Annual Performance Reviews

Annual Performance Reviews

by | Sep 17, 2020 | Annual Performance Reviews, ConsultingHQ Blog, Performance Management

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Employers should have conducted annual reviews by now

Annual reviews are usually conducted in September prior to strategic & budget planning for the financial year ahead and for the balance of the current year.

Performance reviews are a requirement for employers – regardless of the situation your business or the national or global economy is faced with.

We recommend that employers follow an established and standard process for conducting performance reviews and this year, more than most, a focus on goals and the achievement of them or progress toward them is required to evaluate performance – obviously taking into account whether or not it was possible for employees to meet expected and agreed goals.

Some employers may even have managed to review goals in place as an interim measure when it became apparent that the year would be non standard.

Having performance review standards in place removes any element of personality related issues from the equation and places the focus entirely upon the performance.

If goals have not been achieved, spend some time drilling into why that may have been and if the goals were in fact reasonable under the circumstances that unfolded. Your employees will be grateful for the opportunity to share their view on how things may have played out differently, share their views in the working from remote and give you valuable insights for your business planning, which inevitably will involve some new situations that have arisen as business challenges recently.

Here are the things that you should cover in your performance reviews: 

  • Review the core competencies required for the specific role and rate the employee on their level and have them rate themselves also to see if you are on the same page.
  • Review goals and subgoals as they were agreed.
  • Review progress toward the goals and if they were achieved, not achieved or partially achieved.
  • Review any roadblocks experienced.
  • Review any specific training requirements or other ways around the roadblocks to ensure they do not continue to hinder progress.
  • Get feedback on support provided to the employee when it was required.
  • Establish new goals and stretch goals for the year ahead.

Your team is your most valuable resource and is also your single greatest outgoing. Ensuring that goal reviews and performance reviews are fair and reasonable will win you respect and loyalty – and may well be the difference between enabling that employee to grow further with your business, or leaving and taking their experience with them.

Another aspect of the annual performance reviews in 2020 may be to review communication processes and assess if you need to put layers in place or introduce new methods of communication for people to be able to function as optimally as possible with away from the office – because the reality of the year ahead is that flexibility will be the new normal.

If you feel you require some assistance with conducting performance reviews this year – or with any aspect of HR, please reach out. Funded options are available through the Regional Business Partner Programme. Our team of HR professionals are available to help you with this and to help with your annual business planning!

Book a complimentary 15 minute consultation now with our Director, Tanya Gray.

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Employee skill matrix

Employee skill matrix

by | Sep 9, 2020 | ConsultingHQ Blog, Performance Management, Training & Development

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Employers are at risk when making team changes – even minor changes, without correct processes in place. The Skill Matrix reduces this risk.

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There are a number of areas of high risk for employers when it comes to HR Management – one of which is considering changes to employee roles without the foundation of knowledge and consideration of the bigger picture.

The employee skill matrix provides the structure of information required to make sensible moves – whether they be temporary or permanent.

Putting correct, structured processes and communications in place during any shift in employment is the other side of the high-risk equation. Where personal grievances are upheld in court, it is almost always due to a lack of correct procedure being followed rather than the actions taken.

Every alteration of an employee’s work environment requires documentation and written consent from both parties for every aspect.

The role of the Employee Skill Matrix

The Skill Matrix is a grid that tables the skills, experience & training an employee has and matches them against the skills & experience required for each role, often also taking into consideration the relative importance of the role to the business & the relative time of accumulating the required level of expertise & training for any given role replacement.

When you conduct a skill matrix for every employee and you also detail the skills required to do any job in your business well, it becomes apparent where you have overlaps and where you have gaps.

It will also become apparent if you have gaps in your succession plan in covering key and core capabilities – and you will see the requirements for training and development in some areas.

It can happen that in considering moving one person from one role to another, that you plug one hole and in doing so, create another hole. Employees with overlapping key and core skills become relatively more important to your business overall.
There is value in letting employees become aware of their importance – this instils a sense of pride. It is equally important that they see you putting in place the necessary steps to replace them if required to do so – if for no other reason than to have adequate cover should any key employee become ill or require leave.

A strategically planned HR Strategy takes the future direction for the business into consideration and identifies priorities for the process of building skill and capability for the future – allowing business owners to build experience and trust in the most impactful areas.

Restructuring or temporary restructuring

On any occasion where a business owner needs to respond to an emergency or unforeseen situation (such as a pandemic limiting business functionality), an equally planned and measured approach must be put in place.

The bird’s eye view of an external party such as ourselves is extremely valuable in this situation, as we look at skills and capability as much as (if not more than) anything else – and we are somewhat more removed from the stress of the emergency situation to hand.
In every business situation, employee skills, experience and aspiration to a degree must be considered before all else – even in emergency planning situations.

