I had an interesting experience with Sears online ordering and in-store pick up yesterday. I am a huge fan of online shopping and an even bigger fan of in-store pick up options. So, I was pleased when I received my notice from Sears that my purchase was ready in the Merchandise Pick-Up department.

I arrived at my local Sears store and used the very easy to understand kiosk to process my receipt. The kiosk then alerted me to the TV screen above me that would show the status of my order. On the screen, there was my name and how much time had passed since I registered my pick-up request in the kiosk. Sears has a "Ready in 5 minute guarantee" for in-store pickups. If your order takes longer than 5 minutes to reach you once you've run your receipt through the kiosk you receive a $5 Sears gift card.

I wasn't too worried about the time guarantee as I was the only person in the waiting room. Pretty soon I was up to 4 minutes, and an elderly gentleman joined me in the waiting area. We were chatting away, and I wasn't paying attention to the TV screen when he pointed out that my "status update" now said my order was "completed" at 4min 47sec. Wow, I thought, they were pretty close to that 5 minute mark, so they must be on their way out with my purchase. The time kept ticking away and still no one arrived with my product.

Then, I noticed the other gentleman's order was listed as "completed" at 4 min 53 seconds...but his order hadn't arrived yet either. For those of you keeping score- that now means I'd waited over 9 minutes by that point.

Now, I'm not one to go overboard trying to get free stuff from companies until I realized what these Sears employees were doing. They are clearly being tracked according to their "Ready in 5 guarantee" performance metric and have figured out they just need to clear it through the computer tracking system to be successful according to their goals.

At around the 10 minute mark, an employee came through the double doors and practically threw my purchase at me and tried running back inside before I said "So, do you have a gift card for me?" Hmmm...is that my imagination or was he trying to get away as fast as possible so he didn't have to give out a gift card. He came back out (never looked me in the eye, but looked pretty displeased) and handed me the $5 coupon.

My point in asking for the gift card is that Sears is trying to do something right. They are showing customers there is a good reason to come to their store. Your experience will be fast, and if it isn't we will compensate you. The problem is that performance metrics are only as good as your employees are honest. This handful of employees have figured out the system and are getting around it by playing the numbers game in the computer.

They will eventually get caught when corporate says "Wait a minute, the number of gift cards we gave out due to missing the 5 minute guarantee doesn't match the number of times our employees said they missed the time limit!!!" Something isn't right!

Not only that, but there is a big dry erase board where the employees list their percentage of successful "under 5" transactions the day before. It said 98%, but based on the two case studies I saw in person I'm guessing that is inaccurate.

Let's face it, Sears is not losing money based on employee's missing the 5 minute guarantee. I immediately took my $5 gift card and used it...and spent an extra $20 I hadn't planned on spending at Sears. It's a win-win for them.

The point is anytime you place a metric on your employee's performance you also have to monitor how that metric is being calculated.

Before my current role, I was a recruiter. We were required to interview 10 candidates a week. I'll be honest, recruiting did not suite me. When I had a slacker week, I'd enter bogus info to make sure it looked like I'd hit my "goal" of 10 interviews a week. When I was very successful, I'd only enter the "rockstar candidates" that I knew I could place because my interview-to-placement ratio would look really good!

The moral of the story is that some employees will cheat the system- even good ones. You should also be careful when setting performance metrics, because you can demotivate your superstar employees. For instance, in a sales role if you tell the salesperson "we expect you to make 10 cold calls per week" in all likelihood they will meet that goal, however if you gave them no expectation they would have just kept working and perhaps surpassed that goal.

It's as if we create a mental finish line when we have a performance metric. I've done my 10 cold calls and now I'm done for the week.

My suggestion is to always have metrics on a sliding scale with rewards associated with the results. For instance, Sears could say we expect you to have the item ready for the customer in under 5 minutes, but if you average less than 3 minutes for 1 month you get an extra day of vacation. That creates the mental awareness that there is a minimum expectation as well as a stretch goal that will result in praise, rewards or compensation!

To get around the honesty issue, companies either need to use technology (like RFID for Sears) or have a checks-and-balances system in place. As an example, Sears could request the customer sign-off on the purchase saying it arrived in less than 5 minutes. They could also have an email survey sent after the pick-up takes place.

There are so many ways to approach making your performance metric system more accurate- all it takes is a little creativity.

How do you measure performance at your company? Are there checks-and-balances? do you reinforce both minimum expectations as well as stretch goals?