Beyond KPI: How to Measure the Real Contribution of Your Best Team Player

• The KPI Paradox: Why You Risk Losing Your Best People
• The Problem: “Invisible Work” Doesn’t Fit in Excel
• The Solution: Turning “Footprints” into Data
• Checklist: Can You See Your “Employee B”?

The KPI Paradox: Why You Risk Losing Your Best People

Every manager has an “Employee A” and an “Employee B.”

• Employee A (“The Toxic Star”): Always hits their KPIs. Closes 110% of tasks. But they work alone, don’t share knowledge, and colleagues avoid asking them for help.
• Employee B (“The Team Glue”): Barely meets their KPIs (e.g., 90%). But they are the “glue.” They spend 30% of their time helping new hires, answering questions in Slack, and solving other people’s problems.

The traditional performance system sees only one thing: Employee A is a superstar, and Employee B is an underperformer. As a result, A gets the bonus and promotion, while B gets demotivating feedback and leaves.

This is a disaster for the company. You just rewarded a “lone wolf” and lost the person who made the entire team more effective.

The Problem: “Invisible Work” Doesn’t Fit in Excel

Leaders (especially COOs and Transformation Leaders) hate this paradox because it is extremely inefficient. It creates a management blind spot. You feel the value of Employee B intuitively, but you cannot prove or measure it.

This “invisible work”—mentorship, help, knowledge sharing—is your organization’s social capital. It isn’t visible in Jira or your CRM, but it leaves “digital footprints” in your communication tools.

The Solution: Turning “Footprints” into Data

AlbiMarketing’s expertise is that we don’t guess. We measure. We understand that “soft skills” aren’t magic; they are a set of behavioral patterns that can be tracked.

Our “Total Recognition Tracker” is not “another tool.” It’s an analytics engine that plugs into your existing systems (Slack, Teams, Trello, LMS).

It works as a “second pair of eyes” for a leader:

• It sees that Employee B was asked for help 15 times in Slack this week.
• It sees that Employee B spent time reviewing a colleague’s task in Trello that wasn’t assigned to them.
• It sees that Employee B just finished an AI course in the LMS and, an hour later, helped three colleagues with that new skill.

The Tracker automatically collects these “micro-actions” and turns them into an objective “social capital” dashboard.

Instead of relying on intuition, you get a report that proves: Employee B is your most valuable asset. This changes the game for managers, allowing them to make retention and promotion decisions based on the full picture, not just the tip of the KPI iceberg.

Checklist: Can You See Your “Employee B”?

1. Can you name 3 people on your team right now who are “team glue” but are not top performers by KPI?
2. How do you currently measure “helping peers” or “mentorship”? (If the answer is “I don’t” or “by gut feel,” you have a blind spot).
3. Does your bonus system reward only individual achievements, or does it also reward “invisible” team contributions?
4. Have you ever lost an “Employee B” because you couldn’t prove their value in time?
   If you answered “yes” to even one of these, you don’t need more intuition. You need data.

Get a Free Expert Consultation with AlbiMarketing to learn how we can measure the “invisible” contribution on your team.

References

1. The Problem with Rewarding Individual Performers
2. Measuring What Matters: Beyond Traditional KPIs
3. Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) and its Impact on Performance
4. The Value of ‘Invisible Work’ in the Hybrid Workplace
5. Using People Analytics to Uncover Hidden Influencers