3 KPIs for A PR Agency to Measure Employee Success

When employees succeed in their careers, every piece of their organization falls in line behind them. From the top down, all team members, work processes, and departments begin to work like a well-oiled machine to achieve the one thing all agencies want: a satisfied and grateful client. But how do you gauge an employee’s success? What factors are most important?

Here are the top three ways that agencies can measure their employees' success in 2022.

Anticipating and aligning with client needs

Strong employees know how to anticipate and align with client needs. These are the employees that make clients feel like they can read their minds. If senior staff are able to hone this skill, they can help prep their team internally and predict what clients need next.

In order to align with clients, agency team members become active listeners and learn how to ask the right questions. This might require researching the client’s industry, keeping a pulse on the competition, and even looking at the client’s history to see what they’ve tried before.

Being able to understand your client is like a doctor trying to understand their patient. If your doctor told you that you needed surgery without asking any questions, wouldn’t you be a little skeptical? It’s crucial to observe and ask questions, even if this takes time.

One way to help clients open up is to encourage a level of vulnerability within your employees. This mutual understanding allows teams to better align with clients and improves the ability to anticipate client needs. Show your cards so your client can show theirs, and everyone can feel comfortable.

Delivering against hard metrics

Clients love teams that thrive on metrics! Don’t shy away from delivering against hard metrics that align with clients’ quarterly KPIs/MBOs. For far too long PR pros have shied away from making promises about results and during that time other marketing groups have taken center stage.

Data/metrics are available everywhere, and we have the ability to predict and forecast many things in marketing. So why wouldn’t PR pros want to put themselves on the right side of forecasting to help clients better understand and anticipate the value of their services?

Measuring employee success in this area is similar to the way a client measures an agency’s success. A true measure of success is when a great employee thinks like their client; they understand all the moving pieces, including the nuances of their clients’ situation. I may question one of our managers on a forecast, and the best always push back because they have already considered all the options carefully and know what is best. I love that!

Committing to learning and growing

A final measure of how to gauge an employee’s success comes down to those who are hungry for growth and are life-long learners. These are the employees that reassure their clients and managers that they are in it to win it. To measure this, you must find employees that are consistently pushing for more. Those that do so, and continue to push until they’ve succeeded, show passion, hunger, and that they know what will make a difference.

Whether it is a new tool, a new technology or a new client; the bottom line is that employees who continuously look for innovative and fresh ways to improve the business or their professional selves ultimately create success for themselves and the agency.

A Note from 10Fold

10Fold’s best employees know how to anticipate client needs, deliver against hard metrics, and have an undeniable hunger for growth that translates to clients’ success.

I once had a client call me out of the blue to let me know how impressed he was with my team. He told me that he didn’t make this type of call very often to an agency, and it struck him that 10Fold was pretty remarkable. It is in those moments that I know employees have made a connection. While not all of our clients take the time to call me, you can bet that I make the time to call them and ask about their experiences with our team.

These measurements of employee success are the building blocks of a powerful agency. Agencies should consider these in order to align their entire organization to meet the common goal of having satisfied and grateful clients. Being able to understand your employees’ success is the starting point for the entire organization’s success.