Don’t wait until it’s too late.
There is a lot of talk about managers and employees doing weekly or monthly check-ins. Although this is a great way to stay on top of the employee’s performance, this may not always be realistic. A quick midyear review may be the answer for your company. Hopefully, in January or late December you and your employee created goals and set clear expectations. It is now June, so as a manger you have had plenty of opportunities to assess whether or not your employees are reaching their goals. If you are not doing weekly or monthly check-ins, then possibly you did a quarterly review.
What to look for
Although this may be obvious as a manager, you will want to know the answers to the following questions. Is your employee on track, or not, and why, or why not? Do your employees need help reaching or maintaining their goals? Is your employee actually tracking results? Do your employees even know where they are on reaching their goals? How do your employees' performance or lack of performance impact you as a manager or department? As a manager, your employees' goals role up into your goals. If your employees are not succeeding, then neither are you.
What to do with a midyear review
This seems like a simple solution. If the answer is no to these questions, then you fix each. But, for some, it is not that simple. If your employees are reaching or exceeding their goals, then maybe you change the desired results, to achieve more. If your employees are not reaching their goals, then figuring out why becomes very important. Has the market changed? Were the goals too much to start with? Or, is your employee just not trying hard enough? Goals should not be written in stone at the beginning of the review cycle and never changed. If the market has changed and there is an increase in competition, or demand has dropped dramatically, or you lose a key customer, then the goal may need to be changed.
The midyear review is a great time to assess the need for this change. Goal tracking and results monitoring, may be a new concept for your employees, so it will be important they understand recording their results is key to reaching their goals. As a manager, you may have to work through ideas on how this can be accomplished. Sometimes, your employees just need a mentor to help them identify tasks that will help them achieve their goals.
Other resources
It is important employees have access to every tool they need to achieve their goals. As mentioned, a mentor is a great resource for employees. Allow your employee to meet with someone who, "has been there done that," to help them brainstorm ideas to reach their goals. Time management may be the cause for your employee to be off. There are a lot of resources for this online. As a manager, you can schedule time for your employees to record their results or make a time for them to do tasks that will impact their goals. A simple root cause analysis will help employees identify the factors that are preventing them from reaching their goals. Root cause analysis can be daunting and employees may need some help or direction on how to truly answer all of the questions associated with completing a root cause analysis.
Midyear reviews are a great way to get a glimpse into the performance of your employees and department. There is no need to wait until the end of the review cycle, only to be disappointed with the results you could have changed, if you would have looked at the results sooner or more frequently. Although, for many companies, performance reviews are associated with merit increases. Doing a midyear review, does not mean your employees get a raise for being on track. But, it is does mean you know what’s going on.
We want to know
What are some of the things you have done as a manager to help your employees get back on track? Please leave your answer in our comments below.