About 75% of employers rate teamwork and collaboration as ‘very important’. But how can you judge if something so pertinent is working? Here are the top metrics for collaboration and teamwork so you can decide whether togetherness is having its intended effect.

Speed & Efficiency 

Collaboration lends itself to greater efficiency since teams without silos can save time by not explaining processes and updates as often. Passing the baton in well-connected teams is fast and effective. Teams — especially those of varying skill sets — can collaborate on imagining faster, simpler processes, using their blend of expertise to find innovative solutions. 

There are several ways to measure how speed and efficiency have improved due to teamwork. Below are some of the most common metrics.

1. Average Process Time

If collaboration and teamwork focus on a specific business area or a specific process, testing the average amount of time from start to completion can help you determine if it's faster post-collaboration. 

This metric can be tracked in a project management tool where employees log the time it takes to complete a task.

2. Number of Steps

Similar to the above, counting the number of steps in a singular process can signify good team collaboration. For example, reducing the number of times a project is passed back and forth between two functions or shaving off education time before a project can be worked on. 

If you make the number of steps a KPI, teams can consciously work on this, collaborating to find ways to shorten processes, only keeping essential tasks in the workflow.

3. Number of Touchpoints 

Although teamwork is associated with inclusion and greater transparency across individuals, teamwork can also effectively decrease workload, only including those essential to a task’s success. 

So the saying goes; too many cooks spoil the broth. So, you can keep an eye on how many teammates it takes to complete a process, noting when teams can effectively delegate and take accountability to reduce the required touchpoints.

Employee Happiness

Collaboration and teamwork improve employee productivity and morale — that’s a fact. But to know if you’re reaping all of the internal benefits of employee collaboration, you’ll need to track employee happiness. 

Tracking employee happiness is more than subjectively surveying how you think people feel. Instead, it requires a quantitative metric to objectively compare mood before and after more united ways of working.

4. Labour Turnover

A classic metric for employee engagement is labour turnover and one HR is always working to control and stunt the number from getting too high. Measuring how many people come and go is a great way to understand if the employee experience is satisfying, meeting their emotional and professional needs. 

Labour turnover is an important metric to keep as a core KPI because it encompasses the emotion of a team and the practical training and hiring costs that can have a real financial impact on a business. For context, the average cost of a hire in the UK is upwards of £3,000.

5. Internal Progression 

Teams that stay static aren’t necessarily engaged, even if they’re full of long-standing coworkers. It’s also vital to measure professional development, noting how many employees have taken on additional responsibilities or moved into roles with more senior positions. 

This can be easily recorded by respective line managers and tallied up at the end of a six-month or year period.

6. NPS Scores

Perhaps the ultimate metric for employee happiness is a Net Promoter Score (NPS). This is a score based on how much an employee would recommend working at your organisation, alongside various other satisfaction factors. On the whole, are your employees net promoters? 

NPS surveys can be carried out at any time, but they’re most often delivered quarterly.

7. Attendance 

A telltale sign of an unhappy employee is a high absenteeism rate. Unless employees have long-term conditions or other explainable reasons for absenteeism, having too many days off in a period or being out of office on the same day of the week can be a concern for managers. 

Attendance and punctuality are normally tracked within an HR system, especially if you use digital software to house personal employee information, conduct reviews and book annual leave.

Trying to Achieve Effective Collaboration? This Resource Will Help

While performance metrics give us an indication of how effective collaboration is, tools, tricks and strategy of adoption all help to influence those metrics, in turn, helping us to achieve effective collaboration. Read all about this here, in a single, authoritative page on collaborative working practice.

Growth & Expansion 

Thanks to the speed and efficiency of teamwork and the mood-boosting benefits of collaboration, getting together to form closer work bonds can take us towards our growth goals. Whether expanding the products and services you offer or taking your existing offering to new locations, collaboration can help you achieve financial growth year on year. 

But how do you measure such an overarching objective as growth?

8. Revenue

Plain and simple — growth, more often than not, relates to the money coming in. Revenue allows you to see an ‘at a glance’ success or failure in terms of financial performance. We’re betting you’re already tracking revenue, so it’s nothing new to know. 

However, it’s interesting to know if a spike in revenue can be attributed to closer teamwork alongside other metrics.

9. Diversification 

Offering new products and services is a sure sign of growth. This means you’re broadening your horizons and finding resources to develop new ways of working. This could be as simple as tracking the number of new services or the number of deals won, as well as tracking how many new markets you’ve entered or new offices you’ve acquired. 

Diversification stood as one of the most important metrics during coronavirus, where companies were forced to pivot. However, the modern world means companies always need to remain agile and meet new customer demands.

10. Customer NPS

Net Promoter Score (NPS) also plays a role in customer-facing analysis. Similar to employee NPS, customers answer a series of questions to produce an overall NPS score. How many customers will willingly recommend your brand? How do they really feel about your service?

Hopefully, with effective collaboration and greater understanding of service between front-facing and technical back-end teams, customer NPS will improve each year.

Feel the Benefits of Collaboration With Full Digital Transformation 

Collaboration and teamwork can feasibly happen in the office where face-to-face communication is critical. But with a happy, hybrid medium becoming the norm, digital collaboration is also an area companies can’t afford to ignore. 

It’s only with both digital and in-person collaboration that companies feel the full force of its benefits, effortlessly sharing documents, ideas and hopefully, success stories through the web. 

Kickstart your digital transformation using our services. We make coming to the cloud easier while always keeping you compliant.