Management Information |
Performance Reviews That Actually Improve Performance
Employee performance reviews are one of the most dreaded tasks by most managers. It is hard to win here - you can never say enough good things, and one word of criticism is generally the only thing they will remember. Taking the easy way out and just documenting the positive will cause you a lot of trouble if you ever need to fire the employee. The only way this ever gets better is with a lot of practice, and a pretty thick skin. Think about it this way: a bit of feedback that no one else has the guts to give a poor performer might turn around their whole career. Deliver the negative - you have to - but make sure the employee knows there are things they can do about it. For more effective performance reviews, prepare at the time of hire by giving all employees copies of the review forms you use in their orientation packet. An employee who knows how she will be reviewed will direct his behavior accordingly from the beginning of his employment and will probably do all she can to be sure he has good reviews. In fact, an employee should have copies of all survey and review material that he will encounter over the course of his employment. The perception is what you measure is what you care about. Give a description of how often you use each evaluation tool and how. This is particularly important if your company does 360 degree performance reviews. The purpose of reviews is not to trap employees, but to give them the tools to do their best for the company. Accordingly, your review forms should be created very carefully and should cover actions specific to his skills and responsibilities as well as his people skills with peers and subordinates. I always do reviews in two parts. The first part is for the employee to fill out two weeks ahead of the actual review meeting. It asks questions like these:
I have always found that getting an employee to express their feelings first, not only lets them know that you really are interested in their feedback, it also often results in their letting you know what they think their weaknesses are - meaning you don't have to be the first to bring these things up. Most employees really want to do good work. And if you think an employee isn't really there to do good work, you shouldn't be reviewing them, you should be letting them go. About The Author Jan B. King is the former President & CEO of Merritt Publishing, a top 50 woman-owned and run business in Los Angeles and the author of Business Plans to Game Plans: A Practical System for Turning Strategies into Action (John Wiley & Sons, 2004). She has helped hundreds of businesses with her book and her ebooks, The Do-It-Yourself Business Plan Workbook, and The Do-It-Yourself Game Plan Workbook. See www.janbking.com for more information.
MORE RESOURCES: Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting |
RELATED ARTICLES
An Original Perspective on Waging Conflict as a Way to Promote and Restore Self-dignity Conflict is a fact of life for all of us, but too many painful consequences are generated by avoiding or managing it in the wrong way. When we deal with everybody else day after day in any capacity as leaders or team managers, is inevitable that we will be personally confronted with conflict. Dialogue: the Four Dialogic Principles For Successful Communication "But you don't understand!" exclaimed the manager, "this new initiative is vital for our team. If it doesn't work we could all be out of a job!" "Uh-huh. Are You At The Mercy Of Computer Geeks? Many business owners are sabotaging their business without even realizing it. They are completely out of the loop when it comes to all technology aspects of their operation such as websites, computers and software. One Bad Apple One Bad AppleI know what you are thinking but no, I am not doing atribute to Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5. Although I will admit that their hit song from the 70's keeps rolling around in my mind as I type this. Creativity and Innovation Management - Personality Testing Whilst tests measuring the creative or innovative personality exist, there are a number of inherent flaws. Some are noted below:a) Whether a creative or innovative type exists at all is highly contentious. Performance Management Made Easy Performance Management is a process that both employer and employee often fear!Why is this so!There is much misinformation about the performance management process and performance appraisals in management circles today. We often think that best practice demands that we must performance appraise 'no matter what'. Why Good Enough... Isnt About a year ago, I had an opportunity to have dinner with the CEO of an engineering startup company in Pennsylvania. As we discussed engineering design matters over Chinese food, he took a few moments to talk about his business philosophy. Weaknesses of Wishing When you're starting a business, you might wish for a lot of things, like having more than enough customers or not having to do marketing. But wishing is weak willed, having no momentum behind it. Dont Take New Hires for Granted Hiring good people is only half the battle. The other half is keeping them, especially in a relatively strong economy where quality people are difficult to attract. Lateral Thinking, Logical Thinking, Applied Creativity Certain processes enhance creative output and others enhance innovative output. Defining creativity as problem identification and idea generation and innovation as idea selection, development and commercialisation, this article will tackle stages two and three using the three-stage process of lateral thinking, logical thinking and applied creativity. Do You Hear That? I read a report in the Toronto Star stated that 70% of workplace errors happen because of communication breakdown and that many of them directly relate to a lack of listening skills.The challenge is most people filter out sounds, noises and people talking as much as they filter out most of the things their eyes see. What To Do When Your IT Project Is Late, Over Budget, and Looks Like It's Never Going To Work Here's a scary statistic. According to four prominent research firms, only around 20% of all IT projects are finished in a timely manner. Performance Expectations - 5 Tips and 5 Questions People want to understand their role - they want to do well! So by being clear, really clear about what it expected of them, makes a big, big difference! And that improves performance as well as saving you time chasing others around to deliver what you want.5 TipsBe Clear - your people need to know what they are doing, both in terms of actions and the standards that you will be expecting. Reducing the High Cost of Absenteeism Employers pay a high price for absenteeism, often more than they may realize, in terms of both financial and production losses and employee morale. Managers may view the tasks of finding a substitute employee as a short-term inconvenience; however, absenteeism frequently has more serious long-term effects. Leadership Skills Means Turnover is Not a Problem "Ha!" you say. "For someone to make a statement like that, they obviously haven't worked in the real world and certainly have never had to run a company. Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing in a Business Perspective Business IntelligenceBusiness Intelligence has become a very important activity in the business arena irrespective of the domain due to the fact that managers need to analyze comprehensively in order to face the challenges.Data sourcing, data analysing, extracting the correct information for a given criteria, assessing the risks and finally supporting the decision making process are the main components of BI. Working with Hearing Impaired Employees - Giving Them a Fair Go Hearing impaired people often encounter difficulty at workbecause their disability isn't visible. I'd like to relateto you, briefly, the sorry saga of a young man who has recently been dragged through a performance managementprocess, essentially brought about by misunderstanding,frustration on his behalf, and failure by an employer tomake a 'reasonable adjustment' [Australian law includes the concept of reasonable adjustment which in effect means that employers are required to make reasonable adjustments necessary to enable employment opportunities for disabled people]in relation to this person's employment. Problem-Solving Success Tip: Test Your Assumptions About Everything Test your assumptions about everything.Assumptions have a way of creeping into all parts of a problem-solving project. Project Management - The Traveling Product Manager Various studies - and common sense - indicate that involving customers increases the likelihood that your product will meet customer requirements (I hope these studies weren't funded with my tax dollars!)Although the above statement sounds exceedingly obvious, the fact of the matter is many software projects lack customer input. Consider the following example:Week 0: Red, our friendly project mangler, is in charge of the next release of his organization's flagship product. Introducing the 15 Frameworks of Successful Self-Employed Professionals A framework is a way of thinking, a point-of-view, a perspective on something. Here are the 15 frameworks of the successfully self-employed professional. |
home | site map | contact us |