When at the end of a financial year you find that you haven’t scored very high in your key result areas, do not be dumbfounded. This simply means that you have not performed up to the mark towards making progress. You are required to adopt innovative business strategies.

Gauging output

This tool makes it easier to know whether individuals departments or even organizations have performed over certain measurable deliverables or not. Key result areas may not be a very widely used HR instrument, but its popularity is growing. More and more successful entrepreneurs are making use of it.

You may think it to be a performance measurement instrument at a broader level. For instance, while at a macro level, the performance of a whole unit would be KRA of the boss, the actual job might be distributed among the subordinates. Thus the individual targets would be each subordinate’s KRA that can also be measured. In this way the KRA of the boss is totally dependent upon the individual KRAs of the team members. This means that the benchmarks are mutually between the boss and his subordinates.

For instance, in a cricket team, while winning the match would be captain’s KRA, getting wickets would be that of the bowlers, and not letting the ball get past the boundaries the KRA of the fielders. Being role specific makes it easy to identify where what went wrong. In this way, identifying KRAs also help the individual’s team and work management style by focusing on the results rather than the activities. By aligning individual roles to the organization’s business or strategic plans, it’s easier to prioritize the various goals and objectives.

It looks really simple. But in reality, it is not so simple at all, let us discuss the complications involved in its implementation. Before one can pinpoint a KRA for each role in an organization, basics like an organizational structure and the role maps for the every employee have to be clearly defined.

Various types of KRAs

There are five types of KRAs that are applicable to companies. These are financial, customer-specific, society-related, employee related and project based. Depending upon the complexity of the role of the team member, he may have more than one key result areas. typically, KRAs capture about 80 percent of a work profile. The remainder is usually devoted to shared areas of responsibility such as helping team members and participating in joint activities. For example. the image of an organization is usually a very senior officer’s KRA, but all employees contribute to it.

The roadmap to implementation

It’s here that the HR personnel play an important role by providing the necessary framework for the implementation of the KRAs. The HR ensures that individuals are not saddled with too many KRAs. Further, each KRA is assigned a weightage. This weightage depends upon the performance roles of the employees. While more weightage is given to system development and strategizing at higher positions, those lower in the order are held responsible for actual implementation of the plan.

It is also helpful for HR to judge its own capability. Companies use this as a tool to decide the individual performance and and consequent incentive package. Its an opportunity to see whether the employee is constrained by the environment or whether he is simply the unfit person for the job.

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