employee performance review

Conducting a mid year or quarterly employee performance review

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An employee performance review is an important aspect of managing employee performance. Most companies have a policy to do an annual review at the minimum. Many small businesses don’t have a formal process but good leaders will take the time to sit down and discuss performance with employees.

There are some good reasons why you should conduct regular employee performance reviews more often than just once a year.

  1. Employees need to know how they are doing on the job. An employee performance. review will act as a scorecard
  2. An opportunity to set new performance improvement objectives.
  3. Identify and solve problem affecting performance.
  4. Get a sense of how the employee feels about their job.
  5. Identify ways you could better support the employee.
  6. Develop training and development opportunities.
  7. Give employees feedback and positive reinforcement.
  8. Build trust and collaboration.
  9. Evaluate yourself as a leader and manager through their feedback.
  10. Improve employee retention.

 

Conducting the employee performance review

employee performance reviewSome companies have a structured approach for managers to use to conduct the employee performance review. Even if your company does not have a structure in place, it can be quite simple.

  1. Use a job description to review responsibilities and tasks. If you don’t have job descriptions this would be a good opportunity to put them in writing. Check out my articles and videos on job descriptions.
  2. Schedule the date to meet each employee. Send out a calendar invitation with a brief explanation of the purpose of the meeting.
  3. Start the meeting with the employee by putting them at ease. Explain the purpose of the review is to discuss and agree on performance, set improvement objectives and identify ways to better support the employee.
  4. Review the key responsibilities and tasks and ask the employee to evaluate how they think they are doing on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being excellent. Do the same so you can compare notes.
  5. Compare the employee’s perception with your own. Discuss any discrepancies in perception and come to an agreement on the score.
  6. Set performance improvement objectives for high-priority responsibilities and tasks.
  7. Ask the employee to give feedback on your leadership and management. Ask what they need from you to do their job better
  8. Summarize the commitments from the employee and yourself for performance improvement objectives.
  9. Set a date for any coaching that would be required to achieve the performance improvement objectives.
  10. Set a date for the next review session and add to your respective calendars.

Following these steps will ensure a successful employee performance review meeting and help you realize the benefits that were listed above.

employee performance reviewOften the biggest obstacle is time. Everyone is busy doing many things and it is easy to put aside this important activity. However, this is an essential aspect of good leadership and employee performance management. The solution is to commit and schedule the time in your calendar.

The other obstacle is fear or discomfort. Many people perceive an employee performance review as an unpleasant experience. At first this may be the case if you have not done it on a regular basis. But you can make this a pleasant experience both for yourself and the employee by following the steps listed.

Interview with Valerio Pascotto on Coaching Employees to Build Trust & Better Performance

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This interview with Valario Pascotto by Stephen Goldberg covers the approach to leadership best used to engage and empower employees. Valario explains the coaching style of leadership and what stops leaders and managers from adapting this style. He provides insight as to how to change and lift the barrier to becoming a coach leader rather than a more autocratic type of leader. Here is the link to the article mentioned in the video “Redefining Accountability: Creating A Workplace Consonant With Human Values” by Valario Pascotto, Jules Goddard and Tim Gallwey.

Link to Valerio’s websites: http://www.igeos.net/, http://illustra.tv/

 

 

Promoting Your Best Performing Employee to Manager

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I have often come across companies promoting the best performing employee to a manager. The problem is that the best performing employee does not guarantee that they will be a good manager.

What often happens is you lose a good performing employee and gain a poor manager. Promoting someone to a new position especially management, should follow a similar process as hiring a new employee.

When someone knows the job, and does it well we think they can guide and teach others how to perform as good. But managing requires a whole new skill set that many people do not have and do not want to develop.

Before promoting someone to a management role follow these steps.

  1. Write a job description or update a current one. Make sure the role description is well thought out and includes the essential leadership and management skills. A good resource for writing a job description is org.
  2. Post the job so you have more than one candidate. Sometimes this may be difficult because the employee in mind is expecting to be promoted. Depending on the situation and size of the company you can post both internally and externally.
  3. Conduct an interview as if you were if hiring from outside. Let the person know that they must fit the job.
  4. Conduct an psychometric evaluation of the person to check for their fit with the job. Use the right assessment tool for this purpose. You need to use a total person assessment that can measure cognitive skills (thinking style), behavioral traits and occupational interests. An interest in people should be high on the list.
  5. Consider the training and coaching that would be required for the new manager. Do you have the resources and who would provide the training?

Coaching an Olympic Speed Skater

employee promotionI once met the coach of an Olympic speed skating champion at an event. We sat next to each other over dinner. He told me how he became the athlete’s coach and I was amazed. He said he had never been a speed skater and new almost nothing about the sport. But the two had met and he took an interest in her. He offered to be her coach and at first, she was skeptical but finally agreed as the relationship developed.  He told me that although he knew little about speed skating he knew people well and how to coach and guide them. He said he knew he could easily learn the success techniques of speed skating but no one could teach him how to build rapport with people and get them to be at their best. He said he always had that ability.

The Sales Manager

I once was hired by a sales manager to conduct a workshop at a conference the company was organizing in Las Vegas. They sold security devices and systems to hotels and institutions. I discovered some of the things that the sales manager was doing to support the sales people across North America. He himself had never sold the product but was a true professional manager. He knew his job well and what he needed to do to make sure that everyone was equipped to sell.

A common error is promoting a great salesperson to sales manager. Often what happens is the person continues to sell and spends little time on management issues like strategic planning, training, coaching etc.

The next time you are thinking of promoting an employee to a management position follow the steps listed above and make sure you are putting the right person in the job.