Employee Performance: Clearly Setting Expectations for Team Success

Employee performance management is a mindset. It’s an operation, an on-going process of setting expectations early and clearly starting immediately when you hire team members into your organization. And it’s a process that helps supervisors and employees reach a shared understanding of what is expected in terms of behavior, results, and feedback. Therefore, in this article, I want to talk about how to navigate the sometimes treacherous waters of employee performance through expectation setting.

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Before you can conduct performance reviews on employees, you must institute a performance management system. If you’re throwing employees into a semi-annual or annual performance review without giving them the tools they need to be successful within your company, then you’re not just crippling them. You’re crippling your business.

Tips for Determining Expectations for Employee Performance

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, performance management is a mindset and a process. It’s not a once-a-year meeting. Performance management is preparing team members to meet their goals throughout the year. It’s purposefully directing their actions without micro-managing them. But just how do you do that?

Well, I recommend the following:

• Have clear, documented expectations of employees in their job descriptions and in employee handbooks.
• Regularly discuss the key components of employee and corporate goals with team members.
• Meet with your team members regularly.
• Get 360 degrees worth of feedback about employees from other team members.
• Share the performance review criteria and meeting format with team members.
• Work with team members to set individual and corporate goals.
• Review both negative AND positive things team members are doing.

Steps for Communicating Employee Expectations

Once you understand how to direct the employee performance, it’s time to begin it.

In the Beginning – Setting Goals

• Step 1 – Meet with the employees: Allow the employees to set and write down yearly goals for themselves.
• Step 2 – Review, amend, and approve employee goals: Critique employees’ yearly goals, and sign their goal sheets.

In the Middle – Mid-Year Review of the Goals

• Step 3 – Continuously review and comment on the results of activities, goals, and progress: Allow employees to tell you how well they’re achieving their goals.
• Step 4 – Assess the employees’ progress and discuss it with them: When you receive employee feedback, agree or disagree with their mid-year assessments, and offer them insight on how to reach their goals. Encourage them. Coach them.

At the End – Year-End Review

• Step 5 – Allow employees to review expectations and results and rate their own progress: As you’re wrapping up the year, allow the employees to self-assess their progress toward their goals.
• Step 6 – Review employees’ results and ratings: Give your own assessments of the employees’ achievements.
• Step 7 – Discuss and confirm employees’ ratings: Ultimately, you’re going to write down the results of the employees’ progress and have them sign it. Place the forms in their employee files.

Ultimately, what I’ve just given you is the process of clearly setting expectations to your employees. It’s a seven-step process. It’s ongoing. Many business owners don’t do performance reviews, but if they do, they just throw employees in their offices once a year for a stressful meeting. That’s not fair to your team members. Let them know what you expect of them. Keep them up-to-date on where they stand throughout the year. You can make these mini-performance reviews part of your daily routines. That way, employees aren’t left wondering what you expect and whether or not they’re meeting your expectations.

Don’t miss our next staffing article using what you learned here: Conducting Performance Reviews

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