We struggle to find meaningful weekly metrics for our administrative and back-office seats like accounting, HR, and IT. How do we create objective weekly scorecard numbers for people whose roles are purely support-oriented and do not generate revenue?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Every seat on your Accountability Chart must have at least one measurable. If a seat has no weekly number, you cannot objectively manage that person, and they cannot know if they are winning. Back-office support seats do not generate direct revenue, but they are critical for maintaining operational momentum and protecting your margins. You must measure their efficiency, accuracy, or responsiveness.

For your finance or accounting seat, do not track lagging metrics like monthly cash flow. Track weekly leading indicators instead. This includes the number of invoicing errors, the percentage of collections completed within terms, or the number of days of cash on hand.

For your HR seat, track the time-to-fill for open positions, employee onboarding milestones completed on time, or weekly training hours delivered.

For your IT or administrative support seat, track helpdesk tickets resolved within twenty-four hours, system uptime percentage, or office supply expense variance against budget.

To design these numbers, look at the roles and responsibilities of the seat. Ask the seat owner what a great week looks like in their world and what happens when things go wrong. If an IT system crash halts operations, then system uptime is your metric. If a late hire delays a project, then recruitment pipeline health is your metric. The goal is to make their contribution highly visible to the rest of the leadership team. When support seats have clear, objective weekly numbers, they feel more connected to the company success and are held to the same standard of accountability as your sales and operations teams.