Hello, I’m Stephen Goldberg and this is my seasons greeting video. This time of year is about making others happy by giving gifts and spending time together with loved ones. We all want to be happy and studies show that happiness comes more from an experience rather than the goods we buying or receive. So as we begin the holiday season I want to encourage you to be mindful of the importance and source of happiness and to create new experiences that will spark greater happiness both for yourself and those you care about. Happy holidays!
There are three essential elements to selecting the right person for the job. This article will focus on the selection process in order to make the best decision from your pool of candidates.
You must do a good job of attracting enough qualified candidates in order to have a good selection of applicants to choose from. This includes writing a good job posting based on a good job description. Knowing what you want is essential for marketing the position and the job description will do this and help you enormously in the selection process.
Skill fit
The person must have the knowledge and skills to do the job and this is determined by their past experience, education, ongoing learning etc. You can determine the skill fit from the resume, but you will need to verify if all that is written is true. Most people exaggerate their skills, knowledge and accomplishments and might even lie about their education. Background checks can help verify the information. As well you can conduct specific skills testing that you develop yourself or use a service. During the interview you will also ask questions about their past to gauge their response as part of their presentation.
Company fit
The person must fit with the company and more specifically with the people in the department and the team members. This is something you determine in the interview. It is basically measuring how you feel about the person. It is important to stay as objective as you can during the interview and treat all candidates the same. This is often hard to do even for skilled interviewers as everyone is swayed by their emotions, of course to a greater or lesser degree. Remember that someone might be well qualified for the job with great knowledge and skills. But if the person always worked in larger structured organizations and your company is small, it might not be a great fit. If your company lacks the structure that the person was used to working with they might not be compatible unless they can adapt themselves quickly. This is where assessments can greatly help.
Job fit
The person must also fit with the job. This means the persons thinking style; behavioral style and job interests are within a good range for the job requirements. This can only be reliably determined quickly using assessments. There are many excellent assessments on the market but not all are designed or suitable for use in hiring. The best assessments like the Profile XT, matches the person to a job profile. Each job should have a unique job profile based on the requirements of the job. This is where having a good job description is again beneficial. The Profile XT assessment provides starting job patterns based on role descriptions done by the US Department of Labour and available on the O-Net website. These job descriptions are also a great source of information for writing your own job descriptions and greatly speed up the process. The Profile XT is a total person assessment tool as it measures thinking style, behavioral traits and job interests and matches all of these to the job.
Doing a good job at applying these three essential elements can increase your ability to hire and select top performers by over 75% than relying on interviews alone.
It comes a time when you need to confront employees on performance issues. This is where a manager needs to understand and apply progressive discipline to attempt to turnaround problem performance situations.
Progressive discipline when applied correctly is what is best for the employee, the manager and the company. Even if you do not have established policies in your company you can follow these steps. They will let the employee know you mean business and will protect you and the company from wrongful dismissal and lawsuits.
You will need to have been given the authority to carry this out by your boss. You should also get familiar with the legal requirements for employee termination in your province, state or country.
Progressive discipline should be the last step in the management process. You should first confront the employee with your concerns about their behavior or performance and discuss it with them. Listen to what they have to say but end with a call to action.
For example if the employee has been late or missed days at work often, meet with them alone. Let them know how their behavior is affecting the work, the team and you. Ask them what they will do about it as it is not acceptable. Get a commitment and write it down. Make sure they see you writing it down. Set a follow-up date in a week o show them that this will not go away. Meet them whether the infraction has been corrected or not. If they have shown up on time every day over that week, recognize them for it. If they have not respected their commitment, let them know that the next time this occurs they will be getting a written warning. Explain the steps that will follow after that as explained below.
Verbal Notice
The first step is to provide the employee with verbal warning of the situation and that it needs to be corrected. Let them know that if the behavior or poor performance occurs again they will receive a written notice. Make sure you have a file for each employee and write the date of the warning and what you said in their file. Make sure to note their response. You might want to ask them to sign the note or you can have a witness present such as your boss or a colleague.
Written Notice
The next step if the situation has not been corrected by the employere is to give written warning. Refer back to the original reasons for the progressive discipline process presently being implemented. Also state the fact that verbal warning was given but the situation has not improved. The written warning should let them know that the next step if corrective action is not taken by the employee is a suspension without pay for one to three days or more. Also state that the last step will be termination if the cause for the progressive discipline reoccurs.
Suspension
Suspension without pay is the last step in the progressive discipline process before termination. This should be done in writing as well. The length of suspension can vary.
Termination
This is the last step so hopefully the progressive discipline has been enough to change the behavior of the employee. In this case you want to terminate employment immediately. A letter of termination must be given that states the reasons for termination and reference to the progressive discipline steps that were taken.
Ideally you won’t have to do this too often. The goal is to hire the right person for the job and train and coach them for success.
In this video I will cover how to conduct a follow-up coaching session with the goal of improving employee performance.
In my previous video blog I explained how to use a job description to initiate a coaching process with the goal of improving performance. Prior to that, I showed how to write a job description using my job description template in that blog video. You can download the job description template from that blog article.
The follow-up coaching session is really an ongoing process of coaching for continuous improvement through goal setting, problem solving and clear communication between the manager and his/her direct reports.
Here are some suggested steps to run a successful coaching session.
1.Start of by asking what is going well since the last meeting. Discuss the causes of this and recognize what the employee has done to make this happen. Point to their positive traits and improved behaviors that might have contributed to these results. For example the employee might have said they felt good about putting more time and focus on one of their key tasks that you had discussed with them at the last meeting. You could point out that you are glad to see them making that effort and that their ability to focus on a task is what you see as a key strength of theirs.
2.Discuss the goal you may have set with them at the last meeting and the progress that has been made. Again recognize the accomplishments and what caused it in their behavior. If the action steps toward the goal had not been fully met discuss what happened. This is another opportunity to identify obstacles to job performance and to find and agree on new solutions.
3.Review the actions you as a manager were to take to support them and remove any constraints that had been discussed at the previous meeting. See if there is new support action that you need to take.
4.Review the discussion and summarize and agree on the next action steps both the employee and you will take towards the goals you have set together.
5.Set the date for the next meeting in both your agendas.
Tip 1: Ask questions and listen. Let the employee come up with their own solutions to problems as much as possible, rather than solving problems for them and telling them what to do. This will develop more autonomous and responsible employees who will become self-sufficient with your coaching.
Tip 2: Never point out negative traits but instead focus on the problem. For example if the employee shows sign of poor work ethic, don’t say you really are lazy. Instead just ask what happened; why did they not do what was agreed. If what you hear amounts to excuses, you need to challenge them on this without putting them down. Stick to finding out what they will do to correct this by the next meeting. If this behavior continues it is another type of problem that needs disciplinary action.I will cover this in a future blog article and video.