To create an Employee Skill Matrix, the 4 pillars for success are as follows:

  • List the roles in the business (the positions)
  • Nominate the key skills required for each of the positions, the relative level of experience or competence required, and the relative importance of the skill to your business. Key roles require a robust succession plan to be in place.
  • Rate each employee against each of the required skills for each role (regardless of the role they are presently in, taking into account the level of skill and level of experience.
  • This should give you your map of where you need to increase resources and where you may be able to release or redeploy some.

Please give us a call to discuss further if you need some expert advice or if you feel you are getting caught up in the details.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

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Employee performance management

Employee performance management

by | Jun 1, 2020 | ConsultingHQ Blog, Performance Management

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Performance management is an HR function employers tend to avoid.

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Employee Performance Management- There is no reason employers cannot have in place a clear performance measurement process, without it seeming like a ‘performance review’, or having employees feel they are being micro-managed.

The key to performance management is goal and timeline establishment.

Each and every goal should have a series of steps or achievements required to achieve the overall goal – and a timeline around each one. In this way, goal achievement becomes project managed.

Where one step is not achieved in the required or expected timeframe, other project steps need to be restructured.
Planning workflow in consultation with your team in this way enables the team to understand co-dependency across the team and also enables team members an insight into other’s workloads.

When team members share a common goal, they become much more invested in collaborative progress.
Your job as the team coach is to remove impeding obstacles and to monitor overall progress.

Daily performance monitoring.

We recommend daily catchups at critical progress points. Catchups are literally 5 minute stand up meetings to make sure everyone is clear on overall progress.

Agile planning processes encourage daily stand up meetings during the two week sprints – the outcome effectively is that the team performance manages tasks forward.

Once you have your team working in this manner, performance management becomes an entirely different and much more transparent process – and remains focused on task completion rather than method of completion.

Regular communication one to one with employees about their project progress is also a positive influencer when it comes to high performance – as long as it’s kept short and to the point.

Regular catch ups are not at all overwhelming compared with annual performance reviews and they tend to contribute really well to a ‘no surprises’ culture.

If you are not already in regular contact with your employees about various aspects of their performance and how they are tracking, you should try the ‘regular catch up’ concept.

Employees will start to relax a little when you give them regular positive reinforcement, which will inevitably give you insight on where they want to move toward in your business – and a deeper understanding of the culture of your own organisation.

Having a deeper level of insight into what’s going on with your employees usually means you will more than likely be able to provide more support than you would have been – in itself adding fuel to the overall project management function.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

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Communication essentials for remote team members

Communication essentials for remote team members

by | Apr 1, 2020 | ConsultingHQ Blog, HR Advice, Performance Management

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Communication with remote employees is a complex topic

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People are people and react in different ways to different types of communication. Choosing the right method will be key to your success in keeping your team positive and proactive if they were suddenly required to work remotely.

In recent times, many employers and employees have been required to adapt to a remote working situation without drills – and in some instances, even without much notice. This is completely different to employees choosing to work remotely!

From an employer’s point of view, in a digital world, employees can be allowed similar levels of access as they are in the office

Some people need lots of contact, some people need clear and repeated direction and some are able to carry on and just require check-ins.

The same will apply in a remote situation, with a degree of amplification.

Those who need continued contact and reassurance will probably become somewhat anxious, while those who are happy to keep calm and carry on will need to be called in for their check-in!

The key is to keep people connected and on track – bear in mind that some will feel out of sorts, so having a Zoom Room or Hangouts open during standard office hours & rostering your managers or senior team to be present in those spaces across the day will keep most in a zone of comfort.

Some digital tools that your managers could investigate to keep their team members focused and relaxed could include:

  • Morning team briefings via Zoom with follow up notes in the chatbox distributed to all.
  • Shared files on Google Drive or Office 365 updated in real-time.
  • Slack Channels by key sub-topic to keep the team updated – just as they would across the office. Slack integrates with Google Drive, Gmail, MS Onedrive, Outlook Calendar, Dropbox, SalesForce, Zoom, Asana & Trello – it’s a brilliant tool for managing communications across multiple topics without being overwhelming and even has an in-built App for Polls & Surveys called Polly to capture feedback and team culture.
  • Voxer is a wonderful app that is super useful in situations where the use of voice is better than typing messages, but a record of the conversation is required. Voxer has the option of typing text style or via voice communication and can be used one to one, within a group conversation or a one way broadcast to all from a group manager.Vocal communication can sometimes be more effective in communicating a message than written communication, where the tone of voice helps the receiver understand the unwritten emotion or attitude – and it is of course much more time efficient for busy managers.
  • Finally, enabling TeamViewer on computers may also assist where people get stuck and visual insight to what they are working on is required.
    Be sure to advise people before jumping on a TeamViewer link so they can clear their screen of anything that may be confidential – and assure them that they must approve the connection before you can view their screen so they do not feel invaded.
    Instituting Quiet Time Zones in each day will enable focused productivity. Zoom Rooms should show an on screen notice to ensure everyone is clear that it’s a no-fly zone until the next catch-up.

