Tag Archives: appraisals

Getting Started with Performance Appraisals Part 2

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Here are some things to think about, before you carry out your annual staff appraisals, to make them less daunting and more effective. We’ll go into more details on these tips and what to actually in the appraisal meeting, at our forthcoming workshop on 11 September 2013.

Prepare. A good appraisal form will provide a natural order for proceedings, so use one. If you don’t have a standard appraisal form then find one online – there are plenty of templates available. Organize your paperwork to reflect the order of the appraisal and write down the sequence of items to be covered. If the appraisal form includes a self assessment section and/or feedback section, make sure you give this to each member of staff in plenty of time, allowing them to complete it before the meeting.

Part of your preparation should also consider ‘whole-person’ development, beyond and outside the job skill-set. Many people are not particularly interested in job skills training, but will be interested and motivated by other learning and development experiences. Get to know what your people are good at outside of their work. Appraisals are not just about job performance and job skills training. Appraisals should focus on helping the ‘whole person’ to grow and attain fulfilment.

Inform. Let your staff know when and where their appraisal will be held. Give them the chance to assemble any data and relevant performance and achievement records they need.

Venue. Plan a suitable venue that’s private and free from interruptions. Privacy is absolutely essential.

Layout.  Room layout and seating are important elements as they have huge influence on atmosphere and mood. Irrespective of content, the atmosphere and mood must be relaxed and informal. Remove barriers – don’t sit across the desk from your staff member; use a meeting table or easy chairs and sit at an angle to each other.

Introduction. Relax your member of staff by opening with a positive statement. Smile, be warm and friendly to create a calm and non-threatening atmosphere. Set the scene by explaining what will happen and encourage a discussion and as much input as possible from them

When you spend some time thinking about how you’ll carry out your annual appraisals, they’ll be much more effective for both you and your members of staff.

For more information, come to our workshop on 11 September 2013 for just  £12 +VAT. Click here for the details and online booking.

Getting Started with Performance Appraisals

Posted on by

Here are some things to think about, before you carry out your annual staff appraisals, to make them less daunting and more effective. We’ll go into more details on these tips and what to actually in the appraisal meeting, at our forthcoming workshop on 11 September 2013.

Prepare. A good appraisal form will provide a natural order for proceedings, so use one. If you don’t have a standard appraisal form then find one online – there are plenty of templates available. Organize your paperwork to reflect the order of the appraisal and write down the sequence of items to be covered. If the appraisal form includes a self assessment section and/or feedback section, make sure you give this to each member of staff in plenty of time, allowing them to complete it before the meeting.

Part of your preparation should also consider ‘whole-person’ development, beyond and outside the job skill-set. Many people are not particularly interested in job skills training, but will be interested and motivated by other learning and development experiences. Get to know what your people are good at outside of their work. Appraisals are not just about job performance and job skills training. Appraisals should focus on helping the ‘whole person’ to grow and attain fulfilment.

Inform. Let your staff know when and where their appraisal will be held. Give them the chance to assemble any data and relevant performance and achievement records they need.

Venue. Plan a suitable venue that’s private and free from interruptions. Privacy is absolutely essential.

Layout.  Room layout and seating are important elements as they have huge influence on atmosphere and mood. Irrespective of content, the atmosphere and mood must be relaxed and informal. Remove barriers – don’t sit across the desk from your staff member; use a meeting table or easy chairs and sit at an angle to each other.

Introduction. Relax your member of staff by opening with a positive statement. Smile, be warm and friendly to create a calm and non-threatening atmosphere. Set the scene by explaining what will happen and encourage a discussion and as much input as possible from them

When you spend some time thinking about how you’ll carry out your annual appraisals, they’ll be much more effective for both you and your members of staff.

For more information, come to our workshop on 11 September 2013 for just  £12 +VAT. Click here for the details and online booking.

The Beginner’s Guide to Management

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If you’re new to managing people, or you’ve been doing it for a while without much formal training, then the next workshop I’m running will be ideal for you.

Here are a few of the things you need to do as a manager:

  • Learn the principles of team building and how to get the best out of your team members
  • Understand the behaviours of different personality types and how people work together
  • Find out how to motivate and develop people
  • Practice the art of delegation
  • Learn the best practice for managing performance
  • Carry out a successful appraisal meeting
  • Learn how to give useful feedback
  • Be prepared for “that difficult conversation.”

