Look At Yourself First When Employee Performance Falters

When an employee's performance falls below expectations, the natural reaction is to blame the employee first. Employees are responsible for meeting (or exceeding) expectations and when they don't they are surely doing something wrong, aren't working hard enough or just can't do the job. And with some employees, one or more of these might very well be the case.

But an employee's performance is also tied directly to the quality of management oversight and assistance. The role of a manager is complex. The following list offers an overview of the activities required of a manager in supervising employees:

-Hiring people well suited to the job
-Establishing rapport and trust with employees
-Setting clear, demanding and reasonable expectations for employees
-Communicating effectively on a daily basis
-Training and development of employees
-Planning and defining projects and work
-Enforcing accountability
-Creating an environment where high performance can occur
-Providing feedback about performance to employees
-Coaching and counseling of employees
-Employee discipline

When an employee is struggling, managers should first ask this question; "am I doing my job to the best of my ability?". There are many cases where an ineffective manager has a profound negative impact on one or more of his/her employees. When a manager is ineffective, even a normally high performing employee can be affected in a negative manner.

Looking at the list above, how many of the tasks do you consistently do well? Managing people requires constant attention to your own performance. The trickle down effect of marginal management on employee performance cannot be overstated. But, it is difficult for many managers to admit that they are contributing to an employee's performance problems.

Employees who might ordinarily struggle under a less effective manager sometimes flourish under a manager who consistently does his/her job well. But why? A good manager understands his/her employee's weaknesses and works with them to strengthen those weaknesses. The challenge in managing people is that is takes hard work and a lot of time to do it well. Most managers are unwilling or unable to put in the time and effort required to help employees be as successful as possible. In our opinion, the mark of an effective manager is that they are willing to spend the time necessary to help their employees do their jobs well. They don't immediately dismiss the employee as the problem. Rather they work with them to develop their skills and create an environment where the employees don't feel threatened if they do make a mistake.

Obviously, there are employees who will never be able to the job they are currently attempting to do. But how the manager deals with these employees is critical to the performance of the work unit as well. Too many managers ignore problem employees. Left unchecked, problem employees not only underperform, but they can cause those around them to do so as well. When every attempt has been made to coach and assist an employee to higher levels of performance, but it becomes obvious that the employee just cannot do the job, it's time to deal with that employee either by finding a job they can do well or by by following the prescribed discipline and termination process for your company.

When an employee is struggling to meet expectations, ask why. Look first at yourself. Are you really managing effectively? Use the list above and continually critique yourself in terms of how well you are doing each of the things on that list. Ask yourself if an employee's performance problems could be associated with your ineffectiveness and in what manner. Ask your employees to give you feedback about your performance. Let them do so in a nonthreatening way. Ask your peers to do the same.

Too many organizations force managers to try to do two jobs at once. They are expected, in essence, to do some form of front line or production work, but are expected to effectively manage their employees at the same time. Unfortunately when a manager gets tied down to a desk doing a lot of detail work, he/she simply can't spend enough time ensuring that his/her employees are performing at high levels. This often stems from a desire to save money by forcing the manager to take on tasks that would be better left for a lower level employee. When this occurs, the company actually ends up worse off because the productivity of the work unit suffers due to a lack of appropriate attention from the manager. If the manager has a difficult time delegating work and gets bogged down in details someone else should be handling, he/she can't devote enough time to his/her employees.

To become a more effective manager, constantly self examine your performance. If you are not doing the things that will help make your employees successful, it will be virtually impossible for you to be successful.

High Performers and Your Organization

We define a high performing employee as someone who meets or exceeds reasonable, but demanding expectations on a consistent basis. We are continually amazed at the number of organizations that have an unacceptably low percentage of their total employee base represented by high performers. A significant problem in many organizations is that management overrates the performance of employees. This is significant because it speaks to the quality of management in place as well. By doing an unacceptable job of hiring and developing as many high performers as possible, the organization is put at significant risk of failure or, at the very least, suppressed performance. In many organizations, the percentage of high performers is easily less than 50 percent. And it is not uncommon to find companies with 25 percent or less of the employee base represented by high performers. It is critical for organizations to regularly examine their employees relative to performance. This issue is very often clouded by the fact that management is not heavily represented by high performers. In companies where management understands how to establish accountability for high performance, the percentage of high performers to the total employee base tends to be much higher. However, too many managers are not adept at establishing clear, demanding and reasonable expectations and then following up to ensure that performance is measured against those expectations. Also, too many hiring and promotion decisions are based on improper criteria. There are simply too many employees in many organizations who are not well suited to doing the jobs they currently hold. This is a crucial reason why organizations underperform. It is difficult to get management to look at these issues objectively. A primary reason for this is the fact that too often managers are not well suited to their job of management. We admonish all organizations to look as objectively as possible at the issue of peformance of employees. This requires an introspective look by management as the starting point.

