Upgrade Higher Ed Performance Management by Answering These Three Questions

HR managers in higher education institutions need to find an easy way to streamline the performance management process. But they have the same question we’ve heard from many businesses:

How do we manage performance across a varied workforce when we have practically no budget?

The easiest response might be to just put a paper process in place. Everyone uses Microsoft Word, so it should be pretty easy to get these reviews done. But then managing data collection, confirming reviews have taken place, or even checking that the right forms got to the right people can create administrative chaos.

Who has time for that?

No one, but it’s a very real scenario that these organizations deal with every time there’s a review cycle. When HR managers in higher education institutions and universities finally throw their hands up, it’s time to find another way to get quality performance management, even on a tight budget.

Here are three questions to ask when you’re ready for a better way to manage your performance: 

1.     Can we utilize technology? Today, almost everyone is connected to a computer 40 hours a week. If that’s the case, an online or cloud solution might be exactly what you need. Make it easy for faculty and staff to log in and complete a form online instead of using paper handouts. Things don’t get lost in the shuffle, and you can then track completions. 

2.     Can we transition quickly? It’s not too difficult to imagine that universities are filled with processes that have been in place for years … and no one will change them, even if they’re flawed. Since new programs could cause upset, making sure the transition can happen quickly and cleanly will be important. That means getting all the stakeholders on board, finding a technology with easy implementation processes and having a rollout plan. 

3.     Can we make some room in the budget? Sometimes just looking at the loss of productivity can be enough to secure some spend. Not all technology solutions will use up every dollar in your HR budget. Especially when you need to secure spend approvals beforehand, making the case for the savings (even if there is a cost) will help you get some budget freed up for the solution purchase.

Streamlining your performance management can be easy, but getting your institution or university ready for the change will go a long way toward program success. Answer these questions and get ready to upgrade your own performance management approach.

Three Steps to Apply Your Talents to Goal Setting

As an employee, you can have a lot of power over what your goals look like for the next year. Many companies cascade goals down through the organization, linking individual goals with the overall strategy. Instead of waiting to hear what those goals are, though, you can pull together ways you best contribute to the business.

Here are three steps to follow when creating individual goals that you might bring to your manager:

1.     Tap Into Your Talents and Interests: People perform best when they’re working on what gets them energized and excited. While your job might include not-so-fun tasks (everyone has something administrative to do), make it clear to your manager where you do your best work and where your passions lie. For example, a retail store manager still has to set the schedule every week, but she could also be great at hiring and onboarding new associates. When she thinks about her goals, her talents in hiring and onboarding should be on the list.

2.     Make the Goal Measurable: Before bringing a new goal to a manager, make sure that you’ve thought through how you’re going to measure progress on that goal. Without these metrics, your own manager won’t know if you’ve accomplished that goal, made progress or are behind. When hiring and onboarding store associates, our manager can put some time metrics against her goals: Hire associates within two weeks of opening, associate proficient at point of sale system within two days, and so on.

3.     Bring It Back to the Business: Identifying your new goal isn’t complete until you’ve also included how it relates back to the business. Our store manager might get a lot of fulfillment by getting to focus on hiring and onboarding, but she also needs to say how that would be relevant for the store’s goals or even the company’s success. Her goal could include pulling together best practices for other store managers so all stores improve their hiring and onboarding processes.

Make sure you’re including your manager in the development of these goals, giving them plenty of notice that you want to work on these individual goals. If you surprise them too late, you might not get to focus on these areas. By being proactive, you’re working on things that help you perform better, but also help the performance of the business.

Connect Learning Back to the Job

With the Internet, it’s never been more obvious that the skills you learn in school could drastically change over the years of your professional career. The Internet (as we know it) didn’t exist prior to 1991, yet graduating college students are incredibly savvy about SEO and mobile connectivity.

When you don’t have the option to go back to school, get updates through skills-based learning.

Learning exists to help you do your job better, and learning management systems have matched the most-needed skills with training modules. Instead of classes on topics too vague or high-level to be useful in your daily job, today’s learning dives into the proficiencies that you actually need.  

Here’s how a flexible learning strategy can help you perform better:

·       Learning to update your skills: You might have already learned something once, but your brain fills up fast. If you need a refresher, you should be able to breeze through some short learning modules that help you remember what you covered before. For example, you might have to work on a new machine in the shop, something you’ve done before but it’s been awhile. A quick tutorial will get you up to speed and moving products down the line in no time. 

