Video Transcript
The purpose of a performance appraisal management or development section is to keep all the information regarding employees performance. Whether positive or negative so you want to make sure you have gathered all of it and are safeguarded in this employee file that you’re going to put together. By building a history of positive or negative performance you have the necessary backup for promotions or terminations. Again it’s important to have signatures on performance documentation to prove it has been discussed with the employee. That doesn’t mean you’re asking them to sign that they have accepted what you said but you’re asking them to sign that they’ve read what you’ve said. So let’s talk about performance because what I don’t want you to think is this is about collecting data to terminate people. That’s not the focus, the focus here is to drive behavior and to get the greatest productivity out of your employees because they want to. So in this section you’ll have performance appraisals that you’ve done or I kind of look at performance there’s appraisals management and development kind of vapor phase. The appraisal system that’s kind of older are those 0 to 10 or 1 to 5 or unsatisfactory to satisfactory. Those are kind of old-school in my mind appraisals. I don’t think they’re the best that are out there but as long as it works that’s what matters. There’s management systems where you really just take a job description and you give me guidance or feedback around exactly what I’m doing there or there’s the development ones where you’re helping me grow and learn by putting objectives in place that I need to achieve. So there are different styles of reviews that you can do so really think about what makes sense for you. In this section you might have letters of recognition, performance improvement plan we’re gonna talk about a minute and disciplinary letters. So a while ago I wrote this system for smaller organizations and the idea is that you have your job description your position profile and your performance plan all went lumped into one. This isn’t the only style that I would use I think objective programs are really effective but depending on your organization’s size and shape this might make sense for you. So a job description, so what I want to do is break this into three sections so the job description is the high level at the overall level of the role. It’s just like say you’re hiring a finance manager it covers the scope complexity type of work knowledge skills and experience required for the role it’s used for benchmarking and salary ranges and it changes only fundamental if the fundamental job changes. So you’ve got a section that says job description and it says I’m hiring a finance manager that has to have this much experience has to have this much education and that’s it. Then you’ve got the position profile and that is specific to the role that they’re doing to the actual job. They’re doing so it could be one of the things that they’re doing is they’re focusing on cash flow it reflects the current portfolio of duties. It’s brief but it’s focused on roles and outcomes it’s matched with a job description that the key specifics are aligned. It’s updated regularly as often as portfolio changes and clear communication that changes are expected and do not necessarily affect communication. Let me reframe it make it easier so we’ve got a job description that says my finance manager then we’ve got a position profile that says in that I do things like cash flow I do a pa are possibly but if I change the position profile that doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s going to change my income. If I stop doing a a p and a r and I do something else that doesn’t necessarily impact my salary the only way that salary necessarily would be impacted is if there was a major change. But it’s really indicative of the role itself which is the finance manager so again you’ve got a finance manager who’s doing these duties and then you clip on your performance plan to that and it’s detailed and specific. Annual priorities for each so ideally you’re doing a little bit of development and management you’re putting in some objectives. For me it covers objective measurements of success competencies and a personal development plan. It’s reviewed a minimum of three to five three to five times a year. You know I know everybody’s busy but the more you can check in on how an employee is doing the better and it’s aligned to organizational goal. That’s just one way to look at performance I think you know for one organization we did one that it was a first nations organization and we did it to the seven sacred teachings and they then became the values and the foundation of the performance program it’s really quite fabulous so it’s what makes sense for you for a company. We did a casino game. There’s lots of different ways to look at performance. The key I think bottom line is do your employees actually engage in it. Are they excited about being a part of it. Because that means it’s working. If they’re not you might want to check the system letter of recognition. Please catch people doing great things and put it in writing for them. We’re always quick to catch them doing things you don’t like so much and we put in their writing so please catch them doing great things and put it in writing. So if an employee is having challenges with an employee you’ve already got their performance plan working. You’ve got challenges with your employees throughout the year. You’ve talked to them a few times. You could put them on a performance improvement plan agreement to support them to be course-correct and the difference between a pip and a pipa is the performance improvement plan. Agreement says they’re agreeing to something so that you use a language like agreement so you’re entering into an agreement that they are going to work with you and collectively you’re going to work to increase their portfolio. So they do a better job disciplining. So if you’re gonna write a disciplinary letter please make sure you also close it so if you’re gonna put something on my file as an employee and of course correct it please make sure you then give me a letter to say that it’s closed employees that’ll stand open in their minds for a long time. So in summary performance have a system that works for your organization ideally not a subjective scale system rather a development process one that fits your intended culture, manage day-to-day performance day-to-day and if an employee needs a performance improvement agreement make it meaningful and measurable, help the employee succeed and then properly close it, ensure the systems you use drives behavior equals organizational performance. Everyone going in the same direction at the same time to achieve organizational goals I know for certain that employees want to help you be successful so put in meaningful systems to help them help you do that. This has been an initiative of the city of penticton economic development department and I’m cori from the performance group.