Posts Tagged ‘Employee Performance’

Building a Talent First Culture

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

People who run companies with a Talent First Culture make more money than their peers. Their businesses also are more successful.

We all know hiring and retaining top talent is the key to solving business challenges and building profits. But how and where to start.

Building a highly talented business culture starts by engaging your employees. Both management and staff level. All can contribute. It’s often amazing the insights various employees have on how to improve your business.

A key to any business is improving the processes used to run the business. The hotel industry is often slow to adopt and develop streamlined/new/better processes. Staff employees are often the key to identifying process improvements. They are familiar with the details of their jobs and departments.Often they have great ideas on how to improve the department while making their jobs easier, and themselves more efficient.

Companies with a Talent First Culture typically are innovative. Because employees are engaged they can be quick to respond. Innovation is concentrated first on improving revenues and profits. You can’t save your way to profitability. Innovate.

Improved processes and innovation lead to improved productivity and profits.

Companies with a ‘Talent First” mentality quickly become known for their agility to take advantage of opportunities. Agility also entails turning challenges to opportunities.

The beauty of a Talent First Culture? It starts with an attitude. Any business person can do it within the frame of their job. Changing a mindset and engaging employees doesn’t require capital or more staff…at least initially.

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HR on Wheels: Employee Appraisal System Performance

Friday, March 26th, 2010

Is your employee appraisal system driving performance or just a paperwork exercise?

In a previous posting I reviewed the top ten issues to assess in your positive employee relations. One of the most important issues is making sure that your performance reviews include both results and behaviors and has a positive impact on behavior and engagement.

Do you dread doing your performance appraisals? Do your employees dread receiving them? Do the reviews measure the aspects of your employee’s positions that are important to you now or are they the same forms you have been using for years? Maybe you aren’t providing meaningful feedback.

If you haven’t taken a close look at your forms in the past couple of years, now is the time. Today we will just look at manager’s reviews and make sure that you are measuring against clearly stated expectations.

The first section should be objective expectations for the position; Profit, Sales Revenue, Guest Scores, Turnover, Internal Audit Scores and any other clearly defined objectives. The expectations should be spelled out prior to employment or at the beginning of the year. It is simply a “Yes” or “No” to whether or not they met them. Or it can be as clearly defined as making 95-100% of budget is “successful,” and 94% equates to “Needs Improvement”.

However, I see reviews all the time that take objective issues and make them subjective. They become subject to the whim of a manager who likes the person and can’t bear being the deliverer of bad news. It allows managers to allow “mitigating” circumstances to change the evaluation to a satisfactory performance. Get these out of your reviews.

Once you have looked at the objective portions of the performance review, take time to rate their behavior. What are the behaviors you evaluate? Has your management team sat down and talked about what is expected and how it is defined? What are the behaviors that are expected? I suggest evaluating these areas in terms of “Strength”, “Competency”, or “Challenge”. It defines the behavior clearly.

Some of these behaviors might include:

  • Leadership
  • Communication
  • Team Building
  • Planning
  • Problem Solving
  • Technical Skills
  • Decision Making

When you take this positive new approach to your reviews, your employees will look forward to knowing where there career is going and that they are being evaluated against clearly defined objectives rather than against another employee.

Can I assist you in this transformation in your company? If so, contact me at:

scottwheeler@HRonWheels.com

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