When you can do all this, you’ll be a great manager, with a really productive team!

If all this sounds rather daunting, don’t worry. I’m running a workshop that will cover all this and more. It will give you the management skills you need and refresh and update the skills you already have.

The two day workshop will be held on 28 January and 11 February 2014 at Wargrave Cricket Pavilion, RG10 8BG. Places are limited, so click here to book your place.

Promotion – Are They Really Ready for It?

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You’ve got a great salesman working for you. He’s been with your business for some time and knows the company inside out. He knows all about your products and services and does a great job selling them. You have other members of the sales team who aren’t doing as well and who could learn a lot from this person. So you decide to promote him to Sales Manager. This way, he can lead the rest of the sales team, sharing his knowledge and experience with them. He can inspire them and help create a great sales department.

However, a few months after his promotion, you notice that things are not quite going to plan. Why is this? It is something that’s seen over and over again in companies where someone has been promoted because they’re good at what they do. They end up managing other people and not doing a very good of it. This is often because they have had no management training; they don’t know how to manage other people who are doing what they used to do.

Great salesmen – and many other professions – are good at the technical side of their jobs. They’re not necessarily natural people people.

So what do you do if it goes wrong?

Always start with a probationary period, to give you the chance to review the performance of your new manager

If it’s still not working out:

  • Give them a full opportunity to any discuss problems with their job
  • You’re under no obligation to give them their old job back, but you can discuss it, if it’s still vacant
  • Consider an alternative position before dismissal; tribunals will want you to consider all alternatives before you let someone go.

Before you promote someone to management level, take the time to find out if they are really ready for it. If not, what do you need to do to make them ready to make them into great managers?

To find out more, click here to watch a short video that?s on my website.

Are your people ready for promotion?

Getting the Best from Your Staff – Some Ideas from our Latest Workshop

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At the end of November 2012 we ran another of our very popular workshops, where we focused on how to get the best from your staff. After a short talk on issues to be considered, we opened up the floor to the delegates, to give them a chance to ask specific questions about their businesses and their staff.

Here are some of the topics that came up in the discussions, along with some of the solutions that were proposed.

Top tips for getting the best from your staff:

  • Appraisals are very effective for learning where your members of staff are at with their jobs. It gives you both a chance to talk about what’s expected and how people are performing against those expectations. Not carrying out regular appraisals can allow small issues to grow into major problems, if they’re not dealt with promptly.
  • Job Chats are a more informal way of talking to members of staff about how things are going. You might have a job chat over a cup of coffee rather than in a meeting or with agenda. You can do them more frequently than appraisals and they are a great way of picking up small issues that need to be discussed.
  • There are many ways of rewarding your staff that don’t involve money. Reward them by making them feel part of your business; if they can see how they have an influence on the growth of the business, they will get a great sense of achievement and feel important and needed.

And here are some of the topics we discussed:

Question: “One of my staff members works hard during office hours and takes work home, so we don’t mind if he’s a bit late in the morning. Another member of staff doesn’t seem to work as hard and is checked when he’s late. He’s complained about this. What can I do to keep both of them happy and working hard?”

Answer: “Talk to the second staff member to explain why you’re more flexible with his colleague. He may not be aware how hard his colleague is working or that he takes work home with him.”

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An idea: “We introduced an efficiency percentage report for our staff, based on the speed of finishing a project, completing it properly and the size of the project. The report is great for showing who is doing what within the business. Some staff didn’t like the idea when we introduced it, until we realised that they’re the ones who aren’t very busy. They’re finishing a project and not letting me know that they need more work to be getting on with! Now we know who is working efficiently, we can work on improving that across the whole business.”

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An issue: “A couple of members of staff asked me if they could work late and do some overtime and I agreed. I’m not often in the office and at the end of the first week, my general manager asked why they were working late. When I explained, he told me that these two members of staff were always late in the morning! Did they ask me instead of their manager because they knew what I’d say?”

A solution: Make sure you’re clear about what you agree with your staff and find out why they want to change their hours. Consider all the angles and speak to their managers before making a decision.

We’ll be running another workshop in the spring which you can attend if you have any issues to discuss. If you have anything you need help with now, please do get in touch by calling 0118 940 3032 or emailing sueferguson@optionshr.co.uk.

How to Be a Great Boss

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It can be tough at the top. Here are some top tips to improve your personal success as well as the success of the people working for you.

