Describe best practices for setting employee expectations
Explain which performance outcomes (i.e., goals or standards) should be used for construction supervisors and laborers
Setting expectations for employees is one of the most improvement techniques for performance. Performance outcomes can be obtained through communicating in a specific, unambiguous and clear way on what is expected. It also involves ensuring that employees are definitely committed to the goals of the organization. However, one of the most glaring challenges is communicating the manner in which the performance outcomes should be used for construction supervisors and labors. It is important to ensure that supervisors are equipped with tools and skills to help in meeting the challenges. Some of the benefits associated with this include ensuring employees who require less supervision since they are committed to less supervision and achievement of organizational goals. Other benefits include greater alignment in the entire organization, fewer problems of performance, increased engagement of employees and increased productivity because of internal motivation of employees.
The performance outcomes that should be used for construction of supervisors and laborers include employee training, employee methodology, employee customized solutions, and employee applications. Employee training highlights the methods of creating SMART performance expectations that have linkages to important goals of the company, spelling out the needed behaviors and engaging employees in a dialogue for setting performance expectations. It also highlights the methods of identifying whether employees understand and getting their commitment to obtain expectations, monitoring and measuring performance and establishing what is to be done when the changes expected occur.
Setting expectations with employees’ methodology involves setting time with them in a hands-on practice and customized application process through coaching and feedback by using appropriate tools and skills. Using customized solutions for setting employees expectations ensures that employees are matched to the business strategy, culture, situation and people. In this regard, performance outcomes help align performances of employees with the critical objectives of the business, prepare team leaders to take up first line managers’ roles, align and integrate objectives of performance in the entire organization, and reduce errors associated with performances. It also changes to a culture that was more focused on customers.
Identify three characteristics of employee performance expectations that confirm best practices
Employee performance expectations have several characteristics. To begin with, the expectations ought to align with and back up the company’s mission, strategic goals, annual performance plans, organizational programs and policy objectives. Expectations here include overall performance expectations that apply to each and every employee like handouts, standard procedures of operation and other requirements and instructions for operations that are related with the functions, jobs and units of employees. Additionally, managers and supervisors must communicate expectations performance. This includes such communications that will determine an employee’s job retention.
The best mode of communication for the performance expectations is through writing. This communication must be delivered to the employee before he or she is held accountable for eventuality. Nonetheless, despite all these, it a requirement that employees should be accountable for showing suitable conduct standards, professionalism and behavior like respect for others and civility. Moreover, performance expectations may take a number of forms. They can take the form of objectives and goals that set specific or general targets of performance at the level of individual, organizational and team. They can also take the form of occupational, organizational or other requirements of work like operating instructions procedures, internal directives and rules, operating instructions and administrative manuals. These are generally available and applicable to employees.
It can also take the form of specific work assignment like quantity, quality, timeless and accuracy expectations together with other combined assignment characteristics. Another form is the completeness that is anticipated to be demonstrated by employees and the expected contributions. Additionally, any other reasonable means that is reasonably understood by employees for performance expectation is a form as well. Finally, supervisors are required to involve their employees to attain practicable performance expectations. However, the management is the exclusive decision makers regarding performance expectations.
Recommend best practices for performance management of roofing supervisors by doing the following:
Describe one of the best practice/benefit for each of the following elements of performance evaluation
Effective observation, coaching and feedbacks that are ongoing helps engage staff and managers in open dialogue that is interactive in nature. This helps to build trust, raise the performance of the employees and the organization as well as developing knowledge, skills and abilities of employees. Coaching should be integrated into day to day activities of employees. There are apparently two kinds of benefits that can be accrued from coaching. First, proactive coaching is oriented for the future. This is where new staff members are mentored and guided by managers to begin new projects, engage in decision making. Employees are supposed to acquire valuable advice from their managers at the onset in order to ensure that their early performances are on track and they move forward with confidence and clarity. Proactive coaching requires managers to ask open ended questions and listens collaboratively rather than tell them stories. Reactive coaching happens after or during an assignment or a task and requires a manager to engage in feedback discussion for employee engagement.
Feedback is a message that is informational and focuses on particular, recent behavior of employees and behavioral impacts. This includes the priorities and goals of departmental unit. Effective and valuable feedback is usually focused on behavior and not a person. It is also part of private discussion for manager-employee interactions. Feedback can always be based on the positive behavior that the manager wishes to reinforce and acknowledge. Moreover, it can be developmental in nature and this implies that it is focused on behaviors that have no optimal results. Feedback conversations should be interactive in nature. A respectful and open exchange for ideas can be achieved if the manager engages employees with open ended questions. The discussion is planned by the manager with the consideration of the desired outcome and the best ways of helping the employee grow and develop. Feedback benefits employees by raising their organizational and individual performance
Some of the best practices of observation, feedback and coaching include managers carving out in their timetable in the provision of feedback and coaching on a regular basis. Feedback is timely, balanced and specific. Discussions on performance appraisals and mid-year reviews are the basis upon which feedback and coaching are conducted. Managers make use of the resources available for learning and training in enhancing their capacity in the provision of observation, feedback and coaching. Employees embrace feedback in a constructive and professional manner as well as improve their performance besides enhancing their skills.
