Dental team KPI scorecard: useful measures, fair context

A KPI is a measure you use to check whether something important is working. For a dental team, it should help answer a practical question: are tasks owned, are enquiries followed up or is learning evidence ready to check?

A scorecard is useful only when people understand the calculation and what they can do about it. A ranking based on raw counts can confuse workload, opportunity and performance.

Start with one question per measure

Choose a small set of questions your team can act on. For each measure, write down the source, period, calculation, owner and correction process. If you cannot explain it simply, do not put it on a public board yet.

Question	Suggested measure	Context to keep visible
Is work assigned?	Number of open in-scope tasks with no owner	Newly created tasks and assignment delays
Is agreed work finishing?	Eligible tasks completed on time ÷ eligible tasks due	Counts, complexity, cancelled and blocked work
Do enquiries have a plan?	Open enquiries with an owner and dated next action	Whether the action is current and appropriate
Is learning evidence checked?	Completed learning records still awaiting verification	Who verifies them and what is missing

These are proposed operational measures, not employment targets or clinical standards. Define “eligible” before reporting and document how exclusions work.

Show counts beside percentages

Hypothetical example: Colleague A completes 18 of 20 eligible tasks on time. Colleague B completes 27 of 30. Both rates are 90%:

• A: 18 ÷ 20 × 100 = 90%.
• B: 27 ÷ 30 × 100 = 90%.

That does not establish equal effort or quality. One person may have more complex work or different available time. Review the work and constraints before drawing conclusions. If no eligible tasks were due, show “not applicable” rather than a misleading zero rate.

Use a defined period consistently. Do not move late tasks into next month merely to improve this month's result. Record a correction openly when a source entry was wrong.

Check fairness before comparing people

People with different roles, hours or access to enquiries may not have the same opportunities. Reasonable adjustments and individual circumstances also matter. ACAS performance guidance says objectives should reflect the person's normal work and workload.

Explain why information is collected, who sees it and how it will be used. The ICO's worker-monitoring guidance requires attention to purpose, proportionality and transparency. It also warns against inaccurate inferences. Have the intended use reviewed before using personal activity data for employment decisions.

Treat health and absence information carefully. Do not assume an automatic “reliability” score fairly represents someone's conduct, or that showing only the top names removes every privacy concern.

Use the score to ask a better question

If several people have overdue handover tasks, examine the handover process. Can they find the task? Do they have authority to finish it? Is another approval holding everyone up?

Use the one-to-one agenda for a private support conversation. For marketing source quality and consultation outcomes, use the separate lead-quality scorecard; those questions need their own definitions.

Decide what belongs on a shared display

Team improvement or a useful contribution may be more suitable for recognition than a named league table. Explain the purpose to the team and consider the effect on behaviour. A measure that encourages rushed replies or unnecessary task splitting needs redesign.

Dentorb's leaderboards and KPIs page describes categories, shared display options and individual visibility controls. Confirm the calculation, corrections and current configuration before enabling a category. Its My Portal provides the individual view; the actual permissions still need checking.

Before the first review: trace one reported number to the original record, explain its limits and name the practical decision it will support.