Use Performance Management

By Susan M. Heathfield

Job Vacancy Indonesia, Employee, Vacancy

Are you fed up with the return on investment you experience when you subject people to your current performance appraisal process? Are you changing your approach to performance evaluation and review? There is a better way to approach performance management and development. The performance management process can help you create a work environment that helps employees succeed.

You can improve productivity, motivation, and morale by handling performance management in new ways. In this interview with Robert Bacal, the author of Performance Management (Compare Prices.) (McGraw-Hill Professional), we'll help you explore what to do differently.

HR Guide: Robert, in your book about performance management, what do you recommend in lieu of the traditional annual appraisal in which a manager hands out a form to an employee with ratings and a review of the prior year?

Robert Bacal: I can give you several answers to this one. Let's start with basic principles. Performance management is about having everyone succeed and improve. In order for that to happen, the manager and the employee have to work together in a communication process to identify barriers to success (whether they are from the employee or the system of work), and to build plans to overcome those barriers.

So, in a sense ANY method that does that will succeed. Ratings and yearly review lack the detail to make this happen unless the manager is excellent. My suggestion is to focus 90 percent of performance management time on performance planning and communication throughout the year. And, move to specific measurable objectives.

No system is perfect. What we need to do is find ways to make performance better, and sometimes that means the manager and the employee need to figure out the best method to use in their unique situation.

HR Guide: What is the focus of the discussion during a review or evaluation session, or as I would prefer to call it, a performance development meeting?

Robert Bacal: I like this question a lot. The single most important compound question is: What things have made your job more difficult, and what do we need to do in the next year to help you become more productive?

The discussion needs to be forward looking, and not be restricted to "deficits" of employees but also deficits in things like work flow, work communication, and so on.

HR Guide: How often do you recommend managers hold these sessions with the people who report to them?

Robert Bacal: I recommend that managers have informal short talks once every few weeks - that's like five - ten minute how's it going talks. Hold quarterly discussions that are a bit more organized. Schedule a year end review that is really just a review. By the time the year end review happens everything should have been discussed before. No surprises.

HR Guide: How do you establish a communication system to get top performance and value from each employee, in a workplace climate designed to stimulate greater productivity from both managers and employees?

Robert Bacal: I'm afraid that's what I call a "consulting question." That is, it's not possible to offer up a recipe that will fit everyone. The answer is it depends, and without doing a diagnosis of an organization, one can't really suggest anything without ending up saying nothing.

In other words, each organization is different, and requires different things since they are also starting from different points.

HR Guide: What is your general philosophy about employee performance management?

Robert Bacal: Be forward looking. No blame. Problem solve. Hold ongoing communication. No surprises. Forms are trivial and unimportant to the real purpose. All barriers need to be considered, not just employee-based factors. Flexibility to negotiate evaluation methods on an individual manager-employee basis is important.

That later is part of my newer work which I hope to turn into a book called Value-Added Performance Management. It will outline the logic of flexible systems if I ever get around to writing it.

HR Guide: How would you go about instituting a change in the typical organization's current appraisal system?

Robert Bacal: That's another "it depends." The standard answer, and still a good one is that significant changes need to be top down. The CEO uses the new system with VPs. VPs use it with executive directors, and on downwards. And, the CEO holds VPs responsible for replicating the process with their reporting staff, and so on.

The other way, when there is no indication of senior management willingness (and that's common) is to build pockets of success in the middle and bottom of the organization. It doesn't result in a better overall company system immediately, but it's better than having a lousy system pervade the entire organization.

In other words, the strategy is: "We can't get this turned around because we lack the support to do so, so let's see what we can accomplish anywhere where we might find some support."

HR Guide: You share my personal philosophy in this last, Robert. People in organizations tell me frequently that they can't do something or change something because upper level management doesn't support the change. I consider this an excuse for inaction. Unless executives are actively working against your proposed changes, or forbidding them, you can always start to make changes in the areas at work over which you have some control.

So, thanks for sharing that. I wish more people believed this. Their work places would be better off with more action and fewer excuses. Plus, it would do wonders for their own morale and self-image.

Performance Management: You Get What You Request and Reward

By Susan M. Heathfield

Job Vacancy Indonesia, Employee, Vacancy

Performance management encompasses the most important people issues in your organization. Performance management includes the entire relationship you have with the people you employ.

Performance management is the process of creating a work environment or setting in which people are enabled to perform to the best of their abilities. Performance management is a whole work system that begins when a job is defined as needed and expectations are clearly communicated to the employee. It ends when an employee leaves your organization.

Many writers and consultants are using the term “performance management” as a substitution for the traditional performance appraisal system. I encourage you to think of the term in this broader work system context. A performance management system includes the following components.

