Performance Management Process Checklist

Performance appraisals, performance reviews, appraisal forms, whatever you want to call them, let's call them gone. As a stand-alone, annual assault, a performance appraisal is universally disliked and avoided. After all, how many people in your organization want to hear that they were less than perfect last year? How many managers want to face the arguments and diminished morale that can result from the performance appraisal process?

How many supervisors feel that their time is well-spent professionally to document and provide proof to support their feedback - all year long? Plus, the most important outputs for the performance appraisal, from each person's job, may not be defined or measurable in your current work system. Make the appraisal system one step harder to manage and tie the employee's salary increase to their numeric rating.

If the true goal of the performance appraisal is employee development and organizational improvement, consider moving to a performance management system. Place the focus on what you really want to create in your organization - performance management and development. As part of that system, you will want to use this checklist to guide your participation in the performance management and development process. You can also use this checklist to help you in a more traditional performance appraisal process.

In a recent Human Resources Forum poll, 16% of the people responding have no performance appraisal system at all. Supervisory opinions, provided once a year, are the only appraisal process for 56% of the respondents. Another 16% described their appraisals as based solely on supervisor opinions, but administered more than once a year.

If you follow this checklist, I am convinced you will offer a performance management and development system that will significantly improve the appraisal process you currently manage. Staff will feel better about participating and the performance management system may even positively affect - performance.

Much work is invested, on the front end, to improve a traditional employee appraisal process. In fact, managers can feel as if the new process is too time consuming. Once the foundation of developmental goals is in place, however, time to administer the system decreases. Each of these steps is taken with the participation and cooperation of the employee, for best results.

Define the purpose of the job, job duties, and responsibilities.
Define performance goals with measurable outcomes.
Define the priority of each job responsibility and goal.
Define performance standards for key components of the job.
Hold interim discussions and provide feedback about employee performance, preferably daily, summarized and discussed, at least, quarterly. (Provide positive and constructive feedback.)
Maintain a record of performance through critical incident reports. (Jot notes about contributions or problems throughout the quarter, in an employee file.)
Provide the opportunity for broader feedback. Use a 360 degree performance feedback system that incorporates feedback from the employee's peers, customers, and people who may report to him.
Develop and administer a coaching and improvement plan if the employee is not meeting expectations.Schedule the Performance Development Planning (PDP) meeting and define pre-work with the staff member to develop the performance development plan (PDP).
The staff member reviews personal performance, documents self-assessment comments and gathers needed documentation, including 360 degree feedback results, when available.
The supervisor prepares for the PDP meeting by collecting data including work records, reports, and input from others familiar with the staff person’s work.
Both examine how the employee is performing against all criteria, and think about areas for potential development.
Develop a plan for the PDP meeting which includes answers to all questions on the performance development tool with examples, documentation and so on.Establish a comfortable, private setting and rapport with the staff person.
Discuss and agree upon the objective of the meeting, to create a performance development plan.
The staff member discusses the achievements and progress he has accomplished during the quarter.
The staff member identifies ways in which he would like to further develop his professional performance, including training, assignments, new challenges and so on.
The supervisor discusses performance for the quarter and suggests ways in which the staff member might further develop his performance.
Add the supervisor's thoughts to the employee's selected areas of development and improvement.
Discuss areas of agreement and disagreement, and reach consensus.
Examine job responsibilities for the coming quarter and in general.
Agree upon standards for performance for the key job responsibilities.
Set goals for the quarter.
Discuss how the goals support the accomplishment of the organization's business plan, the department's objectives and so on.
Agree upon a measurement for each goal.
Assuming performance is satisfactory, establish a development plan with the staff person, that helps him grow professionally in ways important to him.
If performance is less than satisfactory, develop a written performance improvement plan, and schedule more frequent feedback meetings. Remind the employee of the consequences connected with continued poor performance.
The supervisor and employee discuss employee feedback and constructive suggestions for the supervisor and the department.
Discuss anything else the supervisor or employee would like to discuss, hopefully, maintaining the positive and constructive environment established thus far, during the meeting.
Mutually sign the performance development tool to indicate the discussion has taken place.
End the meeting in a positive and supportive manner. The supervisor expresses confidence that the employee can accomplish the plan and that the supervisor is available for support and assistance.
Set a time-frame for formal follow up, generally quarterly.If a performance improvement plan was necessary, follow up at the designated times.
Follow up with performance feedback and discussions regularly throughout the quarter. (An employee should never be surprised about the content of feedback at the performance development meeting.)
The supervisor needs to keep commitments relative to the agreed upon development plan, including time needed away from the job, payment for courses, agreed upon work assignments and so on.
The supervisor needs to act upon the feedback from departmental members and let staff members know what has changed, based upon their feedback.
Forward appropriate documentation to the Human Resources office and retain a copy of the plan for easy access and referral.

