HR FORUM

“How YOU Doin’?” (and Other Questions)

Effective performance management is the key to increasing employee performance, satisfaction, and engagement

creating an effective performance management system doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, it can be relatively simple if managers recognize that the process for evaluating employees needs to be clear, concise, and frequent.

The employee performance paradigm has shifted. Traditional performance management systems in which managers track employee performance and hold a meeting once a year to give and discuss feedback no longer works.

What is this paradigm shift and why did it happen? Most employees no longer want to be bystanders in the process of improving performance. Rather, they want to be active agents in how they are evaluated, accomplish their goals, and manage their professional development. More than ever before, employees today prefer—and perform better with—a relationship-based performance management process or system.

SIMPLE STEPS

To move toward a relationship-based performance management system, you need to do a few simple things.

STEP ONE: Manage expectations for both you and your employees by ensuring that each employee sets performance goals that are aligned with the practice’s top objectives and critical numbers. Make sure that the performance metrics focus the employee on achieving quality work that adds value to not just their individual success but also the success of the team and the practice.

By doing this, every employee’s daily activities are contributing to the strategic intent of the organization.

MEASURING COMPENSATION

Every position needs a salary range with a clear delineation of each category that is measured for the pay review. For example, Employee A understands she is at the bottom of the pay range and has room for improved compensation. She should also understand through dialogue with her manager that compensation is measured in the following ways.

35% = CRITICAL NUMBERS
(e.g., book stays full with 12 full exams per day for at least 90% of the month, or capture rate increases from 50% to 55% and stays steady for 10 out of 12 months)

25% = TECHNICAL SKILLS
(e.g., certifications, licensure, professional development, etc.)

30% = SOFT SKILLS
(e.g., teamwork, relationship-building, initiative, service-orientation, problem-solving, etc.)

10% = INDIVIDUAL STRENGTHS
(e.g., the experience, expertise, and qualities the individual brings to the team—the attributes that impressed you and why you hired them in the first place)

If you have employees who are at the top of their pay ranges due to longevity, have a discussion that creates new ways for the employees to add to their true value and set a pay range based on those clearly laid-out expectations. These employees would then have a set of pay percentages to measure this new level of service similar to those shown here.

Regardless of how you lay out the percentages, career paths should be presented clearly so employees can make informed decisions about how to manage accountability for their own performance outcomes and how they can create a future for themselves in your practice.

STEP TWO: Make sure you are measuring an employee’s true value to the practice. Employees add true value by being accountable for their current and future performance, while at the same time diminishing their “emotional expensiveness.” In other words, employees only add true value when they understand that any drama they bring to the workplace environment has a true (hard) cost to your bottom line.

STEP THREE: Separate the performance review from the pay review. Reviewing employee performance should happen often and immediately through traditional means such as coaching, mentoring, team strategy discussions, staff meetings, training, and biannual employee meetings as well as non-traditional means that can be as simple as an ongoing dialogue about how they solve problems, anticipate patient, staff, and practice needs, how they contribute, and what success looks like for them and you.

STEP FOUR: Unlike the ongoing performance dialogue, pay reviews should happen once per year, most commonly at the employee’s anniversary date, and there should be no false expectations about what kind of increase the employee can or will receive.

Your job as manager is to help employees measure their performance in a flow of continuous improvement through a flexible and agile environment that captures feedback on all levels (strategically based on practice initiatives and organizationally based on peer and patient perspectives) so employees embrace the practice as one they can grow with and as one in which their careers will thrive.

— Ginamarie Wells, Ph.D.

Ginamarie Wells is senior director of client services of Cleinman Performance partners, a business consultancy specializing in the development of high-performance optometry practices. ©2014 Cleinman Performance Partners, Inc.