Benefits of Performance Planning

Making the switch to “performance planning” is more than semantics. It’s a shift in mindset that signals a commitment to developing your employees and supporting their career goals. There are a number of benefits to regular (we suggest 6-month) performance planning sessions:

• Employees get regular, actionable feedback.
• Managers and employees collaborate on the employee’s career plans and path, which leads to a more open, supportive relationship.
• Managers gain a clearer perspective of different people in different jobs, which strengthens their management skills.

Effective performance planning requires managers to have a strong, conscious understanding of the underlying philosophy. They must have clear processes or standards or other helpful guidance for helping the employee grow and develop in their particular role and in their future career.

Steps in Performance Planning

The steps below are based on our years of experience in the Human Resources arena and align with what you’ll find in BLOOM®.

1. Review and update an employee’s role description
   Role descriptions are important for a number of reasons:
   • Keep employees informed about role specifications and expectations
   • Communicate company needs
   • Serve as a tool for conflict resolution
   • Provide an objective basis for performance planning sessions
   • Make company metrics related to a job clear and top of mind
2. Give the employee a self-evaluation form (and their revised role description)
   The manager should review the structure of the form with the employee and reiterate that the performance planning session is an opportunity to work together on the employee’s career goals. The employee’s self-evaluation will go into BLOOM® for future reference and planning.
3. Managers must complete a self-review to evaluate their own supervisory performance
   Since performance planning is a collaborative process it’s essential for managers to reflect on their part of the relationship and to pay attention to how they are supporting the employee’s growth and development.
4. Managers must complete a performance evaluation for the employee
   Prior to the performance planning session, managers need to review available information from the employee’s past sessions. If you’re using BLOOM® this includes reviewing the employee’s performance logs (praises, concerns, and so on). It also means entering 2-3 of their own goals for the employee and setting expectations and assignments for training. This adds to the goals the employee already set for himself and demonstrates a willingness to further challenge and support him.
5. Managers must submit all documentation to the department manager
   Also prior to the performance planning session the manager must submit all documentation to the department manager for review. Review any questions or concerns to ensure that the session is productive and on target with the organization’s goals.
6. Conduct performance planning session
   If it seems like there is a lot to do before sitting down with the employee it’s because there is. Rather than rushing into a review un- or ill-prepared wastes time and energy; doing your homework and planning a thorough session pays off.The anticipation of a session can be stressful, so here are a few tips a manager can use to make the session more productive and more encouraging:
   • Control the environment — Schedule a time and location that reduces the chance of interruption.
   • Establish the purpose — Review the benefits of performance planning and provide an overview of what’s included in the meeting.
   • Seek input — Ask open-ended questions to engage the employee, and remember to listen carefully at all times.
   • Share assessment results — The employee should go first, walking the manager through the employee’s self-evaluation. The manager should go second and provide candid and specific results with corrective and positive feedback.
   • Discuss the employee’s strengths — Ask the employee for his input about his strengths, and share your opinion about them as well.
   • Set specific goals — List opportunities for improvement, identify training needs, and set realistic but challenging goals.
   • Close with a synopsis — Summarize what you discussed and review any Human Resources communications concerning policy changes, wage scales, and so on. Sign the session’s forms and explain next steps. Thank the employee for his/her time and work.
7. Forward paperwork to the Human Resources department
The notes from the performance planning session will become part of the employee’s permanent file, so they go to Human Resources for review. In BLOOM®, once HR approves the review it is available to the employee and to the manager for future reference.

If you’d like more information about BLOOM® or our methodology please feel free to contact us or leave a response here.

When you’re running a business, you need to be sure that the members of your team are right for the job and that the roles they fill are aligned with your overall strategy. That’s what we’ve been talking about in our last few posts, and now we’re shifting gears a bit to further explore how you can use assessments to guide employee development so that your people are consistently performing and form the team you trust to get the job done.

