Increasingly, human resources departments are utilizing powerful metrics to determine the productivity of companies’ workforces. A relatively new concept, the application of metrics to an employee base is surprisingly effective not only in developing a clear picture of current performance levels, but also enhancing performance in the workplace. That’s because once they are held directly accountable for their output levels, employees are more likely to produce results more effectively.
But how, exactly, are metrics to be used? Interestingly, quantifying the results of employees’ efforts comes from a system that everybody is quite familiar with – academic grade. In addition to grades, the scorecard has come into prominence in the human resources sector only after it was proven to be effective in providing accurate numbers for company performance.
Now, in the workplace, metrics evaluation tools that have typically assigned to the accounting and overall management endeavors have had great success in their recent application to human resources departments.
By utilizing both rating and ranking systems, a human resources team can determine the metrics of employee performance through simple arithmetic. The tricky part of the process begins when deciding what, exactly to begin measuring.
That’s why the scorecard system includes a wide variety of features that extend far beyond the over-simplified input-output model. Indeed, when considering that human resources deals with the business of people, the equation naturally becomes a bit more complex.
So while one of the key measurements in the metrics evaluation process includes productivity as a function of training – for example, how much return on investment one can get from an employee after 6 months of training – there are other factors to consider. One of these happens to involve the pace at which an employee acquires the knowledge and skills necessary for the workplace. If an employee with no prior industry experience can quickly excel to the level of a five-year veteran, then such a metric should not be overlooked.
Article by : http://www.hrvillage.com/human-resources
Showing posts with label Employee Performance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Employee Performance. Show all posts
Monday, August 6, 2007
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Employee Performance Appraisal — An Ideal System
Creating a Link Between Company Success and Employee Accountability
In America’s best-run and most-admired organizations, employee performance appraisal is a vital and vigorous management tool. No other management process has as much influence on individuals’ careers and work lives. Used well, employee performance appraisal is the most powerful instrument that organizations have to mobilize the energy of every employee in the enterprise toward the achievement of strategic goals. Employee performance appraisal can focus each person’s attention on the company’s mission, vision and values. And ideally, the process can answer the two fundamental questions that every single person in the organization wants the answers to: What do you expect of me? And How am I doing?
But most folks scoff at the idea that there might be a perfect system for doing employee performance appraisal. They think that since their organization is “unique,” then their system for analyzing employee performance must be unique, too. How foolish.
Don’t scoff — there is an ideal method for the assessment process. In organizations that take employee performance appraisal seriously and use the process well, the system functions as an on-going process – not merely an annual event – by following a four-phase model.
Phase 1 — Employee Performance Planning
At the beginning of the year, the manager meets with each person for discussion on the planning piece of the employee performance appraisal process. In this hour-long session they discuss the “how” and the “what” of the job:
How the person will do the job (the behaviors and competencies expected of the company’s members), and
What results the person will achieve over the next twelve months (the key responsibilities of the person’s job and the goals and projects the person will work on).
They also discuss the individual’s development plans. This discussion immediately generates improved employee performance because people know exactly what’s expected of them. And as the manager, you have just earned the right to hold people accountable at the end of the year by making your expectations of them clear from the start.
Phase 2 — Employee Performance Execution
Over the course of the year, employee performance should be focused on achieving the goals, objectives and key responsibilities of the job. The manager provides coaching and feedback to the individual to increase the probability of success and creates the conditions that motivate and resolve any performance problems that arise.
Midway through the year — perhaps even more frequently — they meet to review the individual’s progress toward the plans and goals discussed in the employee performance planning meeting. And the employee is responsible for certain elements of that progress – seeking out coaching and asking for feedback are two key examples.
Phase 3 — Employee Performance Assessment
As the time for the formal employee performance appraisal approaches, the manager reflects on how well the subordinate has performed over the course of the year, assembles the various forms and paperwork that the organization provides to make this assessment, and fills them out. The manager may also recommend a change in the individual’s compensation based on the quality of the individual’s work.
Best practice calls for the appraiser’s boss to review the completed assessment form before discussing it with the assessed employee. One key here is not falling victim to the “myth of quantifiability” — the erroneous belief that in order to be objective you’ve got to have numerical data to prove your assessments. Nonsense! An employee performance appraisal is a record of a manager’s opinion of an employee’s quality of work, so don’t shirk from candidly providing that opinion.
Phase 4 — Employee Performance Review
The manager and the subordinate meet, usually for about an hour. The employee performance appraisal form is reviewed with the self-appraisal that the individual created assessing her own performance. The manager and employee talk honestly about how well she performed over the past twelve months: Strengths, weaknesses, successes and areas needing improvement. At the end of the review meeting they set a date to meet again to hold an employee performance planning discussion for the upcoming twelve months, starting the process anew.