Don't Rationalize Poor Performance

Some managers and owners make excuses when their businesses or operating units don't perform as expected. While there are extenuating circumstances that can affect bottom line results, the reasons for underperforming generally lie in ineffective management. Too often we hear managers rationalizing poor decisions or inaction. In cases where the expectations were unreasonable or a crucual and unforeseen event occurred, a manager has a valid argument as to why performance fell short of expectations. However, in cases where expectations were reasonable and no significant events impacted the ability to perform, a manager is in no position to make excuses for underperforming. Look at your own organization. Are there managers that consistently or even occasionally make excuses for not meeting expectations?

The Struggle Between Efficiency and Effectiveness

Business books, magazines and newsletters are full of recommendations about becoming more efficient. They talk at length about the importance of the bottom line and incremental gains from reengineering and total quality efforts. And they talk about how technology can provide a real boost in efficiency.

But with all this talk about efficiency, are we losing something in terms of being effective? To distinguish between effectiveness and efficiency, a brief definition should help. Effectiveness is doing the right thing. Efficiency is doing things right. These simple definitions point to a clear distinction that has major implications for businesses of all sizes. The implications arise from the difficulty in balancing both efficiency and effectiveness.

With the pressure to constantly be as efficient as possible, an organization can get caught up in focusing too much on reducing process time and/or the number of employees and not enough on what makes sense for the organization. For example, suppose a distribution company decides that it is taking too long to process orders because there is an additional review step in place to ensure that the order is accurate. But often times, orders get backed up slightly for shipping because the people doing the additional accuracy check on outgoing orders fall behind. So the decision is made to eliminate this additional step and at the same time save some money by eliminating two positions. This is done in the name of efficiency because orders will go out faster which has some real merit. But the result of eliminating this additional step is a significant increase in incorrect orders being shipped. The impact of this is additional time dealing with more customer complaints, additional picking and restocking time, additional costs of returned shipments and, above all, customer ill will.

This example illustrates how doing the right thing is often overshadowed by doing things right. What employees often view as being efficient can many times impact the company negatively. This is why it is important for management to create an environment where employees are encouraged to look for ways to become more efficient, but do so without degrading the level of customer service and quality.

Bringing a balance between efficiency and effectiveness is one of the critical jobs of any owner or manager. In the above example, the company might have been realizing a competitive advantage because it was shipping orders with a higher degree of accuracy than its competitors. When it decided to save some money by streamlining a process and eliminating some positions, it lost that competitive advantage. And in terms of saving money, any savings realized from the streamlining were in all likelihood given back several times over.

It is important for businesses to constantly look for ways to do things right....to become more efficient. But it is equally important that decisions along those lines be made by asking questions about the impact on quality, customer service and employee morale. Bad decisions relative to efficiency can very often have a negative effect on all three of these variables.

With regard to technology and efficiency, does the addition of new technology to any process have a positive impact on these variables? Business processes and what's good for the customer should drive the implementation of technology. Technology should not dictate how a process gets defined. Start with the customer and work backwards. Define the process based on the best way to serve the customer and the best way to accomplish tasks. Once the business process is defined, match the technology to the process. When technology is allowed to drive the business, things tend to get forced to fit and the customer, productivity and employee morale with often suffer.

We can safely say that balancing efficiency and effectiveness is not easy. But it is important for organizations to stay focused on the long-term impact of all decisions. Yes, short-term performance is important, but if it takes precedence over long-term viability it could lead to a decline in performance over time.

Deal With Laziness

With productivity being such an important factor in profitability, it is critical that managers and supervisors deal with employees that simply don't work hard enough. Too much time spent on personal phone calls, extended breaks and lunches, slowness in work and visiting too much among co-workers are all things that should be addressed swiftly. An employee must understand the expectation of hard work. When a manager or supervisor ignores "lazy" behavior he/she is essentially endorsing it. Make it clear to all employees what level of work is expected from them and then hold them accountable for achieving that level.

Advantages of HR Technology

A large portion of companies are still using the traditional pen and paper for performance reviews. Companies need to assess the benefits of an online performance management system opposed to the traditional reviews. Below are the benefits that the ReviewSNAP Performance Management System offers.

Real time updates to goals, feedback and reviews:

• If an employees’ goals are changed or feedback is given for an employee it is updated in real time and can be viewed right away. Also, this allows you to keep track of an employees’ progress towards their goals by keeping track of their goals and adding feedback at any time during the review period.

Better and Truer Reviews Can Be Given:

• Rather than taking the chance of basing an employees review for an entire period on recent events only, you can keep better track of their progress, mistakes, etc.
  Automating Your Reviews For More Review Cycles. By automating your reviews, it makes it easier to have more review cycles. Rather, than having to wait for an annual review, because of the annual, manual reviews, which can be a hassle, you have the option to create as many review periods as you wish.