·       Learning just in time: Usually more tactical, these types of training courses will cover skills you need to perform a function or get you background information when you need it. The idea is that you don’t spend five weeks in classes to get where you need to be. If you’ve got a sales meeting and you’re pitching the most recent updates to a product, just-in-time training should have a short video of the product updates along with some talking points so you don’t sacrifice the sale.

·       Learning for the long term: These types of training courses might include strategic perspectives or behavioral development that you don’t need right away. Learning how to communicate as a manager (when you’re not a manager) will help you practice early in your career, help your soft-skill development and help you better understand the communication techniques your own manager uses.

You can always learn, and unfortunately, the pace of change means you’ll be constantly learning on the job. When you’re in need of some information, check out your company’s learning management system. You could find the answers you need before you have time to ask questions

Different Strokes for Different Folks - Customizing Performance Reviews for You

For performance reviews to be a valuable part of performance management, they have to mean something to the employee, manager and organization. Relevant measures help people understand expectations and plan accordingly.

But what happens when the expectations set are too vague?

People get frustrated. Vague competencies or goals are like telling an employee to “do better.” Do better than what? Do better how? Sure, there might be some general understanding of what “better” might mean, but without specifics, performance won’t follow.

For example, “do better” for a salesperson could mean win more deals. However, winning deals by, say, discounting the product or service not only reduces profitability, it makes it harder for the firm to maintain the value of the service. Other salespeople can’t sell at the set price if a salesperson is undercutting them. So yes, more deals were closed, but at what cost?

Customizing goals and competencies can make it much easier to encourage the behaviors that lead to improved performance. Using customizing features in your performance review systems makes the process more meaningful for everyone.

Here are three ways you can customize your performance reviews:

1.     Change the language: Your company might have its own lingo, so integrating that into your performance review system will help employees relate what they do each day with the appraisal’s measures. It can be as simple as swapping out “customer” with “patient” for hospital performance management, or you can translate all the competencies and goals into your company’s vocabulary. As you use an internal language to customize your company’s appraisal, make sure it’s still clear what’s being measured.

2.     Define the goals: Using specific goals helps employees stay on track with the company’s strategy. To make goals more meaningful, cascade goals down from the business’s strategy through employees at all levels. Help a line manager see just how his efforts will contribute to the business. Then take it a step further and ask that line manager how else he might contribute. He might have a new way to work with suppliers that you might never have known about. His own professional goals would then change a process or service, delivering even more value to the company.

3.     Ask for clarity: Competencies are often built into performance reviews to help measure employee effectiveness, but did anyone ask the employees if the competencies were clear? Competencies can sometimes become too general when leaders want only a few competencies that many employees can be measured against. “Effective communications” can mean something different to lots of people. In some cases, you’ll either need to add definitions to those competencies, or go ahead and make a few versions of the competency so it’s relevant.

Customizing competencies and goals can add work to the performance management process, but the work will be worthwhile. With specific and relevant measures, it’ll be easier to see how well employees are performing and link that to the performance of the business.

You Have To Compensate Employees

You’re probably familiar with the dreaded announcement: No raises this year — again. Announcing that a pay freeze is continuing is messy business. Employees hate to hear it, and managers hate to be the bearer of bad news.

There can be a host of reasons why there isn’t enough money to reward people for their performance. When it comes down to a choice between paying the light bill and giving a bonus, the light bill wins every time.

But if you’re moving into a fourth year of pay freezes, it’s time to find a way to compensate employees for what they’ve done. Compensation isn’t everything, but if basic financial needs aren’t being met, employees can’t give you top performance. Compensation is a type of reward, and rewards show that the company recognizes the difference between great performance and poor performance.

If you’re treating everyone like poor performers by failing to reward them, don’t be surprised when that’s the kind of behavior you get.

Instead, think about how you can make small compensation changes that have a big impact. Try looking at your compensation plan with these ideas in mind:

·       Shake up the budget: Where can you shift some money around? Giving a 5 percent raise to everyone might not be possible, but finding a few dollars for bonuses could help keep your hard workers engaged. This is where you really have to match performance and rewards, because you’ll only have budget for the top performers.  

