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Performance Management Best Practices: What are your 3 tips for managing employee performance?
Please list, in detail, 3 tips that you would like to share with the Focus community on managing employee performance. High quality contributions will be included in an upcoming report on talent management best practices, and will receive significant promotion on the Focus network.
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7 Answers
Managing employee performance is one of the most misunderstood and abused processes in organizations today. That's why employees and managers alike dread the process and continue to struggle with how to make it effective and a positive experience.
My three recommendations focus on the performance management and planning process:
1. Develop a good process and be sure everyone uses it
2. Make the plan meaningful and useful to the employee and the organization
3. Make performance management an ongoing activity
1. One reason performance management is unsuccessful in many organizations is because the process is not well understood, it is not reinforced, particularly by C-suite denizens, and because different managers use it with varying degrees of acuity. The solutions to this point, then, are fairly obvious. If a performance management process is worth having, it is worth making sure everyone, managers and employees alike, understand the process and the reason for it. Training is the key here, not just in using the tool, but in using it properly. Next, everyone in the organization should have a performance plan, including the CEO, who must lead by example and visibly reinforce the process.
2. If a performance management process is to be useful, it must speak to the individual and the organization. In other words, what is in the plan must be relevant, strategic and be part of the fabric of the organization. The plan must link employees to their organization and its strategy in a real way. Employees need to be able to see how working their plan will make both them and their organization more successful. In order to do that, the plan must link, at least in part, to organizational, departmental and job specific mission and planning. Other elements must enable the success of the individual.
3. Performance management is an everyday activity, not something done two, three or four times a year. Elements of everyone's plans should be visible in what they do week in week out. If plans are developed and aligned properly, employees and managers should be able to link what they are doing almost daily to something in their plan. Managers need to connect those dots frequently in group or individual meetings. The periodic performance meetings should be times for managers and employees to summarize that which is mostly already known, not a time for dread and surprises.
Besides all the great answers already presented, I'll take a different slant because I'm a big believer in mindful presence and how it can affect performance for the better for all employees and management. Sound leaders of self and of others need to work on it all the time.
The pressure to integrate work and life and be on at every moment is greater than it’s every been in the history of the modern industrialized world, especially for leaders of any shape, size or stage — and that includes leaders of ourselves, which we all are.
I won’t be the first or last person to recommend some of the follow tips for mindful presence...
1) Beware the social media fallacy. You’ve heard of the gambler’s fallacy? Well, social media has become that way as well. The more time you spend on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and/or other personal/professional networks doesn’t mean magic will happen and you’ll score a big win, whatever that means. I’m a big believer in social media’s positive networking, learning, educating and marketing powers, but it can also rip your attention span right away. Limit the time you spend and invest it wisely. Hold your employees to that as well.
2) Have one-on-one’s with your staff. Schedule them and also have them informally when needed. This is a great way to give each of them your undivided attention, regular performance reviews, reciprocal feedback on your performance as a manager, empathizing on personal issues and advising counsel if necessary, identifying potential workplace issues that need addressing, and much more.
3) Check yourself before you wreck yourself. Sure, all the kids say it (do they still?), but this is really important. Whether you’re having a one-on-one, a team meeting, speaking to your entire company, meeting with prospects or clients, meeting with family members — take as much time as you can prior to “check yourself” with what you’re about to do and who you’re doing it with — be of sound emotional intelligence. Sometimes if your schedule is hectic and you’ve got only a few minutes in between, well, then that’s all you have. Check yourself and get your head and heart straight.
1. Know your culture. Despite all the research on best practices, it is best to develop a set of practices that are consistent with your unique culture and organization readiness.
2. Keep it simple. Enough said.
3. Focus facilitating the conversation not the process.
I need a 4th (:))
4. Avoid the peanut butter approach.Tailor performance management practices to different workforce segments. Your shop floor workers should not have to conform to the same process as your accountants and vice versa.
Honesty - I don't think anyone performs well, especially in sales without transparency and honesty. Salespeople are naturally curious and trained to dig out the truth. Good managers give it to them without sugarcoat. If salespeople are doing well or not, they should know right away. Once they know the truth to say a question on performance, give them a clear path to achieve what you want and a clear picture of what will happen if they do or don't.
Expectations -- Set clear expectations and done move them--especially if a salesperson meets or exceeds those expectations. Then darn well deliver on the promises you made around those expectations, 100% without any exceptions.
Freedom -- Give your salespeople the freedom to sell and make their own decisions. Most salespeople I know hate even a whiff of micromanaging. If you are honest about what you expect, spell out the expectations and hold yourself and your salespeople to them, then you team should be able to make it happen. Of course you are there for coaching, but you should also be smart enough to let salespeople get it done in their own fashion.
There are many issues that can sink or swim the Performance Management (PM) process, but if I were to single out three, that would be:
1) Understanding and Competence of line supervisors and managers in PM:Quite often they are too focused on the business at hand (be it selling a product, producing oil or running a production line) and they short change their employee on the process both in terms of attention and focus dedicated, as well as competence in handling the process and doing the necessary steps.
2) Proper goal setting:In order to manage performance you need measure it, and in order to measure it, it has to be "measurable" - enter the SMART goals. Deceptively easy to describe but often quite hard to implement and follow through, especially if
3) Balancing appraisal between both delivery on the job AND behaviors and attitudes - which is necessary if you are interested in promoting a certain company culture. Behaviors are difficult to monitor and measure consistently, and are much more difficult to discuss and appraise, as more emotions are involved.
I'd add one. A person will perform well, with minimal coaching, when asked to do something for which they have experience. However the same person will require more coaching if asked to do something for the first time. Hersey and Blanchard captured this concept in their Situational Leadership Model - which unfortunately has received mixed support at best - many years ago.
As a supervisor, have a clear vision about the position and set realistic, doable goals with employees.
Be open and available to staff. If your staff know they can talk to you, they'll ask for help.
Provide 2 positive reinforcement items for each negative to keep staff motivated.
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