  • Lead by example. Provide guidance and support and set the benchmark for team cohesiveness and performance.
  • Understand yourself and work on bettering yourself. What are the things you do well and what can you improve? How effective is your management style? By investing time in developing your individual skills you will drive your business forward and reap the rewards in terms of how successfully you lead your team.
  • Be a good all-rounder and play to all your strengths. Technical skills are important but so are soft skills such as people management skills. Do not neglect one in favour of the other.
  • Learn to delegate effectively. You can’t do it all! By relinquishing responsibility to others you are not only ensuring that your efforts are always directed to best effect but also that the people around you feel empowered to make decisions and improve the business.
  • Build a team that can work without you. A team that falls apart when you are on leave or away from the office is not good business.
  • Maintain boundaries: Whilst it is good to develop a good personal relationship with your colleagues, you must establish appropriate boundaries. This will be important during times when you have to make tough decisions that may not always be welcome by others.

What do you do to make sure that you’re a good boss? Share your tips (or mistakes!) with us by leaving a comment here.

How to Boost Profitability in Your Business

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Here are 10 ideas to help you improve the profitability of your business through your people.

  1. Build a stimulating and vibrant working environment. A diverse workplace is a profitable workplace. Embrace the many different skills, backgrounds, experiences and attitudes of your staff and direct these to best effect
  2. Focus on training and personal improvement. Make sure every member of you team is given the opportunity to reach their full potential by offering them the training and development they need, in technical and soft skills.
  3. Reward and recognise. By recognising and incentivising staff that reach targets or produce a consistently high quality of work, you will encourage them to strive even harder.
  4. Handle difficult situations quickly. Do not let disciplinary or incapability issues turn into problems. Deal with them in a responsive and positive way to reduce the chances of them happening again.
  5. Have a good recruitment and induction process. Make sure that you always recruit the best person for the job and that they perform to the level you require from day one.
  6. Keep up to date with legislation. This is a key aspect in treating your employees fairly and also a way to constantly building best practice into your people management procedures.
  7. Communicate, communicate, communicate.   Keep your staff informed about how the business is doing. What can they do to help? How does their job fit into the bigger picture of the organisation? This will ensure your employees feel valued, engaged and focussed on the success of the company.
  8. Carry out succession planning. Don’t just rely on the skills and experience of long-standing members of staff but put time and effort into training and mentoring programmes that develop the skills and abilities of younger members of the team. This way you ensure success for the long term and continuity of service for your customers.
  9. Look closely at team dynamics. What teams are working well and how can this be replicated across the business? Look for gaps in team dynamics and skills sets that can affect morale development and work to actively improve them.
  10. Be a good boss. Your behaviour sets the tone for how you expect others to behave. Invest time in working on your own management style and take a top-down approach to improving performance rather than relying on the skills of those around you.

We’ll talk more about how to be a great boss in this blog in a couple of week’s time.

In the meantime, what do you do to improve profitability of your business through your people? Leave a comment here to share your tips.

Annual Appraisals

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The success of your business relies on your employees; by getting the best from your team you get the best for your organisation.  Employees need to feel appreciated, supported and that you are invested in helping them progress their careers.   On the flip side, your business can suffer both commercial and reputational damage if issues of underperformance are not managed effectively.

Annual appraisals play a key role in helping to recognise and reward good employees, and identify and coach those whose performance or conduct is falling short of the mark.  If done correctly appraisals will reap rewards – by improving performance you will in turn boost the bottom line of your business.

Preparation, preparation, preparation?  This is without doubt the key to ensuring appraisals are constructive, meaningful and successful.   It is vital to track performance throughout the year; keep a log of any memorable incidents or projects; look back at previous appraisal information/job descriptions to ensure objectives are being met; and gather views from line managers and peers.

A good appraisal is one in which the conversation is free flowing, with range of views expressed by both parties freely and without fear of repercussion.  Evaluations should be based solely on performance, not personality, and the approach must be tailored to the individual.  Feedback should positively reinforce the good or, in the case of underperformance, help the employee understand the impact of their actions/behaviour and what corrective action needs to be taken.

A good appraiser is someone who listens to what the employee is saying, does not interrupt or inhibit the flow of conversation, pays attention to non-verbal communication such as body language, and gives feedback based on fact not subjective opinion.

Well planned and executed appraisals will help you harness the talent and aspirations of every person within your organisation, solve problems and ultimately improve performance.  Are you getting it right?