·       Get consistent: Are you offering new hires competitive salaries while current employees’ pay lags behind? You may not have the budget to bring everyone up to market rates, but make sure there aren’t major discrepancies among similar roles. Help hiring managers understand compensation options and find ways to match internal salaries to preferred rates.

·       Find variety: If you think about compensation as a reward, there are suddenly more options. You can provide managers with flexible funds that can be used for spot rewards — like sending an employee to a conference or taking the team to a congratulatory lunch. Non-cash rewards can’t replace raises, but they can help your people feel appreciated throughout the year.

Just because an employee hasn’t left yet doesn’t mean their loyalty should allow you to hold back on compensation. Budgets are tight, but you should find a way to grant rewards to employees who deserve them. Hopefully, you’ll then drive improved performance, which might result in better opportunities to raise compensation in the future.

Setting Goals That Mean Something

Unless you’re in sales, goals can seem vague and unrealistic. Instead of a clear goal, like increase sales by 5 percent, vague goals take on the similarity of New Year’s resolutions — be a better team member, communicate more frequently, and focus on personal development. No wonder most resolutions get dropped before February.

Instead of generalizing goals, get really specific. Set both quantifiable and qualitative goals that mean something to employees.

·       Find the numbers. Most employees’ duties can be measured in a quantifiable way. Some metrics are easy (sales), and some are going to be a little trickier (customer satisfaction). For each goal an employee has, make sure there’s a way to measure it and track it with numbers.

·       Check the numbers. Do some digging to make sure those metrics reflect what’s important to the business. For example, number of leads can be important for a sales role, but converting those leads to sales is even more important.

·       Narrow qualitative goals. How people do their jobs is just as important as hitting milestones. Qualitative goals can naturally lead to vague descriptions, but you can help employees narrow those goals to specific desired outcomes. Instead of learn to write better, make the goal more specific, like learn three writing techniques used by top industry writers and apply them to company materials.  

·       Ask your employees. Your employees probably have a good idea of measures that accurately reflect success on the job. Set goals together so that business gets taken care of and the employee is part of the goal-setting process.

·       Follow up. Progress reports are important to help people not just follow goals as well as meet them. Without specificity, it’s hard to know an employee’s progress or if something has impeded the completion of the goal. By following up on a regular basis, goals can be adjusted and obstacles can be removed. Both the employee and the business will be better for it.

Spend time on goal setting and make sure the goals you set are meaningful to the employee and to the business. Articulating what’s expected early on means people stay on track. And by keeping your employees involved, you’re likely to see high performance and great success.

Giving High Performers a Runway

Companies have to make lots of tough decisions when it comes to developing their people. When money is tight, it’s easy to focus on developing high-potential employees. After all, they’ll make a huge difference for your company in the future.

But you don’t want to think too far ahead and forget about today. A pool of very important people keeps your company running so that it’s there in the future. These are your high performers.

In our most recent white paper, “Giving High Performers a Runway,” we take a look at how you can get the most from your high-performing talent. When you download the paper, you’ll learn:

·       Why high performers need a runway

·       How to develop high performers for team success

·       Ways the company benefits overall from strong high-performer development

We want to help you improve the performance of your organization and your people. Count on Reviewsnap for expertise on how you can start seeing benefits when you let your high performers fly.

Download your complimentary copy of “Giving High Performers a Runway” today.

Corporate Learning: Training Doesn’t Have to Be Old School

Corporate learning programs get a bad rap because people assume you just sit through an endless string of boring training sessions. How can employees learn when they have to suffer through 10-hour sessions with instructors akin to Charlie Brown’s teacher? Whaa-whaa-whaa.   

Your employees already went to school, so now’s the time to change the way your company approaches learning.

Beef Up Corporate Learning

“Beef up” doesn’t mean “add more of the same.” We’re talking about making the learning more meaningful. When corporate learning can be integrated with development plans, employees know there’s a reason why they might need to attend training or complete a learning activity in the first place.

Look to diversify your current learning offerings. You could use online learning modules that employees can complete on their own, saving you the time and expense of trying to get everyone in a room. Videos can provide just-in-time training when an employee needs a refresher, and a wiki can include the most up-to-date information on a project.

Don’t forget about the topics. If your learning library only offers training on mastering Excel or Word, your employees could be missing out. Ask around — what do your employees wish they knew? There are going to be a number of missed learning opportunities for a variety of situations. For example, an employee traveling overseas on the company’s behalf for the first time could watch a quick video on how to prepare for travel, how to behave in the country, and how to manage time and expenses.

