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By Liza | Categories: Consulting | No Comments
It’s the time of year that most people dread – performance reviews. If you’re a manager you will probably be thinking “do I really have time?” If you’re an employee, having that one-on-one discussion that is primarily around you and your performance, can be confronting as well.
We have some insights that we want to share.
First of all, we weren’t being flippant when we wrote in this post that you should simply “have one,” There is research out there that says how damaging it is to simply ignore your team. Read point one of this post about this research about 5 reasons people leave you that you may never know about.
As a Manager, never underestimate the impact that you can have in someone’s life. One of the best Managers I ever had was simply interested in me. I knew that they listened to me. I then knew that they understood me. So when it came to a time for them to give me feedback, I was ready to listen.
Business woman and highly successful career blogger Penelope Trunk wrote this on her blog almost 10 years ago now. But the message still resonates as it comes back to fundamentals of respect.
“Good performance review takes heart. You need to really see the employee and understand what motivates her. You need to understand where she wants to go, because the job of you, the manager, is to help her get there. And of course, a good manager will show the employee why she should want for herself what her manager wants for her.
An employee knows right away how prepared you are for the review, so don’t bother trying to fake it; this is not a college essay test, this is real life. Lack of preparation means that you do not take the review seriously, so you can bet the employee will ignore what you say. Lack of preparation means mentoring and leading are not high priorities, and managers who do not make those high priorities are managers who have ill-prepared disloyal employees.”
Here are a few things we know are important:
- Listen to your employees. There is no way that they will listen to you if you don’t.
- Before you deliver the review, consider if you are being fair. As human beings we can form impressions of people, that may not be completely true. You may think of someone as not working as hard as others, yet in fact they actually are more productive. So try to base feedback in fact. If you are in doubt in any way, check out your ideas on that person with an impartial third party.
- Be prepared. As Penelope says, how prepared you are is a reflection on how much consideration you give this person’s career.
- Do not reschedule. We say this pretty much for the same reason that we say you should be prepared.
- Be honest and be sincere. One of the things that strikes us in talking to people about their careers is that few people really have an awareness of their strengths and weaknesses. One reason for this is that we all seem to shy away from delivering honest feedback.
Often managers have concerns that they’ll come across like a bully in a performance review if they are too assertive, yet you may need to be direct to make your point clear. We cannot give you a one simple paragraph on how to handle that. Communication is complicated. The way your team member interprets your message can be the result of what they think of you, and what they think you are telling them, regardless of the actual message.
If you would like help with communication training and if you think you need some help in designing a performance management system, please give our Workforce Management Solutions Team a call on 8221 0553.
In 1997, I founded Enigma HR with the philosophy: “be ethical; be professional; be friendly and serve my clients well.” We specialise in insurance and accounting placements and have been assisting professionals in this industry for over 20 years.
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By Liza | Categories: Consulting, Recruitment advice | No Comments
The Fair Work Act of 2009 has been in place for the past two years.
However, when we talk to our clients and candidates, we are always surprised about how little people know about employee contracts and how many myths surround dismissal laws. This is partly because there have been a number of changes to the minimum terms and conditions with the National Employment Standards, but mostly because there has been a lack of education and training around these.
Many people still think that they are required to give three warnings prior to dismissing an employee.
If you dismiss a worker for an unsatisfactory performance, Fair Work Australia is required to consider whether an employee has been warned about their unsatisfactory performance. Did you know, however, that Fair Work Act does not actually set out any minimum amount of warnings that must be issued in order for a dismissal to be considered fair?
That’s right. The Act does not specify three!
What this all means, is that your people and compliance systems need to be sound. Here is a sample of things you’ll need to consider:
1) Do you have contracts in place?
2) How compliant are your contracts with the current National Employment Standards and modern awards?
3) Do your managers understand their new obligations?
4) Are your managers trained in managing performance and delivering warnings?
5) Do you have systems in place that ensure that members of your teams are complying with the latest changes in legislation and regulation?
The law is complex and changes all the time. If you are unsure of your rights and obligations, we strongly recommend that you seek professional advice.
If you would like assistance in reviewing your performance management systems and workplace contracts, please give our Workforce Management Solutions team a call on 02 8221 0553. We will ensure you are compliant with Workplace Laws.
