The Most Important Piece of Employee Management
Bad management causes disgruntled employees. That’s easy to say. How does it play out? In my opinion, it’s in the feedback and two-way communication. This article is about effective feedback that actually helps and does not alienate employees.
By the time I started my
first MSP, I had been managing teams of 25-30 people for several years. In all
of those cases there were either no employee reviews or annual employee
reviews. In my opinion those are identical choices: Both are useless and not
helpful for the employee or the team in any way.
Why is an annual employee
review the same as none at all?
That’s easy. Consider
your new year’s resolution to cut down on carbs, lose weight, learn Spanish, or
document all your procedures. Then imagine that no one ever mentions anything
about this to you until December 31st. How are you doing on that resolution?
Or consider a new skill.
I want to improve my basic coding so I can begin using agent AI more
effectively. Option A is to set aside blocks of time every week to read, take
classes, practice with real world tasks, etc. Option B is to spend one whole
day once in the next twelve months. Which is more effective? Option A of
course.
The weaknesses of annual
reviews are too numerous to mention. The most important flaw is that they
become “big” important events despite the fact that they cannot possibly have a
positive impact on performance, employee morale, or company success. Employees
are nervous about them, treating them like high school report cards.
Managers hate to do them
and generally put them off. And, for the most part, they do a poor job
precisely because they don’t know what to say. Every manager knows how good
every one of their direct reports is doing. They see it every day. And they do
give feedback all year long. But how do you summarize everything someone does
for an entire year?
Never-Ending
Evaluations in Your Business
Luckily, the concept of
continuous improvement is practically built into the business model of IT
companies. We try to practice lean and agile methods. Quick responses to
changing needs. Kaizen – continuous incremental improvement.
In my company, we started
with Quarterly evaluations, but tied these to weekly activities and what I call
the daily “chatter.” Daily chatter is just the flow of conversation that
happens every day in the office.
“How’s that studying
coming? Is it as easy as you thought?”
“Did you put your notes
in the ticket?”
“Thanks for checking up
on yesterday’s appointments.”
Notice that all of these
are just normal conversation. These comments and questions should not come
across as accusatory or judgmental. If you need to correct someone, you can.
But the all-day chatter in the office is just light conversation. It conveys a
sense that this is simply what we expect.
Evaluation Starts
with Hiring
In my book, evaluation
starts before you begin the hiring process. You should have good, clear,
detailed job descriptions. These should list the skills and temperament you are
looking for. “Skills” means both technical and soft skills.
Once you have a good job
description, create a spreadsheet with each item you want in the ideal candidate,
one item per row. From there you can write your job ad, which should also be
detailed and list as many of these traits as you can.
And it flows . . . You use
those criteria to determine who to interview. And you use them as guides to the
interview. And you use them for evaluating all the candidates and choosing
someone to bring on board.
After you hire someone,
these criteria will give you a good sense of where they need additional
training or real-world experience. Specific training programs are defined as
needed. And for areas where competence seems high, you just need to give them
tasks that demonstrate the skills you believe they have.
Finally, we get to the
classic process of evaluation. That begins with setting quarterly goals. These
are personalized, for the most part. You can include company-wide goals like
keeping clients happy. But the most important bits are focused on helping the
employee come up to speed as needed, learn new skills, and improve in areas
specific to them.
This list should be
reasonable. Maybe five or six items maximum. Minimum should be two or three.
Don’t feel obligated to put something down just to put something down. Goals
are automatically time-bound as this is a quarterly exercise. And, of course,
all goals should be measurable. Write down all of this in a simple form,
one-page maximum.
Finally, you flow
through the spreadsheet to the actual evaluation. How did the employee do on
each goal? How do they rate themselves, and how do you rate them? If you’ve
been giving daily, constant feedback, there should be no surprises here at all.
People who are late every day know they’re late every day. People who always
put their notes in the system before leaving the client’s office know they do
that. And so does the manager.
Rinse and repeat.
One final note on giving
continuous feedback: Don’t worry that employees will see this as nagging. If
everyone goes through this process with a sincere desire to improve the
employee and the organization, then the daily chatter is just a steady reminder
of how we need to go about our day. Really. Employee won’t see this as nagging
if you deliver it right.
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Book Notes
I still believe The
One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson is the best place
to start on employee feedback. Get the latest version, which includes an update
on the classic “feedback sandwich” approach. Other good books in order of
preference:
The Coaching Habit:
Say Less, Ask More, and Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay
Stanier.
The Feedback
Imperative: How to Give Everyday Feedback to Speed Up Your Team's Success by
Anna Carroll.
The Feedback Book: 50
Ways to Motivate and Improve the Performance of Your People by Dawn Sillett.
Feedback always welcome.
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This Episode is part of
the ongoing Lessons Learned series. For all the information, and an index of
Lessons Learned episodes, go to the Lessons Learned Page.
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Karl W. Palachuk is an executive coach and author of several books,
including Managed Services in a Month and Relax Focus Succeed. He
has built, bought, and sold several businesses, including two successful
managed service businesses in Sacramento, CA. He advocates a holistic view of
business, viewing the company as a system. You can find him at karlpalachuk.com
or on LinkedIn. No artificial intelligence apps were used in the writing of
this post.
:-)