Time to Manage Performance

You do not have time to NOT manage employee performance! The following is an excerpt from Painless Performance Evaluations: A Practical Approach to Managing Day to Day Employee Performance.  Please share these important ideas with the managers, supervisors, and colleagues in your organization to help them find the time to effectively manage performance. If managing employee performance is not a high priority for you on a daily basis, your employees may not be receiving the support and feedback they need to be effective.  It is the manager/supervisor's job to spend time helping employees be successful. And, employees expect and want frequent feedback.Here are a few tips for making performance management a priority:• Keep a File for Each Employee – Unfortunately many supervisors do not have a filing system for keeping performance-related documentation. It's really easy. Just one manila folder with the employee's name on it is all you need! Or, if you choose to use technology, one Word or Excel document will do the trick. These files are essential for keeping the notes, letters of commendation, training certificates, and quantitative performance records that verify the employee's success. If you don't keep these records, who will?• Use a Performance Log – Even if you have a filing system, you may forget to add important things to it on a regular basis. Try using the performance log. Keep one hard copy log for each employee and whenever anything happens that you want to remember (positive, negative, or neutral), make a note on the log. Keep an electronic log, if you prefer, to type your notes rather than handwrite them. If you were to make one entry per week in each employee's log, you would have made over 50 entries per employee at the end of a year. These entries then become the basis for the employee's performance evaluation.• Regularly Scheduled Meetings – This sounds like a simple solution, but many managers say they don't have time to meet on a regular basis with each employee. Plan to meet on a regular (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly) basis with each employee. This meeting doesn't have to last for more than ten or fifteen minutes. It can be in the office or conducted more informally over lunch or coffee. The important thing is that you are giving feedback to the employee on a regular basis and not just at performance evaluation time.• Use the Performance Evaluation Form to Record Performance Examples – If your organization has a standard performance evaluation form, electronically save one copy of that form for each employee. As the employee's performance is observed throughout the year, record examples of the performance in the appropriate place on the form. At the end of the year or rating period, when the performance evaluation is due, you will have a head start in making comments on the performance evaluation. • Use Technology – Today, emails provide strong documentation; this is a capability we did not have in the past. Keep an electronic folder in which you store emails and other electronic documents from and about each employee. If you have an electronic filing system set up on your computer, you are more likely to keep orderly documentation, which leads to more accurate performance tracking.