We recommend the Kolbe Indexes® as most effective tool for predicting performance

The Kolbe A, B and C Indexes® provide a holistic understanding of the natural instincts and unique talents of each employee. Understanding these instincts enables you to form synergistic teams and empowers managers to develop effective approaches for successful leadership. Any size company can benefit from the Kolbe Wisdom® system.

Understanding Kolbe®: How we all solve problems

Human instinct is the power behind all actions and is the source of mental energy. The Kolbe Indexes® supplement assessments that measure intelligence and personality so that you can optimize hiring, deployment, retention, and effectiveness.

Research, both academic and practical, has shown that our creative instincts shape how we accomplish tasks and solve problems. To reiterate what we’ve discussed in previous posts, the Kolbe A Index® identifies four action modes that form these instincts:

• Fact Finder: the instinct to probe
• Follow Through: the instinct to pattern
• Quick Start: the instinct to innovate
• Implementor: the instinct to demonstrate

Ways to use Kolbe® results for employee development

Whether you’re looking to hire someone, choose the best person for an important project, or build a successful business team, the Kolbe Wisdom System® can help you assess and deploy your workforce for maximum productivity.

Practical application: act on the knowledge you gain from index results:

• Help employees set attainable, measurable personal goals that are supported by their natural instincts
• Understand how personal goals further the overall vision of the company
• Identify areas where employee training is needed
• Implement a performance management system (we of course recommend BLOOM) to monitor and track training completion, performance, and goals
• Set new goals when past goals are met
• Regularly and effectively communicate
• Establish incentive programs that encourage and reward personal growth and productivity

An Example: Adapted from Wendy Buckingham’s article, “Basic Instincts” (pdf)

A manager who is a Fact Finder will research all the possible details to present to her team. If the team is largely comprised of Quick Starts, whose instinct is to take an idea and run with it, the team will be frustrated with the amount of detail the manager provides and will be anxious and inattentive. In turn, the manager will feel that her team does not value her work or contributions. By understanding team members’ instincts, the manager can adapt presentations so they are more easily digested by Quick Starts – for example, leading with a summary – and still have all the background information available when questions arise.

Insight is trained and certified in the Kolbe Wisdom® process, and we can apply the results from the Kolbe system to help you:

1. Create effective teams by choosing individuals with complementary talents.
2. Improve how existing teams perform by examining the complete array of talent within a team and explaining how to deploy talent and problem solving.
3. Reduce employee stress and conflict and increase communication by understanding how people optimally operate in the workplace.
4. Help employees harness their instinctive talents in synergistic ways by discovering their own process to meet a challenge.
5. Determine the best candidates for a given position by comparing an applicant’s talents to what a job demands.

Contact us to learn more about how Kolbe Indexes® can impact your organization.

By definition, a team is a group of people that has a common purpose, mission, or goal. Its members are interdependent, and they agree that they must work together and collaborate to effectively reach their goal.

Characteristics of successful teams

Regardless of whether we’re talking about the Indianapolis Colts or the editorial department of the Indianapolis Star, there are a number of characteristics common to successful teams:

• Clear goals
• Clear roles
• Clear communication
• Beneficial team behaviors
• Well-defined decision procedures
• A plan for improvement
• Balanced participation
• Established norms and ground rules
• Awareness of the team process
• Scientific approaches

There are a number of types of teams, and they are generally distinguished by three key points: their purpose; their duration (permanent or ad hoc); and their membership (functional or cross-functional). Five types of teams generally seen in the business sector are:

1. Natural work groups: groups composed of people who work together every day
2. Business teams: groups of people who come together for a specific task.
3. Management teams: groups of people, usually peer managers, who come together to coordinate actions of the entire organization.
4. Problem-solving teams: groups of people who come together for a specific period to analyze a situation and suggest working alternatives.
5. New product/service teams: groups of people who come together to design or redesign a product or service.

