Employee Performance

Helping employees with personal problems

June 1, 2004
Suspecting that an employee’s performance is suffering due to personal problems is one of the toughest situations a supervisor can face. Here’s some advice that can help:

What to do when feedback doesn’t work

May 1, 2004
What can you do to make sure your feedback makes a real difference in employee performance? Here are some suggestions from the pros:

When the same old excuses turn out to be true

April 1, 2004
Generally, you don’t mind conducting semiannual reviews in the claims-processing department you supervise, except when Cassidy comes in with her tired old complaints about how everyone else gets an easier ride …

Crafting a sure-fire performance plan

April 1, 2004
We’ve said many times that the first step in an effective performance management process is developing a performance plan for each employee. And you know you should involve your employees in setting the specific work goals that make up that plan.

Cure employee-of-the-month syndrome

March 1, 2004
Unless you manage a team of clones who all do exactly the same tasks in the same ways, the employee-of-the-month approach leads to apples-and-oranges comparison that spawn mistrust and resentment.

What performance appraisals don’t do

March 1, 2004
Both team leaders and their team members dread the annual appraisal and struggle to make it valuable — especially as flexible job descriptions and team- and project-based workplaces have become the norm. You can get better results when you conduct appraisals if you acknowledge from the start what a performance-review system doesn’t do.

Turning ‘nice people’ into top talent

February 1, 2004
Co-workers and customers alike commented on what a “really nice person” Lauryn was. But Amy wished Lauryn’s work quality and productivity weren’t just barely good enough to satisfy her expectations …

When an appraisal is long overdue

May 1, 2003
If you haven’t found the time in a long while to review your people’s performance, should you just forget about it? Not at all, but as you embark on long-overdue appraisals, keep these points in mind.

Appraising workers in alternative job arrangements

February 1, 2003
Alternative work arrangements — flextime, permanent part-time, job-sharing, telecommuting — require managers to adapt in many ways. One of these, often overlooked, is performance appraisal. What’s the best way to evaluate the work of someone who’s working where you can’t see them?

How to tell team to rework a project

November 1, 2000
It’s difficult to tell solid performers that their hard work on a project isn’t quite good enough. How do you ask team members to take another crack at a project without demotivating them?