Targets and employee behaviours

Poor targets drive destructive behaviours. Destructive behaviours can be intentional and unintentional. When trying to improve customer service, one company set a target that phones must be answered within three rings. Company employees focused on answering within three rings, but not on the quality of their conversation with customers. While the target is achieved, the true objective of enhancing customer service has not been accomplished.

The target therefore has produced unintentional behaviours.

Bad targets can have a damaging effect on work environments by:

a. Focusing attention on the wrong aspects of work
b. Creating incentives to undertake tasks that do not serve the interests of the practice or customers
c. Imposing costs of collecting and reporting information
d. Reducing employee morale and engagement.

In a previous organisation that I worked for, a target of dispensing individual prescriptions within five minutes was established during a process improvement programme. This resulted in a focus on improving process steps and eliminating duplicate work.

This in itself was beneficial for the practice, but the downsides also included:

a. Less time to engage with the patient
b. A focus on quantity and not the quality of the process
c. Enhanced stress levels amongst the dispensary team and increased errors.

Tying financial incentives for individuals to specific objectives can lead to destructive behaviours. There are many corporate examples of where individual greed has led to achievement of objectives without regard to the damage caused along the way.

Communicate for success

There is little sense in developing business goals and objectives and then not communicating them to your employees. Involving staff in developing action plans is a good way to explain why you want to achieve certain objectives. Employees want to contribute to their workplace, and want to know how well the practice is doing. Simply handing down a set of tasks without explaining why will lead to certain failure.