• Develop clear job descriptions.
• Select appropriate people with an appropriate selection process.
• Negotiate requirements and accomplishment-based performance standards, outcomes, and measures.
• Provide effective orientation, education, and training.
• Provide on-going coaching and feedback.
• Conduct quarterly performance development discussions.
• Design effective compensation and recognition systems that reward people for their contributions.
• Provide promotional/career development opportunities for staff.
• Assist with exit interviews to understand WHY valued employees leave the organization.

Intrigued about performance management and its potential contribution within your organization? Take a look at the rest of this performance management special resource for all of the current information about performance management. Join the people in forward thinking organizations who retain their best talent and achieve their goals.

What's the Big Deal About Clear Performance Expectations?

By Susan M. Heathfield

Job Vacancy Indonesia, Employee, Vacancy

A lack of clear performance expectations is cited by readers as a key contributing factor to their happiness or unhappiness at work. In fact, in a poll about what makes a bad boss – bad, the majority of respondents said that their manager did not provide clear direction. This factor affected their sense of participation in a venture larger than themselves and their feelings of engagement, motivation, and teamwork.

Critical Components of Clear Performance Expectations

The process that results in employees who clearly understand and execute their performance expectations contains these components:

• A company strategic planning process that defines overall direction and objectives.
• A communication strategy that tells every employee where their job and needed outcomes fit within the bigger company strategy.
• A process for goal setting, evaluation, feedback, and accountability that lets employees know how they are doing. This process must provide opportunities for continuing employee professional and personal development.
• Overall organizational support for the importance of clear performance expectations communicated through cultural expectations, executive planning and communication, managerial responsibility and accountability, rewards and recognition, and company stories (folklore) about heroic accomplishments that define the workplace.

Communication of Clear Performance Expectations

Communication of clear performance expectations starts with the strategic planning process of executive leaders. How they communicate these plans and goals to the organization is critical to create an organization in which all components are connected and pulling in the same direction. Executive leadership must clearly communicate its expectations for the team’s performance and expected outcomes to align each area of the organization with the overall mission and vision.

At the same time, leadership needs to define the organizational culture of teamwork desired within the company. Whether a department team or a product, process, or project team, team members have to understand why the team was created and the outcomes the organization expects from the team.

Communicating Clear Performance Direction Through the PDP

The Performance Development Planning (PDP) process translates these higher level goals into the outcomes necessary for each employee’s job within the company. After the quarterly PDP meeting, employees should be clear about their expected contribution. Goal setting at these meetings should include a performance evaluation component so the employee knows how he or she has been performing.

Leading up to the PDP meeting, the employee self-evaluation guides each employee in thinking about their performance. The six-eight goals set at the meeting, or continued from the previous PDP, establish performance expectations without micromanaging the employee. Deciding how to accomplish the goals empowers, engages, and motivates the employee.

The manager maintains needed contact with the critical steps in the employee’s performance plan through weekly meetings and coaching. (No, it’s not a free-for-all when each employee’s work affects other employees and must mesh to accomplish the whole.) Additionally, this step ensures that employees are accountable for accomplishing their jobs.

Consider following this same process with each team you establish for the same sense of interconnectedness and understanding of clear performance expectations.

Continuing Support for Clear Performance Expectations

Your organization demonstrates support for the accomplishment of clear performance expectations in three key ways.

• You need to show constancy of purpose in supporting individuals and teams with the resources of people, time and money that will enable them to accomplish their goals. When you provide the resources teams need to succeed, you ensure the development of teamwork and the team's best chance for success. Sometimes, this requires the reshuffling of resources or the renegotiation of goals. But, the visual application of resources sends a powerful message of support.
• The work of the team needs to receive sufficient emphasis as a priority in terms of the time, discussion, attention and interest directed its way by executive leaders. Employees are watching and need to know that the organization really cares.
• Finally, the critical component in continuing organizational support for the importance of the accomplishment of clear performance expectations is your reward and recognition system. Clear performance expectations accomplished deserve both public recognition and private compensation. Publically cheering and celebrating team accomplishments enhances the team's feeling of success. The recognition clearly communicates the behaviors and actions the company expects from its employees.

Use clear performance expectations to help your employees develop accountable, productive, meaningful, participatory teamwork. I trust these guidelines helped you see the role of clear performance expectations in organizational achievements and teamwork.

