Everybody knows employees need job feedback. Yet most employers don’t provide enough of it. Neither do they provide the type of feedback that explains what people have to do to improve. If they are to be useful, employee reviews have to include certain elements. There have to be expectations the employee can understand, meetings to keep the employee on track, and an annual review that goes in one of three directions depending on how good or bad the performance has been.
Countable expectations
The process has to start with performance expectations. Many employers never lay out expectations and just leave people in the dark about what they need to do to succeed. But to get the performance it wants, the firm has to outline what it expects each employee to do. Use the job description as a compass and tell the employee what the expectations are for each item. Make the expectations objective so they can be measured. The more measurable they are, the more the firm can help staff change their behavior. Not all expectations can be measurable, but at a minimum, half of them should be.
Don’t say, for example, that the employee has to be timely in making follow-up phone calls to clients to gauge satisfaction. What does timely mean? Say instead that the employee has to complete X% of the calls within a certain time period. That’s countable.
A good way to determine the expectations is to look at what the top employees have done in the past. For example, if the best employee made 80% of the follow-up calls within a week, that’s a good level to set.
Be wary of subjective words. Shows good stewardship gives the employee nothing to go by. There’s no way to determine whether this year’s stewardship is better or worse than last year’s. The same is true for runs effective meetings or communicates effectively with peers. It’s not possible to say whether somebody is or isn’t effective, because there’s no standard to follow. With an objective measuring system, things are countable. It’s possible to see the employee’s improvement—or lack of it—each year.
Lots of little meetings
With expectations in hand, meet briefly and often with staff throughout the year to track their progress and see what things are affecting their ability to perform well. That way, their year-end evaluations will never be a surprise.
All that’s needed are informal meetings—weekly, if possible—where the administrator asks things such as, are you able to meet your expectations? do you have all the tools you need? do you need any training? These 10-minute talks are conversational, not confrontational, and therefore take the anxiety out of the review for the employee—and for the administrator. They open the lines of communication and keep employee and administrator on the same page about the performance.
More meetings at the quarter
Once a quarter, have more formal meetings to discuss the level of success. For example, if an expectation is to call 80% of the clients within some time frame, count the calls and see if that’s being achieved. If it isn’t, decide what changes need to be made to get the employee on track. At each meeting, review the performance for the year to date so that by annual review time the employee has already had a three-quarters look at what’s going on.
Culminating in the annual review
For the annual review, there are three types of discussions to hold, all depending on the employee’s performance level.
The first is for the high performers, or the top 30% of the staff in both performance and attitude. There, the conversation focuses on making them feel good about what they do and what they will be doing the next year. The goal is to keep those people on board.
Praise the work. And along with that, outline the firm’s plans for the next year. Making them privy to that information is a way of showing them that they are part of the organization and that they contribute to the firm’s success.
Then don’t mince words. Ask “what can we do for you so that you never want to leave?” Surprisingly, the answer will likely not be more money. Most people want things that will help them grow in their jobs such as more training and responsibility.
The second type of review discussion is for the middle performers, and those will make up about 60% of the staff.
With them, don’t talk about the firm’s direction, and don’t ask what the firm can do to keep them around. They haven’t earned that. What they have earned is a positive “support-coach-support” conversation:
Support: “These are the positive things you have done.”
Coach: “Now here are a few areas where I think you can do better.”
Support: “Let’s review again the things you are doing well.”
The third discussion type is for the low performers, and it’s an unpleasant one because those are the people who are sucking the life out of the firm every day.
Tell them what part of their performance is unacceptable and how that performance is harming the firm and the other staff. Explain what needs to be done to improve it, and what’s going to happen if they don’t shape up.
Set a time limit for the improvements. That will keep the poor performance from going on without change.
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