What do you think? Share what you do in your organization for performance management and appraisal. Talk to the HR community in the HR Community Connection Forum.

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3 More Tips for Team Building

In the first part of this article, three tips for effective team building were presented. In the second, six tips for team building were provided. Here are three more tips for effective team building.

Consequences: Do team members feel responsible and accountable for team achievements? Are rewards and recognition supplied when teams are successful? Is reasonable risk respected and encouraged in the organization? Do team members fear reprisal? Do team members spend their time finger pointing rather than resolving problems? Is the organization designing reward systems that recognize both team and individual performance? Is the organization planning to share gains and increased profitability with team and individual contributors? Can contributors see their impact on increased organization success?
Coordination: Are teams coordinated by a central leadership team that assists the groups to obtain what they need for success? Have priorities and resource allocation been planned across departments? Do teams understand the concept of the internal customer—the next process, anyone to whom they provide a product or a service? Are cross-functional and multi-department teams common and working together effectively? Is the organization developing a customer-focused process-focused orientation and moving away from traditional departmental thinking?
Cultural Change: Does the organization recognize that the team-based, collaborative, empowering, enabling organizational culture of the future is different than the traditional, hierarchical organization it may currently be? Is the organization planning to or in the process of changing how it rewards, recognizes, appraises, hires, develops, plans with, motivates and manages the people it employs?

Does the organization plan to use failures for learning and support reasonable risk? Does the organization recognize that the more it can change its climate to support teams, the more it will receive in pay back from the work of the teams?
Read more about culture change.

Spend time and attention on each of these twelve tips to ensure your work teams contribute most effectively to your business success. Your team members will love you, your business will soar, and empowered people will "own" and be responsible for their work processes. Can your work life get any better than this?

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Why Use a New Employee Welcome Letter?

A welcome letter to a new employee who has accepted your job offer confirms the employee's decision to accept the position. The welcome letter helps the new employee feel wanted and welcomed. Depending on the goal of your new employee welcome letter, this sample gives you a template to follow.

Use this template to form the basis for your own company new employee welcome letter. Not convinced you need a welcome letter? Consider these reasons.

The new employee welcome letter accomplishes these goals as part of your new employee welcome process.

Reinforces your commitment to and satisfaction with your choice to the new employee and makes him or her feel valued by the new employer. Every new employee wants to feel welcomed and wanted by their new employer. This enhances their expectation of their ability to succeed in the new job.
Reiterates start date, start time, business dress code and other details that the new employee needs to know. The welcome letter confirms what the new employee is expected to do on the first day of employment. This saves the new employee some feelings of insecurity and avoids misunderstandings.
May provide the opportunity for Human Resources to send, in advance, some of the benefit forms and other employment forms so the new employee can review and fill them out with a partner or spouse.
Sending the employee handbook and other policies and procedures in advance, for the new employee's review, avoids the impression that the first day was all paperwork and HR orientation. Paperwork is not the most stimulating component of an employee's first day.
Reminds the supervisor to review the new employee orientation plan and ensures that none of the top ten ways to turn off a new employee occur. Ensures that the employee's workstation and other equipment and software needed for immediate productivity are ready and available.
Sends the message that you are a class act as an employer: organized, trustworthy, welcoming, and prepared.

The supervisor of the position should always send a new employee welcome letter to encourage a successful reporting relationship from the start. Human Resources may also send a new employee welcome letter, for any of the purposes detailed above, but the HR letter should be in addition to the letter from the position's supervisor.

The new employee welcome letter is a prime opportunity to welcome your new employees in a memorable, remarkable manner. Don't miss the opportunity to continue making a favorable first impression.

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10 Tips to Make Training and Development Work

How much money did your organization invest last year in training and development that failed to provide the results you sought? You are not alone if employee training classes rarely resulted in the transfer of immediately useful information to your workplace.

Real employee behavioral change, based on the training content, is even harder to demonstrate in most organizations. Discouraging? You bet. So what's an organization to do to ensure employee training transfer to the workplace?

You can create a training and developemnt support process that will ensure that the employee training you do works. You can make training and development more effective within your organization. These ten suggestions and approaches will make your employee training more effective and transferable; their application will result in measurable differences to your bottom line performance.

This article is the first of a three-part series about making employee training transfer to the workplace and produce the results you need for your organization. The second article explores actual processes and activities within the employee training session that help people obtain useable skills for workplace application. The third article helps your organization support people as they apply the skills from the employee training and use the information in your real-time workplace.

You can do the following in advance of the employee training session to increase the likelihood that the training you do will actually transfer to the workplace.

Six More Training Transfer Tips and a Case Study

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Phrases for Performance Reviews and Other...

