Perfomance standards

Then I would assign them tasks that are relevant to their skill set.

Then evaluate them on their performance with that skill set. Also though evaluate their ability to learn other skill sets, have they improved in other areas?, etc

There is no "good" metric to measure an IT techs performance, as each situation is different.

1 idea would be to survey the clients (users) that your department supports, and establish a rating based system.

Speed,
Knowledge,
User satisfaction,
Manner (ease of getting along with users)
cleanliness,
etcetera.

Chas

A few questions to keep in mind: Were they hired directly by you or your company? If they were hired by you, what were the skills you looked for in your employees? If they were hired by the company to work for you, you will need to talk with the person responsible for their employment to obtain a list of detailed job duties and criteria used in hiring your employees.

You need to set up a basic model of what skills they have such as Windows, Linux, Network, Certifications and so on, how they perform their duties such as working over the phone, from email or in person, IT Dept.'s mission and goals and whatever makes sense to you. Once the basic model is created, set up a simple guideline to create performance and personal standards toensure they're providing the best support to their clients.

If you need advice about evaluating your employees' performance, you should check out other departments on how they do that and get feedback from them, study their examples to get a goodidea how they measure their employees' performance and start using a database tool to keep track of your employees' performance.

You will probably have several "categories" of performance...

* Basic administrative (reporting, submitting administrative paperwork like time sheets)
* Customer service
* Technical

and you may come up with more

Expectations for the 5 employees may vary depending on their current level in the business, at least in the technical realm. It would seem that administrative and customer service performance have a minimum requirement no matter how much experience the employee has.

The important thing....when you've defined how you will measure....meet with *each* of the technicians to let him know what you are expecting. This is very important to the success of you and your employee. Also give the employees regular feedback between formal performance reviews, so corrective action can be taken as needed.