitude
    3. Team member 3: Alex (Friday program)
      1. Metric 1: Program attendance rate
      2. Metric 2: % of attendees that finish their homework
      3. Metric 3: % of attendees that demonstrate a positive attitude

(click image for interactive experience)

weekly after school scorecard

Any organization can adapt these scorecards and metrics to fit its operational processes and departments. For information on developing effective program performance measures, visit our website here.

Monetary incentives aren’t your only option. Again, hold a conversation with each of your teams to brainstorm what would be most attractive to them. Offering irrelevant incentives that don’t matter to your employees will not make a difference, and they may even have a detrimental effect.

Some incentives to consider include:

  1. Buying conference tickets relevant to your organization and offering free attendance to employees on winning teams
  2. Paying for employee certifications or training programs relevant to your organization. Check out the RBA Professional Certification for an example of a certification program.
  3. Free Amazon book
  4. Extra day off
  5. Free lunch for a week
  6. Sponsor fun events
  7. Monetary rewards like gift cards

Please contact us if you think we can help you design your weekly scorecard and start winning more of your weeks! We are here to answer your questions and help you succeed.

 

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