The share of participants who move on to work is an outcome. It says what happened, but only afterward, once the placement is already closed and the chance to influence that particular case is gone. (The difference between reporting outcomes and managing quality is covered in more detail in [article 1].)
Leading indicators, or process indicators, measure something else: what’s actually being done along the way, before the outcome is known. They give leadership a chance to act while the placement is still ongoing, instead of only being able to note the result afterward.
Three examples of leading indicators, none of which is a universal truth for every organization:
- Time to first employer contact – how quickly the process gets going after the placement starts.
- Follow-up frequency – how often an actual check-in happens during the placement.
- Core steps completed – are the steps the method identifies as most important carried out, in the right order and within a reasonable time.
These three are examples, not a finished template. Which indicators actually say something about your organization needs to be tested locally. An indicator that works well in one organization may mean nothing in another, depending on the participant group, the mandate, and the way of working.
It’s also important to be clear about what a leading indicator actually shows. A step completed on time gives evidence that the work follows the intended process. It doesn’t on its own prove that step caused a better outcome. The link needs to be tested over time, across several cases, before any indicator can be trusted as a reliable early signal.
Choosing indicators is therefore an ongoing exercise, not a one-time decision. Start with a few, see whether they actually correlate with later outcomes in your own data, and adjust or replace the ones that don’t turn out to say anything.
The practical value lies in the timing. A leadership team that waits for the quarterly report to discover something isn’t working has already lost the time when it could have been adjusted. A leadership team that follows a few well-chosen leading indicators continuously can catch the same signal while placements are still ongoing.
Want to test where you stand? Pick an ongoing placement type and identify one or two steps early in the process that you think correlate with a good outcome later on. Track them for a few months and then compare with the actual outcomes. If the pattern holds, you’ve found an indicator worth tracking continuously. If it doesn’t, you now know that one isn’t the right signal for you.