In 1997, I founded Enigma HR with the philosophy: “be ethical; be professional; be friendly and serve my clients well.” We specialise in insurance and accounting placements and have been assisting professionals in this industry for over 20 years.
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By Liza | Categories: Career advice, Consulting, Recruitment, Recruitment advice | No Comments
Here at Enigma HR we love TED talks.
They’re inspirational, thought provoking and delivered by some of the most fascinating thought leaders in the world. Like this talk, from Dan Pink – a career analyst and former speechwriter to Al Gore.
For a long time we’ve all asserted that there’s pretty much a direct relationship between reward and performance.
That’s wrong says Dan.
He says science proves that people can actually perform worse (not better) when they’re offered financial rewards. While incentives are not disincentives, they can act as a distraction in roles that require right brain and creative thinking.
Rewards, he says, work really well for simple linear type tasks where there is a simple set of rules and a clear destination. However, rewards by their very nature, narrow our focus and concentrate the mind. For real life problems in the working world of the 21st century, you don’t want to be looking straight at the task when the solution may actually lie in the periphery.
Dan says we’re rewarded and engaged when we do things that matter to us, when we like what we’re doing, when we find the task interesting and when we feel we are doing part of something that is important. Put simply there are three things are critical to true motivation – “autonomy”, “mastery” and “purpose.”
These are the foundation for a new way of looking at our businesses and working lives:
- Autonomy is the urge for us to direct our own lives
- Mastery is the desire to get better and better at something that matters
- Purpose is the urge to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves
What’s our take out of all of this?
Well, we hope to surprise you too, given what we do.
We say – before you throw more money at a performance problem with your staff; before you decide to offer the big dollars to attract new staff and before you personally decide to go after the big dollars, watch Dan talk and think about what really matters to you.
Then when you’ve done that come and talk to us.
In 1997, I founded Enigma HR with the philosophy: “be ethical; be professional; be friendly and serve my clients well.” We specialise in insurance and accounting placements and have been assisting professionals in this industry for over 20 years.
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By Liza | Categories: Consulting | No Comments
Call us the Grinches who stole Christmas, but sometimes we call Christmas the cranky season rather than the festive season. The city is busier than usual. People are all in a hurry. All those deadlines that have been lurking on the bottom of the to-do list for months all suddenly pop up as equally urgent. The holiday you’ve been saving up all year, can’t come soon enough.
Have we just made you crankier as well?
It’s about to get worse.
Does this sound familiar?
“Start your New Year, with a new career?” You’ll see the less creative career copywriters use this line to entice your newly holidayed staff across to their organisation. One of the reasons people want to kick start the New Year with a new career is their last performance review – or in some cases lack of them.
If you are about to run these reviews, or you have never run a review, these tips will help get you started.
1) Have one. It seems that any conversation is better than no conversation – not that we’d encourage you to berate your staff. Read this post on how damaging it is to ignore your staff.
2) Plan the meeting in advance, and don’t reschedule it. If you reschedule, that sends a very strong message that these are not important. Planning the meeting in advance allows your employees to prepare as well.
3) Give specific feedback – nothing vague. There are a few reasons for this.
Firstly, most employees, no matter how well they have performed throughout the year, will be apprehensive about a performance review. This means people may not process information you provide as quickly as they do normally.
Secondly, be also aware that very few people are self-aware. So you’ll tend to get people who underrate their performance, or overrate their performance.
If you relate feedback to a specific project, incident or series of them, then people can actually process that information and better understand the impact of their behaviour, either positive or negative.
4) Involve your employee in the discussion.
As a reviewer, this is difficult, but essential. But if you are wanting people to improve, or keep doing the things that they are doing – then you need to start from the mutual understanding of where things are at. A good question to ask is “how would you rate your performance in this area?”
Many successful organisations make reviews a two-way process. This is one reason why.
5) Make notes and keep your promises.
Actions speak louder than words. If people know you plan to do something concrete about their career development in the new year, then logic says they’ll be less likely to want to move.
Need help with your performance reviews?
Our experience interviewing job-seekers in the new year suggest that these are a real issue with many organisations.
If you’d like the Christmas Grinch to leave your staff alone in the new year, call our Workforce Management Solutions team now on (02) 8221 0553.
In 1997, I founded Enigma HR with the philosophy: “be ethical; be professional; be friendly and serve my clients well.” We specialise in insurance and accounting placements and have been assisting professionals in this industry for over 20 years.
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