The process begins with the standards or objectives you set, in cooperation with your employees.
Review the employee’s job description. Analyze, too, department or corporate plans. Together, they should enable you and the employee to set standards, goals, or needed results—whatever is the basis for your firm’s appraisal program.
Different appraisal systems use different measurements. Some firms use standards, others objectives, and still others results. Performance goals are often results that are critical to the department’s operation. Standards are usually tied to output and are frequently the same for each employee in the same job. For instance, a standard for copy editors might be to “edit no fewer than 12 manuscript pages per hour.” For a customer service rep, it might be to “handle no fewer than 20 phone calls per hour.” Results are specific ends to be accomplished, like developing a new product, improving delivery of customer orders, or increasing sales by 5 percent.
Increasingly, organizations also include developmental goals along with performance goals, results, or standards. Developmental objectives reflect skills, abilities, or knowledge deficiencies that need shoring up. Let’s assume that an employee lacks know-how in statistical analysis. So you might set as a goal for the employee to “complete a course on statistical analysis by year-end.” In determining development objectives, consider what you want an employee to be able to do by the end of the year that will improve job performance.
If your organization promulgates a number of values, you may want to tie these to your appraisal as well. For instance, your firm might expect its employees to show initiative. This is a value. For a department administrator, the value-related goal tied to showing initiative could be, “Develop a user’s group to increase workers’ knowledge of search engines and identify those most useful for competitive research.” For an engineer, it might be, “To identify less expensive ways to manufacture existing products to increase profit margin.” If the performance factor is collaboration, you could measure it by an administrative assistant’s ability to, “Fill in when colleagues are either ill or away on vacation.” For the engineer, collaboration might be measured by the ability, “To participate in cross-functional projects so they are completed on schedule.”
Whether you work with goals, standards, or results, the statement needs to include the outcome, the time frame or deadline, and a means of measurement. For example, interview four experts to produce one article monthly in time for the midmonth production copy date, to ensure magazine production and delivery to subscribers on schedule.” Another: “Review office procedures by July 15 to identify ways to streamline operations.” Still another: “Update software programs on schedule as provided by marketing and customer demands.”
Ideally, you should have from five to eight objectives. You wouldn’t want fewer than five—there wouldn’t be sufficient challenge. Nor would you want more than eight; your employee would be running every which way. If you really do identify eight things you would like your employee to achieve, prioritize them and reserve three for later use.
During the year, you will offer feedback—criticism and praise—to your employees hundreds of times. If you practice what I have preached so far, you will also meet in coaching sessions, once a month, with each of your employees, with an emphasis on employee development and day-to-day performance (see Chapter 6). But you will also meet as often as four times a year to review progress toward the standards, goals, or results.
During these interim sessions, you will review the standards or objectives to determine if they are still relevant. If the economy has suddenly taken a deep dip, you and your employee may agree that working toward a 15 percent increase in sales is unrealistic and, consequently, may drop the figure to 5 percent. If the company has decided to discontinue a newsletter for customers, a goal to improve the quality of its content is no longer relevant, but finding an alternative method of communicating with your customers makes a lot of sense.