Employees need feedback. They want to know how they are doing and if they are meeting their manager’s expectations. Feedback is fun when you can offer praise and satisfaction. It is more challenging when you need to discuss improving performance.

Organizations hold a performance review to provide feedback, encourage employee development, and assess employee progress and contribution. Whether an employee is meeting and exceeding job expectations is a critical component of the performance review feedback.

A formal performance review challenges the manager’s communication skills because the employee understands that the performance review will affect his compensation. This can cause conflict and hurt feelings.

Regardless of how your organization practices performance feedback, when you need to hold a difficult conversation, these phrases and approaches will help.

This communication is easy, but you can improve its impact and affect. Mention why and give examples of the reasons why you rated the employee’s performance outstanding. The employee will learn from your examples and you can encourage her to do more of the actions that you identified as noteworthy.

You are performing and meeting the expectations of your job requirements. You have the opportunity to improve your performance and aim to become an outstanding contributor. These are the areas that need your attention.

Your performance qualifies you for a raise because you are successfully carrying out your most important job requirements. I’d like to see improvement in these areas.

You have said that your goal is to earn the largest possible pay increase each year. You need to improve your current performance to accomplish your goal. Let’s talk about the areas in which you have the greatest opportunity for improvement.

We’ve discussed your performance during our weekly meetings. It is not improving and it’s time to talk about a plan of action. In our company, all employees are expected to perform, at a minimum, their job expectations.

These are the key areas of your performance that need improvement before I can determine that your performance is meeting minimum job expectations.

You are not performing your minimum job expectations that we discussed for the year. Somehow I am not communicating this information clearly so that you understand the implications of your continued poor performance. I’ve decided that a performance improvement plan in which we set goals, make agreements, set deadlines and due dates, and meet frequently to assess progress, is our next step.

Do not continue to repeat the same words over and over when an employee does not seem to understand what you are trying to communicate. Find different approaches to saying the same thing and hope that one of them will clearly communicate your concerns. (Sometimes a lack of clarity signals disagreement.)

Tell the employee that you are open to any questions that might help clarify the points he doesn’t understand.

Ask the employee to summarize his understanding of your key areas of concern. (You can determine what is not understood and how far apart you are in communicating.)

When you have tried to clearly communicate the problems you note with an employee’s performance, and the employee disagrees, questioning is one recommended approach.

Can you provide examples that will show me what is wrong about my assessment of your performance?
What do you think that I am misunderstanding about the performance that I have observed regularly this quarter?

The feedback that I have received from your coworkers, team members, and other managers is consistent with my observations. Consequently, I know that you disagree with my assessment, but I haven’t heard anything today that makes me want to alter it. For now, my assessment will stand. I will be happy to discuss your performance further in a month at our weekly meeting after I have seen evidence of improvement in these areas…

Say to the employee, John, will you summarize our discussion here today so that I know that you and I are on the same page?

I am confident that you will be able to make the changes that we have discussed today.

I believe that you will be able to make these improvements because you have the talent and skills needed for better than average performance. I am available to help you when you encounter barriers to your success or if you feel you will miss a due date or deadline. Just let me knoiw that the slipping is occurring as soon as you are aware of it.

Let’s make a plan together for how you will pursue these improvements. I want to have feedback points frequently enough so that we know when a problem is occurring.

Take the time between now and Thursday to come up with a plan to make these improvements. On Thursday, you and I can agree on the goals and timelines for the plan. I’ll think about it also and come prepared with my ideas, too.

Do you agree that this is an achievable plan?

We have put this plan together. I am confident that you will be able to accomplish the needed improvements within the timelines we developed. Do you agree? What concerns might you have that we can talk about today?

Based on your performance this year, I have determined that you are not eligible for a salary increase.

Because you have not achieved your job expectations, you will not receive a raise this cycle. I will be happy to discuss this further in 4-6 months after I have seen sustained improvement in your performance.

State the amount of the salary increase and the amount of pay that the increase will bring in the employee’s paycheck with new salary increase. Percentages are not motivating in all cases. Sure the employee can do the math, and likely will, but your goal is to make the employee aware of the change in pay.

Your salary increase is $500 bringing your total salary to $55,000.00.

When you communicate clearly and take care to avoid a defensive reaction, you can express your expectations in a way that the employee hears. You can speak so that employee listens, comprehends and improves. And, isn't that the goal of all of this?

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Sample Letter of Termination for Cause

Need a sample letter to use when you terminate an employee's employment for a reason? This sample letter of termination states the cause and confirms that the employment relationship is terminated. Use this sample letter of termination as an example when you write your own termination letters.

You can send a letter of termination to the employee following the termination meeting with return receipt requested, or you can hand the letter to the employee at the end of the meeting. It should be printed on company stationery with the official signature of the employee's manager.

