KPI Examples for Employees by Role, with Copyable Tables

Good KPI examples for employees combine one result the person is responsible for with one or two behaviours that drive it. A salesperson might track monthly new revenue (the result), discovery meetings held per week and proposals sent within 48 hours (the behaviours). A support agent might track customer satisfaction, first-response time and tickets closed with a confirmation question. Give each person three to five KPIs they can actually influence, and review them weekly.

The tables below give you ready-to-copy KPIs for common roles in small and mid-sized companies, each labelled as a result or a behaviour, with an example target. All targets are hypothetical: set yours from your own baseline.

What is a KPI for an employee?

KPI.org, run by the Balanced Scorecard Institute, describes KPIs as the critical, quantifiable measures of progress toward a desired result. At company level that means revenue, margin or churn. At employee level it means the slice of those results each person can move, plus the behaviours that move them.

It helps to sort every KPI into one of two types:

• Lag KPIs (results). They report what happened: revenue closed, tickets resolved, orders shipped on time. They matter most, but they arrive late.
• Lead KPIs (behaviours). They track what the person does that predicts the result: calls made, checks completed, follow-ups done. They can be changed this week.

Our pillar guide on lead and lag measures explains this split in detail. For employees, the rule is simple: every role should have at least one of each.

Employee KPIs are also different from a job description. A job description lists everything a person is responsible for. KPIs pick the few outcomes and behaviours that matter most right now, so the person knows where to put extra effort when time is short. Expect to revisit them when the role, the team goal or the market changes, typically once or twice a year.

What makes a good employee KPI?

Six tests for a fair, useful employee KPI

• The employee can strongly influence it through their own work.
• It is defined precisely: what counts, what does not, where the data comes from.
• It has a target and a time frame, agreed with the employee.
• It includes or is paired with a quality check, not only a quantity.
• It can be updated weekly without extra admin.
• It connects visibly to a team or company result.

Clarity matters more than most managers expect. Gallup reported in 2015 that only about half of employees strongly agree they know what is expected of them at work. A short list of agreed KPIs is one of the quickest ways to close that gap.

KPI examples for sales

Sales is the easiest place to start, because results are already counted. The challenge is adding behaviour KPIs, so reps are not judged only on outcomes that take months to arrive.

KPI	Type	How to measure	Example target
New revenue closed	Lag	Signed contract value per month, from the CRM	$30,000 per month
Win rate on proposals	Lag	Proposals won ÷ proposals sent, per quarter	30%
Average deal size	Lag	Total won value ÷ number of deals	$6,000
Discovery meetings held	Lead	Meetings with a qualified prospect, logged weekly	4 per week
Proposal speed	Lead	Share of proposals sent within 48 hours of discovery	90%
Deals with a dated next step	Lead	Open deals with a next meeting in the calendar ÷ all open deals	85%
Account check-ins (account managers)	Lead	Scheduled calls with top accounts completed	5 per week

Pick one or two lag KPIs and one or two lead KPIs per rep. For how these fit into each stage of a deal, see our guide to the B2B sales process.

KPI examples by role

Customer service agent

KPI	Type	How to measure	Example target
Customer satisfaction score	Lag	Share of post-ticket surveys rated good or very good	90%
Repeat contacts within 7 days	Lag	Tickets reopened or repeated ÷ tickets closed	Under 10%
First-response time	Lead	Share of tickets answered within the target time	90% within 2 hours
Confirmation question asked	Lead	Share of closed tickets with “Did this solve it?”	95%

Operations or warehouse team member

KPI	Type	How to measure	Example target
Order accuracy	Lag	Orders shipped without error ÷ total orders	99.5%
On-time dispatch	Lag	Orders dispatched by the promised time ÷ total	97%
Pre-dispatch checks completed	Lead	Orders checked against pick list before packing	100%
Safety checks done on schedule	Lead	Checklist completions ÷ scheduled checks	100%

Marketing specialist

KPI	Type	How to measure	Example target
Qualified leads generated	Lag	Leads that sales accepts as a good fit, per month	40
Lead-to-meeting rate	Lag	Leads that book a meeting ÷ qualified leads	25%
Useful content published	Lead	Articles, videos or guides published per week	2
Inbound leads contacted within 1 hour	Lead	Share of new leads replied to within 1 hour	90%

Finance or admin officer

KPI	Type	How to measure	Example target
Days sales outstanding	Lag	Average days from invoice to payment	Under 35 days
Month-end close time	Lag	Working days to close the books	5 days
Invoices sent on delivery day	Lead	Invoices issued same day ÷ deliveries	95%
Overdue accounts followed up	Lead	Overdue accounts called each Friday ÷ total overdue	100%

Project manager

KPI	Type	How to measure	Example target
Projects delivered on time	Lag	Projects finished by agreed date ÷ projects finished	85%
Budget variance	Lag	Actual cost vs budget, per project	Within 5%
Client update sent weekly	Lead	Weeks with a written status update ÷ project weeks	100%
Risks reviewed	Lead	Risk log reviewed with the team each week	Every week

Team leader or supervisor

KPI	Type	How to measure	Example target
Team result vs target	Lag	The team’s main lag KPI	As agreed
Staff turnover	Lag	Leavers ÷ average headcount, rolling 12 months	Below company average
One-to-ones held	Lead	Scheduled one-to-ones completed ÷ planned	90%
Weekly scoreboard updated	Lead	Weeks the team scoreboard was current	Every week

For team leaders, the behaviour KPIs are often the ones that need most attention. A steady rhythm of one-to-one meetings is a leading signal for retention, engagement and results.