Performance Development Planning

By Susan M. Heathfield

Job Vacancy Indonesia, Employee, Vacancy

 

During the Performance Development Planning (PDP) meeting:

• Establish a comfortable, private setting and chat a few minutes to establish rapport with the staff person.
• Discuss and agree upon the objective of the meeting: to create a performance development plan.
• The staff member is given the opportunity to discuss the achievements and progress accomplished during the quarter.
• The staff member identifies ways in which he would like to further develop his professional performance, including training, assignments, new challenges and so on.
• The supervisor discusses the employee's performance for the quarter and suggests ways in which the staff member might further develop his performance.
• The supervisor provides input to the employee's selected areas of personal and professional development and improvement.
• Discuss areas of agreement and disagreement, and reach consensus.
• Examine job responsibilities for the coming quarter and, in general.
• Agree upon standards for performance for the key job responsibilities for the quarter.
• Discuss how the goals support the accomplishment of the organization's business plan and the department's objectives.
• Set goals together for the quarter.
• Agree upon a measurement for each goal.
• Assuming performance is satisfactory for the quarter, agree on a personal and professional development plan with the staff person, that helps him grow professionally in ways important to him and to your organization.
• If performance is less than satisfactory, develop a written Performance Improvement Plan (PIP), and schedule more frequent feedback meetings. Remind the employee of the consequences connected with continued poor performance.
• The supervisor and the employee discuss the employee's feedback and constructive suggestions for the supervisor and the department.
• Discuss anything else the supervisor or employee would like to discuss, hopefully, maintaining the positive and constructive environment established thus far, during the meeting.
• Mutually sign the Performance Development Planning document to indicate the discussion has taken place.
• End the meeting in a positive and supportive manner. The supervisor expresses confidence that the employee can accomplish the plan and that the supervisor is available for support and assistance.
• Set a time-frame for formal follow up, generally quarterly. I recommend you set the actual date for follow-up.

Following the Performance Development Planning Meeting

• If a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) was necessary, follow up at the designated times.
• Follow up with performance feedback and discussions regularly throughout the quarter. (An employee should never be surprised about the content of feedback at the quarterly performance development meeting.)
• The supervisor needs to keep commitments relative to the agreed upon personal and professional development plan, including time needed away from the job, payment for courses, agreed-upon assignments and so on.
• The supervisor needs to act upon the feedback from departmental members and let staff members know what has changed, based upon their feedback.
• Forward appropriate documentation to the Human Resources office and retain a copy of the plan for easy access and referral.

When your organization develops the discipline and commitment necessary to carry out regular performance development planning, your organization will win. This systematic method for cascading goals and commitment throughout your organization will ensure your success. Can you think of a better way to communicate and measure your key strategic objectives to ensure progress and success? I can't.
 

Performance Development Planning

By Susan M. Heathfield

Job Vacancy Indonesia, Employee, Vacancy

Are you looking for the process that provides the heart of your performance management system? You've found it. The Performance Development Planning (PDP) process enables you and the people who report to you to identify their personal and business goals that are most significant to your organization's success.

The process enables each staff person to understand their true value-added to the organization. They do so when they understand how their job and the requested outcomes from their contribution "fit" inside your department or work unit's overall goals.

Personal Developmental Goals

In the process, staff members also set personal developmental goals that will increase their ability to contribute to the success of your organization. The accomplishment of these goals also provides a foundation for their career success whether in your organization or elsewhere, so they ought to be motivated and excited about achieving these goals.

Your system of Performance Management, with the PDP process for goal setting and communication, will ensure that you are developing a superior workforce. As one CEO remarks daily, "The only factor that constrains our growth is our ability to hire a superior workforce." Why not grow that talent from within your organization as well?

PDP meetings are held, at least, quarterly to review the staff person's progress on the overall goals and objectives. Your staff person's progress on the action plans, that result from the PDP goals, is reviewed at your weekly one-on-one meeting. This weekly meeting allows you to offer assistance and to identify any help or tools the staff person needs to succeed.

Make the Performance Development Planning Meeting Successful

Wonder what to do to make the Performance Development Planning (PDP) meeting successful? These recommendations tell you and your staff person what to do prior to the Performance Development Planning meeting.

• Schedule the Performance Development Planning meeting and define pre-work with the staff member.
• The staff member reviews personal performance for the quarter, writes business and personal developmental goal ideas on the PDP form and gathers needed documentation, including 360 degree feedback results, when available.
• The supervisor prepares for the PDP meeting by clearly defining the most important outcomes needed from the staff person's job within the framework of the organization's strategic plan.
• The supervisor writes business and personal developmental goal ideas on the PDP form in preparation for the discussion.
• The supervisor gathers data including work records and reports and input from others familiar with the staff person’s work.
• Both the supervisor and the employee examine how the employee is performing against all criteria, and think about areas for potential development.
• The supervisor develops a plan for the PDP meeting which includes answers to all questions about the performance development planning process with examples, documentation, and so on.
• Recognize that this process takes place quarterly and that the most time and work are invested in the first PDP meeting. The rest of the quarterly PDP goals, maybe for years, are updates to the initial goals.