Under normal circumstances, the manager or supervisor and a representative from Human Resources will hold the termination meeting with the employee. This meeting to terminate the employee for cause should occur as soon as the organization has the information, documentation, and proof necessary to fire the employee. The letter of termination summarizes what was said at the meeting.

Date

Mr. John Sanchez

20507 Valley Rd.

Cedar Bluffs, NE 68015

Dear John,

This letter confirms our discussion today that your employment with Sealy Company is terminated for cause, effective immediately.

Your employment, as discussed during the termination meeting, is terminated because you committed company personnel and resources to a client after being told by both your manager and your department head, that the company would not provide these resources nor seek a relationship with that potential client.

Your subsequent commitment of resources, after being told explicitly not to commit the resources, was a gross violation of company policy and our code of conduct.

In attempting to cover up your commitment, you tried to involve several other employees in your deception. This is behavior that cannot be countenanced and it also violates our code of conduct.

Payment for your accrued PTO will be included in your final paycheck* which you will receive on our regular pay day, Friday. We can mail your final paycheck to your home or you can make arrangements with your supervisor to pick it up.

You can expect a separate benefits status letter that will outline the status of your benefits upon termination. The letter will include information about your eligibility for Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) continuation of group health coverage.

We have received from you your security swipe card, your office keys, and the company owned laptop and cell phone at the termination meeting.

You will need to keep the company informed of your contact information so that we are able to provide information you may need in the future such as your W-2 form.

Please let us know if we can assist you during your transition.

Regards,

Name of Manager or Company Owner

*Please note that laws regarding the final paycheck may vary from state to state and country to country.

Disclaimer: Please note that Susan makes every effort to offer accurate, common-sense, ethical Human Resources management, employer, and workplace advice on this website, but she is not an attorney, and the content on the site is not to be construed as legal advice. The site has a world-wide audience and employment laws and regulations vary from state to state and country to country, so the site cannot be definitive on all of them for your workplace. When in doubt, always seek legal counsel. The information on the site is provided for guidance only, never as legal advice.

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How to Break Into a Career in Human Resources

Many people are eager to start a career in Human Resources, as it is a fast-growing field with many lucrative opportunities. Career analysts expect the number of HR jobs to increase in the projected future and the median annual income is above the national average. For these reasons and more, you are probably wondering how to start an HR career of your own. You will find useful information below that will guide you through the process.

There are HR professionals with a wide variety of educational backgrounds. However, many HR positions require candidates with a minimum of a four-year degree. A bachelor's degree in human resources, personnel or some other related subject will offer the best training for an HR career. Such a degree will also be more highly regarded amongst hiring managers.

This is not to imply that current HR professionals without degrees are unsuccessful. Many HR professionals have developed successful careers in Human Resources without degrees. Times are changing in all professional fields, however. If you're starting out or thinking about switiching to a career in Human Resources post 2000, you need to obtain a degree.

If you would like to pursue a managerial position or specialized career in HR, some schools offer business degrees that are more focused on a certain area of human resources. Naturally, a graduate-level degree in a related field will help to place you on more hiring shortlists.

Whether you pursue a general HR degree or a more specialized practice within HR, you should be sure to take courses that cover topics such as management, recruitment, training and compensation. Of course, there are many other business courses that relate to the HR field, so an interdisciplinary program is good.

In addition to a college degree, many professionals will have the opportunity to seek certification in certain HR disciplines. In fact, large companies will sometimes offer workshops and classes that broaden an existing professional's HR skills. By completing a professional certification course, you can increase your earning potential. Examples of certifications include the Professional in Human Resources (PHR) or Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR).

If you are already working in an entry-level HR position, earning a certification could help boost your career. Likewise, it could help you transition from a different department to an HR position.

Finding a position within the HR industry is similar to finding any other kind of job. There are many online resources for jobseekers, such as About.com's Job Search, Monster, and CareerBuilder.

In addition to those general career sites, however, there are online job board resources that are more specific to the HR field. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), for example, offers a job board that is primarily for HR professionals. Additional job boards specialize in the field of Human Resources.

Some businesses will first look for candidates within the company. Keep this in mind if you are currently working for a large company and wish to enter the HR department. If your company has an internal resource for new positions, such as a private online job board or internal job postings, check regularly for your chance to get your foot in the door.

More candidates for HR jobs are finding their way into HR careers via professional networking and online social networking sites these days, too. If you're still a student, or just out of college, an internship in an HR department can provide the relevant experience you need for your HR job search.

Just like any other profession, finding a career in HR is easiest for those with a college degree in the field and /or professional certification. But, people with related majors in such areas as business, sociology, psychology, and social sciences are also considered, especially for more entry level jobs. There are many HR positions available and there will be more opportunities in the future. With the proper training and some diligent job seeking, you can join other HR professionals in what is a most lucrative and satisfying career.

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