This four-phase performance appraisal process not only transforms employee performance management from an annual event to an on-going cycle, it tightly links the performance of each organization member with the mission and values of the company as a whole. And that’s the real purpose of employee performance appraisal in the organization. The real value is focusing everyone’s attention on what is genuinely important — the achievement of the organization’s strategic goals through demonstration of the company’s vision and values in each employee’s day-to-day behavior.
About Dick Grote (HTML)
Dick Grote has been a management consultant for almost thirty years, specializing exclusively in the field of employee performance appraisal and management. As a consultant, he has created employee performance management systems for several hundred of the world’s best known and most respected companies, including Texas Instruments, JCPenney, Miller Brewing Company, American Airlines, Macy’s, Raytheon, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, and Herman Miller. His company, Grote Consulting, specializes in employee performance appraisal, employee improvement and talent management.
For more information about Dick Grote and Grote Consulting, visit: http://www.groteconsulting.com/
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In America’s best-run and most-admired organizations, employee performance appraisal is a vital and vigorous management tool. No other management process has as much influence on individuals’ careers and work lives. Used well, employee performance appraisal is the most powerful instrument that organizations have to mobilize the energy of every employee in the enterprise toward the achievement of strategic goals. Employee performance appraisal can focus each person’s attention on the company’s mission, vision and values. And ideally, the process can answer the two fundamental questions that every single person in the organization wants the answers to: What do you expect of me? And How am I doing?
But most folks scoff at the idea that there might be a perfect system for doing employee performance appraisal. They think that since their organization is “unique,” then their system for analyzing employee performance must be unique, too. How foolish.
Don’t scoff — there is an ideal method for the assessment process. In organizations that take employee performance appraisal seriously and use the process well, the system functions as an on-going process – not merely an annual event – by following a four-phase model.
Phase 1 — Employee Performance Planning
At the beginning of the year, the manager meets with each person for discussion on the planning piece of the employee performance appraisal process. In this hour-long session they discuss the “how” and the “what” of the job:
How the person will do the job (the behaviors and competencies expected of the company’s members), and
What results the person will achieve over the next twelve months (the key responsibilities of the person’s job and the goals and projects the person will work on).
They also discuss the individual’s development plans. This discussion immediately generates improved employee performance because people know exactly what’s expected of them. And as the manager, you have just earned the right to hold people accountable at the end of the year by making your expectations of them clear from the start.
Phase 2 — Employee Performance Execution
Over the course of the year, employee performance should be focused on achieving the goals, objectives and key responsibilities of the job. The manager provides coaching and feedback to the individual to increase the probability of success and creates the conditions that motivate and resolve any performance problems that arise.
Midway through the year — perhaps even more frequently — they meet to review the individual’s progress toward the plans and goals discussed in the employee performance planning meeting. And the employee is responsible for certain elements of that progress – seeking out coaching and asking for feedback are two key examples.
Phase 3 — Employee Performance Assessment
As the time for the formal employee performance appraisal approaches, the manager reflects on how well the subordinate has performed over the course of the year, assembles the various forms and paperwork that the organization provides to make this assessment, and fills them out. The manager may also recommend a change in the individual’s compensation based on the quality of the individual’s work.
Best practice calls for the appraiser’s boss to review the completed assessment form before discussing it with the assessed employee. One key here is not falling victim to the “myth of quantifiability” — the erroneous belief that in order to be objective you’ve got to have numerical data to prove your assessments. Nonsense! An employee performance appraisal is a record of a manager’s opinion of an employee’s quality of work, so don’t shirk from candidly providing that opinion.
Phase 4 — Employee Performance Review
The manager and the subordinate meet, usually for about an hour. The employee performance appraisal form is reviewed with the self-appraisal that the individual created assessing her own performance. The manager and employee talk honestly about how well she performed over the past twelve months: Strengths, weaknesses, successes and areas needing improvement. At the end of the review meeting they set a date to meet again to hold an employee performance planning discussion for the upcoming twelve months, starting the process anew.
This four-phase performance appraisal process not only transforms employee performance management from an annual event to an on-going cycle, it tightly links the performance of each organization member with the mission and values of the company as a whole. And that’s the real purpose of employee performance appraisal in the organization. The real value is focusing everyone’s attention on what is genuinely important — the achievement of the organization’s strategic goals through demonstration of the company’s vision and values in each employee’s day-to-day behavior.
About Dick Grote (HTML)
Dick Grote has been a management consultant for almost thirty years, specializing exclusively in the field of employee performance appraisal and management. As a consultant, he has created employee performance management systems for several hundred of the world’s best known and most respected companies, including Texas Instruments, JCPenney, Miller Brewing Company, American Airlines, Macy’s, Raytheon, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, and Herman Miller. His company, Grote Consulting, specializes in employee performance appraisal, employee improvement and talent management.
For more information about Dick Grote and Grote Consulting, visit: http://www.groteconsulting.com/
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