To be effective, teams have a number of needs that must be met, including:

• Clearly defined purposes and goals that serve the organization
• Clearly defined parameters
• Ability to communicate within the organization
• People with the necessary knowledge and skills to accomplish their tasks.
• Knowledge of how they are going to accomplish their tasks.

How teams operate

To accomplish their purpose and mission, teams must collaborate effectively. Teams that follow a proven process often achieve their goals. An effective process includes:

• Identify the clear purpose, problem, or issue the team will address
• Determine a problem-solving process
• Hold effective meetings (e.g. agendas, ground rules, and established roles)
• Conclude collaborations (e.g. summarize decisions, review action items, and evaluate meetings)
• Follow up (e.g. distribute notes and complete assignments)

In summary, businesses often say they have “great teamwork” but the proof is in the process and the results.

We believe that by understanding that each person has a distinct talent you will frame how they will approach their interests and their work. We also believe that the greater a person’s ability to match his talent with his work, the better his attitude and by his extension productivity will be. In our experience, most organizations don’t encourage the time and effort it requires to provide this advantage, and we can provide some advice on how to make this happen.

Job matching is ultimately a collaborative support process.

The keys to understanding and implementing a unique competitive advantage are to define your organizational goals and expectations and to know your people and support their growth. Integrating these two ideas is a powerful, effective method for increasing efficiency, improving performance beyond your expectations, and as a result retaining your best people.

Before we get to how to match people with jobs, let’s take a step back.

Any business initiative can be derailed without committed purpose and people supporting the necessary actions. The overarching reason for failure is a lack of understanding of these two elements. Specific issues include:

• Not identifying and/or consistently communicating a common purpose
• Losing focus on priorities
• Too much responsibility in too few of hands
• Too little attention to detail
• Poor matches of people to jobs
• Lack of individual ownership toward change
• Pessimism
• Erosion of innovation and creativity
• Complacent leaders without vision

Leaders must work to develop clear, understood purpose and actively align employees and roles with initiatives, otherwise hard work will continually be wasted effort, which in turn will deplete employee morale and retention.

How to get started matching people with the right jobs

Job matching requires meticulous detail in developing a process that is consistently implemented throughout your organization. We find that the best approach is to start in one specific area that is experiencing problems and adapt the following steps to your organization’s needs.

Three Phases of Development: Ready, Set, Go!

To prepare the development of your job matching process, start with completing the following steps:

Get Ready: Inspect and reinforce your organization’s foundation

1. Utilize a process to set specific organizational goals
2. Develop a three-year vision and set up one-year goals for the organization and for individual departments
3. Learn about your employees! Support managers with processes and tools for learning, understand each person by using assessments, and comprehend and track their short- and long-term goals

Get Set: Articulate specific expectations for your job matching process

1. Create job centers for each department by categorizing the main functions in each department. For example, separate job centers in a product department may include line operators, shipping, receiving, and packaging.
2. Detail specific job profiles in each job center, specifying the responsibilities, competencies (i.e. skills, talents, and attitudes), work environment, and training and education requirements.

Go: Integrate the information from steps 1-5 to match people to specific jobs

1. Use a methodology to match your employees with the job profiles
2. Dialog with each employee to discuss fit
3. Set goals (3, 6, and 12 month) with each employee
4. Create a communication plan for each employee to discuss progress
5. Always reward accomplishments with a consistent company reward system

Introducing job matching to your employees

It’s important that a job matching program be a positive, non-threatening process. Here are some tips to achieve that:

• Leadership must communicate the program and already be successfully implementing job matching with their managers
• Leaders must be involved in the training process by sharing their personal experiences implementing the program and the desired expectations
• Don’t enforce the whole system at once. Find a specific starting point, and introduce it bit by bit over a year or longer. You may want to break your job matching process into phases and sequentially introduce each phase throughout the organization, or you may want to implement the complete process one department at a time.

For additional tips and more extensive information let us know, and we will send you an article that includes details about leadership involvement, implementation, feedback loops, and collaborative support.