Don’t Make Learning a Distraction

When corporate learning programs force employees to put their jobs on hold, everyone sees the drop in productivity. Instead, learning should help people improve their skills without pulling them away from their daily tasks for too long.

Homework takes on a new meaning with corporate learning. Instead of theoretical pre-work, have employees bring on-the-job challenges to training sessions. Activities should focus on improving the employee’s job performance instead of completing exercises that appear irrelevant. By focusing on job-related topics, employees could end up developing templates and processes you wouldn’t have known you needed if you’d stayed in the theoretical.

There are many options for learning programs and technology on the market. Adding modules or updating systems might be expensive, but if you build in proper tracking, the investment is worth it. When you combine tracking with a beefed-up program that doesn’t distract employees, you will make your corporate learning program a success.

Use 360 Degree Reviews to Help Employees Process Feedback

Employees don’t like being railroaded with feedback about poor performance. If it’s the first time they’ve heard the news or they only ever hear it from one person, it can feel like an attack. The employee can’t focus on a development plan when he is still trying to figure out where the negative feedback came from.

Sometimes, employees need time to process.

Using 360 degree reviews as part of your performance management process can help employees absorb feedback before coming to a performance review meeting. Here’s how you give employees room to process and prepare:

·       Conduct the 360 degree review. Help the employee pick a 360 degree “A” Team so that the review paints a complete picture. Also, make sure the review is done with plenty of time to capture feedback and get the report to the employee.

·       Review the feedback report. Some 360 degree review tools have reports that don’t require a manager or HR professional to walk through the report with an employee, but doing that might still be helpful. This report review meeting focuses only on the feedback report and helping the employee process the information.

·       Allow a little time to process. Let the employee take the report and review it for a few days. This gives the employee time to form questions and to understand the feedback, and it also gives the employee time to feel whatever emotions might have come up from the feedback.

·       Prepare for the performance review meeting. Both you (the manager) and the employee need to prepare for the review meeting. The employee can ask questions related to the 360 degree review report and should come with ideas on how to start improving. And you should come with a working development plan so that together, you can determine what the employee’s next steps will be.

As a manager, you should be giving feedback year-round so you don’t surprise an employee. Sometimes there are going to be surprises. By using 360 degree reviews, you give employees a report they themselves can review. You also empower employees to be part of the development process, encouraging them to contribute their own ideas. Employees who take ownership of their development will be more invested in their jobs. You then improve performance and engagement, something that can help your team continue to succeed.

Giving Feedback: When Your Gen Yer Isn’t No. 1

Gen Y stereotypes indicate that this group of young employees demands feedback but can’t take criticism. It’s always easy to tell your employee when he’s a rock star, but what do you do if he’s not? You don’t want your performance review meeting to result in shouting or crying because the news came as a surprise to your employee.

Avoid a messy performance review by following these tips:

·       Have your Gen Yer take an active role in preparing for the review: Don’t leave the discussion up to chance. Ask your employee to reflect on the last year’s successes and challenges. Then take it a step further and ask for areas where the employee fell short; have him articulate what he would or could have done to make things turn out better. This approach separates personal responsibility from situational circumstances.

·       Prepare for the review yourself: It’s really easy to remember the project that bombed or the client who yelled. But reviews are about both the good and the bad. Make sure you’ve got the good things prepared and can explain to your Gen Y employee why he handled things so well in those instances.

·       Be clear about development opportunities: There’s a saying, “Don’t be part of the problem, be part of the solution.” When employees have a bad performance review and walk out knowing they need to fix things but don’t have any idea where to start, managers aren’t being part of the solution. Find out what development programs and resources are available and help the employee make a concrete plan for improvement. Get your Gen Yer to be involved as part of the solution, too. There could be social training tools or local networking events that can help your employee get the skills he needs.

·       Check in frequently: Many Gen Yers have a hard time with feedback because it can easily feel like an ambush. If it’s the first time your employee hears about his weakness, he’s going to wonder about all those times he could have course-corrected. Set up progress checks at regular intervals (at least quarterly) so you both can mark whether there’s been improvement.

Employees aren’t always going to be on the rock star path. Make sure to check with HR around performance management protocols, but do what you can to help make sure the employee gets plenty of notice when there’s a problem. You might find that things are easier to correct simply by having open lines of communication.