How many KPIs should an employee have?

Three to five per person is a practical range. With fewer than three you may miss a vital part of the job, such as quality or customer care. With more than five, attention spreads thin and people start optimising whichever number their manager mentioned last.

A useful default for most roles:

1. One or two lag KPIs that link to the team’s main result.
2. One or two lead KPIs for the behaviours that drive those results.
3. One quality or customer KPI to stop the others being chased at any cost.

If a role is changing fast, consider adding a short-term OKR instead of more KPIs. Our comparison of OKR vs KPI explains when each fits, and our OKR examples for managers show how to write one.

How do you set KPIs with an employee?

Set employee KPIs in one conversation

1. 1Start with the team resultShow which team number this role supports.
2. 2Ask what drives itLet the employee suggest the behaviours that matter.
3. 3Agree 3 to 5 KPIsAt least one result, one behaviour and one quality check.
4. 4Set baseline and targetUse the last 4 to 8 weeks as the starting point.
5. 5Review weeklyUpdate a simple scoreboard and talk about it briefly.

Step 1: Start with the team result

People commit more to a KPI when they see why it matters. Begin with the team’s main goal and ask, “How does your work move this number?”

Step 2: Ask the employee what drives it

The person doing the job usually knows which behaviours matter most. Ask them to suggest two or three. You can add or adjust, but let them start.

Step 3: Agree three to five KPIs

Use the checklist above. Make sure there is at least one result, one behaviour and one quality measure.

Step 4: Set a baseline and a target

Look at the last four to eight weeks of data. Set a target that stretches without being impossible. Edwin Locke and Gary Latham’s 2002 review found that specific, difficult goals consistently produced higher performance than vague “do your best” goals, as long as people had the ability and commitment to pursue them.

Step 5: Review weekly, not yearly

A KPI checked once a year is a judgement, not a tool. A weekly glance at a simple scoreboard lets the employee correct course while it still matters. Use those weekly numbers as evidence when you write a performance review, so nothing in the review comes as a surprise.

Worked example: one employee’s KPIs on a 4-week scoreboard

Here is a hypothetical example. Imagine Sam, a customer service agent in a 30-person online retailer. Sam and his team leader agree four KPIs using the steps above: one result, one quality measure and two behaviours. They look at the last six weeks of data to set the starting point, then put everything on one page.

KPI	Type	Baseline	Target	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4
Customer satisfaction score	Lag	84%	90%
Repeat contacts within 7 days	Lag (quality)	14%	Under 10%
First response within 2 hours	Lead	72%	90%
Confirmation question asked	Lead	40%	95%

Each Friday, Sam fills in the week’s numbers himself from the help desk report. That takes about five minutes. On Monday, he and his team leader spend a few minutes of their regular check-in on the sheet. They ask three questions: which numbers are green, what got in the way of the red ones, and what Sam will try differently this week.

After four weeks they review the pattern. If the behaviour KPIs improved and satisfaction rose, the measures are working. If Sam asked the confirmation question on almost every ticket but repeat contacts did not fall, the team leader looks for a different cause, such as unclear product information, rather than blaming Sam.

That last point is the real value of separating results from behaviours. It turns the KPI review into a problem-solving conversation instead of a verdict. The same layout works for any role in the tables above. Swap in the KPIs, keep the baseline and target columns, and update it weekly.

Why does involving employees in their KPIs matter?

Gallup’s research suggests that how a manager sets priorities and goals is linked to how engaged people are. In a 2015 article, Gallup reported a large gap in engagement depending on whether employees feel their manager helps them set work priorities.

Engaged employees, by whether their manager helps set work priorities

Strongly agree: my manager helps me set work priorities 38%

Disagree 4%

A separate Gallup survey of 8,287 US adults, run in 2013, found that employees whose manager helps them set performance goals were 17 times as likely to be engaged as disengaged. Neither figure proves cause, but both point the same way: KPIs set together with employees are more likely to be owned than KPIs handed down. This is also the foundation of real accountability at work: people can only be held to measures they understood and accepted.

What are the most common KPI mistakes?

The third mistake has a name. The economist Charles Goodhart observed in 1975 that a statistic tends to lose its reliability once people are pushed to hit it. If you measure only tickets closed per hour, expect rushed answers and more repeat contacts. Pair each speed or volume KPI with a quality KPI, as the tables above do.

Summary

Good KPI examples for employees follow a simple pattern: one or two results, one or two behaviours that drive them and one quality check, for a total of three to five measures. Set them together with the employee, start from a real baseline, and review them weekly on a simple scoreboard. Use the tables above as a starting point, then adjust to what actually drives results in your business.