Access to review system from anywhere with Internet access:

• If something came to mind at home or you on a business trip you don’t have to wait to get back to the office to access your system or write a review. If something critical comes to mind about an employee and you want to get it in the review before you forget it, there is no better way than an web based performance management system.
  

Goes GREEN

A big initiative in today's world is to be more "green." Not only is it an initiative outside of the business world, but inside as well. Whether you are trying to use more biofuels, less plastic and paper, this can all be done inside the business world.

One way to help your green initiative is to use ReviewSNAP's Web based performance review system rather than the traditional paper performance reviews. ReviewSNAP requires no paper, only a computer with internet access.

Conduct Effective Performance Reviews

There is an age old process conducted in most organizations, large and small, known as performance review or performance appraisal (the term performance review will be used primarily in this article). The importance of providing feedback to employees cannot be overstated. But doing so in the proper setting, context and manner is critical to carrying out successful performance reviews.

Having a performance review system in place is important for a number of reasons including:

-Enhances coaching and mentoring opportunities for managers and supervisors.
-Clarifies the performance criteria that are important for employees to understand as important in doing their respective jobs.
-Defines a clear basis for wage increases, promotions, disciplinary action, and other important job related issues.
-Reinforces that performance and pay are rationally tied together.
-Serves as motivation to continue to focus on improving performance.
-Brings consistency to the organization in terms of how employees' job performance is measured.
-Creates a means for clear and complete documentation of job performance.
-Helps identify training and development needs.
-Assists in associating company goals and objectives with employee goals/objectives.
-Communicates important information to the employee about how they are perceived relative to the work they do on a daily basis.

All organizations should have some sort of performance management system in place. Many “systems” in place are not well defined and/or they do not address critical performance variables (competencies) commonly associated with work.

Employers should understand that personal biases enter into the overall perceptions about employees. What many managers believe is factual about an employee is often nothing more than their own biased perception of the employee’s performance.

Assessing an employee is sometimes an unfair process. In most organizations, there are often misperceptions about various employees. And unfortunately there are a lot of managers and supervisors who are just not good mentors and coaches and, therefore, the employee does not have the benefit of correcting performance issues prior to their annual performance reviews.

Adding to the problems associated with personal bias, misperceptions, and poor coaching is the fact that many performance review sessions (the actual meetings to review performance) are poorly conducted by the manager.

It is important that reviewing performance be taken seriously because it is a critical feedback mechanism for employees and a chance for managers and employees to share valuable information. But keep in mind that formal performance reviews are not the only time that feedback to employees should be given. Appropriate and timely feedback to employees is important in order to reinforce positive "behaviors" or address negative "behaviors". In short, well managed organizations do not use the performance review as the sole feedback mechanism. There should be regular interaction between manager and employee prior to formal review sessions.

Some organizations choose to use a formal review process more often than annually and that is acceptable and may even be preferable depending on the culture of the particular organization. However, conducting formal reviews too often can dilute the effectiveness of the process so it is important to consider the impact of doing formal reviews more often than once per year.

Typically a more effective approach is to create a culture where regular feedback is provided outside of the formal performance review process. In this scenario managers conduct more informal discussions about training needs, goal achievement, a job particularly well done, performance concerns, etc. as they are needed.

Having periodic discussions about goal achievement is central to a high performance, high accountability culture. These are all important to helping employees achieve their own goals and dreams and to the overall success of the organization.

An effective performance review/appraisal system includes at a minimum:
-A well defined process for documenting performance throughout each review period. This is an important reference tool when it comes time to complete the actual review form.
-Well informed/trained managers/supervisors relative to how to complete review/appraisal forms and how to conduct performance review meetings with the employees.
-A properly prepared review form that includes appropriate and valid competencies for measuring employee performance.
-A valid and appropriate rating mechanism (scale).
-Clearly defined goals for each employee that relate back to organizational goals.
-A clearly defined review period and review process that all employees understand.
-Fairness and equity in the review process.
-Consistency in how employees are evaluated. In other words, minimal or no bias from one employee to another.

Many organizations, large and small, are using what are known as on-demand performance review systems. These are typically secure Internet based systems that allow you to manage all of your performance reviews as well as document performance. ReviewSNAP at www.reviewsnap.com and Success Factors at www.successfactors.com are two such products that are considered excellent performance review systems. One major advantage to these systems is that they do not require you to build or load software on any of your computers. Simply subscribe and login into the system from any computer with Internet access.

To help ensure that your organization has an effective performance review/appraisal system in place, the Performance Review Manual provides a complete guide to developing your performance management system. To learn more about this widely used tool, Click Here.