How to have performance discussions

I find it difficult when it comes to appraisal time to have discussions around the performance of my staff - can you offer any pearls of wisdom?

Well firstly well done for undertaking appraisals, for most organisations, people genuinely are "their most important assets." As such, you need to look after your people if you want to get the best from them, so not only does an appraisal afford a regular opportunity for people to keep in touch with you, when conducted effectively appraisals are also a powerful tool to:

• Pick up on satisfactions or dissatisfactions

• Focus on people's efforts

• Motivate

• Celebrate success

• Plan for the future

• Review Training and Development

• And of course manage performance!

However - Managing performance is a topic in itself with the key questions to ask being:

1. "How well is an employee applying his or her current skills", and

2. "To what extent is he or she achieving the outcomes desired?"

To reach the correct answers to these two key questions you will have first needed to have undergone some fairly fundamental stages:

Planning- this stage is where you would be looking to set and communicate SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound) objectives/targets/KPI's, to be honest whatever you want to call them, but essentially these need to be linked to what the organisation is trying to achieve. It has been identified that employees who understand the role that they play in supporting an organisation achieve its goals are more motivated and engaged, and motivated and engaged employees are more productive, so why wouldn't you want a bit more of that?

Monitoring- this stage is about gathering the information as to how well (or not as the case may be!) the employee is meeting those targets set at the planning stage. Effective monitoring can be done through; observation, questioning, auditing, data collection, meetings and feedback to name a few. Feedback can be gleaned from a variety of sources, the employee themselves, their peers and managers and of course not forgetting your clients/customers and even suppliers where applicable.

Coaching & Development – this is an important stage, it's about making sure that your employees have the knowledge, understanding, skill and support required to do the tasks you have set out for them, identifying any gaps that may be hindering progress, it's also about knowing what development is available and putting appropriate support in place. This could be training or it may just be about coaching. (Have a look at the GROW Model to support coaching).

Review – So here we get to the nitty gritty, remember those two questions?

1. "How well is an employee applying his or her current skills", and

2. "To what extent is he or she achieving the outcomes desired?"

Because you have set SMART targets at the Planning Stage, and you have gathered information and data during the Monitoring Stage, you should now be in a much better position to ascertain how well an individual has performed against the targets set, and of course where necessary challenging individuals where the required standard of performance has not been reached knowing that you have given the required level of Coaching and Development to support the achievement of those set targets.

To me, the key to effective performance management is simple, set out your score in advance, monitor and review progress regularly, providing feedback and highlighting where improvements are needed as an on-going activity, if improvements are not forthcoming, set out an improvement plan and ensure they fully understand the consequences of not reaching the desired outcomes/standard. And of course regular and on-going dialogue, you would never leave performance discussions until the annual appraisal!

To go back to the blog, click here.