Explain one specific policy that employs the best practice described in parts B1a-c for each of the following of performance evaluation
Performance evaluations that are based on observation, coaching and feedback provide companies with critical business decisions. Some of the processes for employment of fair performance appraisal include succession planning, retention and recruiting strategies, compensation adjustments, succession planning, engagement plans and development initiatives.
Describe best practices for formal, legally defensible performance reviews by doing the following
Identify four problems or biases that can produce errors in performance observation and evaluation
Some of the biases in performance and evaluation include horns and halos effect, purpose bias, appraisal bias, self-bias and Recency bias.
Horns and Halos Effect
This refers to manager’s habit of assumption of that particular employees are either good or bad naturally. In many cases, this is a perspective that is grounded on personality clashes and other factors that do not have direct implications on job performance. The manager only has to develop certain opinion of an employee and then look for information to support the opinion instead of letting the perspective be guided by the data. As a result, performance appraisals are influenced.
Purpose bias
The biasness of managers in performance reviews could be interpreted as purposeful sabotage and not a natural occurrence. This is normally common in a case where a manager feels that an employee’s talent or defiance of orders of business is a threat to him or her. Therefore, the managers will resort to giving poor appraisal scores to employees since they want to prevent negative opinions from attaining higher levels as well as protecting their positions.
Appraisal bias
Appraisals are normally biased toward a specific position type. Only one type of appraisal form is used by many companies yet one form hardly applies to every employee type. For instance a form that focuses on communication and creativity can allow employees to score highly and score low in production. This is simply because the positions have different requirements.
Self-bias
Self-fulfilling prophecy type can cause suffering to employees. Generally, whenever performance appraisals indicate that an employee is performing better, the said employee is likely to continue performing well or even better. On the other hand, if the views indicate that the employee demonstrates poor performance, then the employee will continue with poor performances. Employees tend to change naturally to align with perceptions that are created by performance reviews, just like the managers.
Recency bias
Recency bias happens when patterns and trends in performance and behaviors overshadows actions of the past. This is risky bias since major milestones and examples achieved at the start of the year.
These biases can be avoided through a number of measures. Some of these measures include benchmarking and calibration, conducting, three sixty degree reviews, year-round feedback and journaling, custom forms, and adjusted rating scales (Shields, et al., 2015).
Describe five characteristics of a legally defensible performance appraisal system
Recommend three strategies for conducting an effective performance review session
Conducting effective performance review session requires the application of a number of strategies. For purposes of this of this paper, we are going to look at three of the strategies. These including setting expectations in advance, doing groundwork before review and ensuring consistency among employees
Setting up expectations in advance
Understanding the most appropriate ways for staff evaluation should occur at the outset of performance review session. It is highly recommended that managers to hold sessions of planning at the beginning of the year. These sessions for planning must ensure that the same evaluations criteria are used by managers. Moreover, managers should have planning sessions with each and every employee to discuss with them their individual goals and expectations. Clear expectations enable both the employer and the employee to know the real nature of success. This is the only way employees will be held accountable at the end of the year during the performance review to find out if they executed their actions.
Ensuring consistency among employees
A performance review session will only work well if the same criteria are used for reviewing employees. While it is true that each employee might pursue different goals and competencies and perform differently, it is also true that the employees will share amongst themselves. This will thus be demotivated upon realizing that different scales are being to evaluate them.
Doing groundwork before reviews
It is important to conduct a performance review with employees by letting them write down their accomplishments that they feel proudest for within the last year. This way, employees will be able to remember their achievements and be motivated to perform better as well. It is evident that the institution of a process that solicits feedback from one’s workmates helps in strengthening performance review. The benefits of this are twofold. First, employees can reach out to individuals that they have worked out with and secondly it will help managers independently reach out to individuals in good positions for the provision of employee feedback. It will help both managers and employees to offer specific examples for highlighting performances that good or bad.
Discuss the strategies for using rewards/incentives to encourage positive employee performance
It is not always easy to motivate employees and increase their performance using rewards and incentives. The current reward system for supervisors could undermine the planning and implementation of a formal performance and management systems if there are no proper techniques and the right information lacks as well. It could also undermine positive employee performance if it does not involve employees in its development, implementation and revision. In this regard, employees feel that they do not own the program and in essence may disagree with its provisions.
One of the most significant modifications that could be instrumental in creating positive performance by employees is through ensuring that employees understand the modalities of the reward scheme. They should be made to know what activities elicit reward and which ones do not. The best way to ensure this is to involve them in the design and implementation of the reward program scheme.
Recommendations
Set performance standards for rewards and incentives that are reasonable and achievable by employees
Make sure that rewards are linked to performance at all times
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