Virtual Afternoon Tea Zoom Rooms – created especially for team chats will help people feel connected by seeing everyone on screen – but you will need to invite them to speak one at a time (people can initiate private chats with any particular person in the chatbox if they wish to during these, but most tend not to be comfortable in doing so at first).

Other things that will help keep people stay in office mode will be to ensure employees maintain your required dress code – including uniform if they usually are required to wear uniform, ensure that office hours are maintained – including clear breaks, and that designated manager roles are nominated so employees know who to go to for things like technical problems and how to best reach out to that person.

By creating out of office protocols and embracing new modes of communication, you may even find a new way of managing business communications after the team has safety returned to your premises.

Finally, when ‘back to normal’ is re-established – make sure you celebrate and get feedback on everyone’s experience.

Communication Essentials for Remote Team Members

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

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Managing personalities

Managing personalities

by | Feb 3, 2020 | ConsultingHQ Blog, Identifying Future Leaders, Performance Management

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Managing personalities to build an ‘A Team’

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An HR basic that we find is often not obvious to employers is to avoid hiring people with whom you have a natural affinity because you feel comfortable with them.

Hiring great employees is about skills first and personality second

And that means diversity of personality – as different personality types have an affinity toward different roles, and some of those personalities may cause a degree of discomfort – such as extroverts employing introverts or vice versa.

The bottom line is, not everyone thinks or behaves the same. The secret to building a high performing team is to hire high performers, manage them in the way they need to be managed, while still upholding your standards and beliefs, and then teaching them to understand each other’s working styles.

How do we create a team from people who are all different from each other?

Start by understanding the skills required for each of the roles and the level of skill and experience required for the future.
In placing skill base before personality, you will avoid the number one hiring trap of employing someone who you are comfortable with, but who does not have the full skill base you require.

During the interviewing process, you will screen firstly on the basis of the skills and experience level required for the role now and in the future.
Your next consideration will be working style – and the easiest way to assess this is to ask the question ‘how do you like to be managed’, or ‘who was the best manager you’ve ever had and why’.

This places the spotlight directly on the candidate and removes a lot of the guesswork.

DISC Personality Assessment for Role Types

Different personality types tend to gravitate toward and have higher or lower aptitude particular roles. A classic extroverted sales person will feel anxious in an environment where he or she is isolated for extended periods of time, while the other end of the scale – the introverted detail checking type will struggle with continual interruption or process change.

Using DISC profiling to assess candidates and roles across the four sectors of DISC (Dominance, Influence, Conscientiousness, Steadiness) leads to a balanced team, however, this in its own right is not enough – managing personalities to work harmoniously and productively will drive business growth more than any other single thing.

Once you introduce your team to DISC principles, they will come to understand more about themselves and how to approach others with increasingly successful outcomes for all concerned and continually improving relationships.

Add to that clear management direction, effective training and development plans, open door communication and your business is sure to grow.
ConsultingHQ run DISC Profiling consultations for clients regularly. We can run Individual & Team reports, along with comparing individuals against specific roles ( which is great for great when you are considering people for new roles or for promotions).

Please contact us if you would like to know more about this.

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Succession planning

Succession planning

by | Feb 1, 2020 | ConsultingHQ Blog, Identifying Future Leaders, Performance Management

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What is succession planning and why is it vital in business performance?

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Succession planning is the process of identifying key skills required for your business to run smoothly, ensuring you have adequate skill overlap.

Enabling any employee in the team to be absent for any reason and for any length of time – and enabling seamless future business growth.
Sickness, bereavement, annual leave and resignations can all create employee absences, planned and unplanned.

Many business owners are caught by surprise when a key employee is absent and are required to step in themselves – or they decide to perform key roles themselves and struggle to also run the business.

As your business grows, the requirement and focus for the owner is to spend increasingly more time managing at top level to provide direction and support. Stepping into the role of an absent employee becomes counter-productive.

In addition to employee absences, planned or unplanned – all your employees (including the business owner) need to feel that they can take leave as required.

This is the basis of succession planning – ensuring that every aspect of every key role can be covered at any time.

The first step is a skill matrix and gap analysis

This identifies potential gaps and overlaps both now and in the future. The optimum way of conducting this process is in light of future business strategy. Strategic gap analysis enables the business owner to consider future skill requirements – in the light of present employees, which obviously shines a light on training and development for current employees and identifies experience and higher skills that need to be recruited to build business growth.

Succession planning reduces one of the most significant employer risks – the loss of productivity due to employee absence. More than this however, having skill overlap in the team creates a more consultative environment, which is always a positive – and is especially valuable for employers who have employed skill bases they do not have themselves.

Succession planning has been the cornerstone for overseas recruitment becoming so widespread in New Zealand – enabling employers to continue projects without loss of productivity due to skill gaps. While some industries have seen this as an extreme situation, skill gap management presents a risk to every business owner.

To find out more about our Strategic HR Process, speak to one of our ConsultingHQ Consultants, or to learn more about employing skilled workers from overseas, please make contact with our RecruitNZ International Recruitment team.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

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