Staff performance management tips for very small companies
Posted on 6:03pm, 28th May 2010 • No Comments
Staff performance management’s easy in small companies, right? Sitting next to each other, you see what everyone’s doing and how well they’re doing it and if there’s a problem, you just lean over the desk and sort it all out.
Pause for hollow laughter from any manager / owner of a small company! Staff performance management isn’t any easier when you’ve fewer than 10 employees, it’s just different and even more of a worry. Small companies live closer to the knife-edge than large ones and a single individual’s failings may be enough to put everyone out of work. As boss, you’re sorting out 101 little and large problems at once and relying on your instincts to make the right decision every time. Being also chief sales executive and company representative, it’s likely you’re out of the office most of the time so staff performance management problems may reach crisis point before you spot them.
In the middle of the mayhem, what practical steps can a busy boss take to stop staff performance management problems arising in the first place (and solve them if they do)?
The first essential is to sort out what aspects of staff performance management truly are key to your business’s survival and growth.
Use the whole team’s contacts to track down a couple of intelligent, trustworthy but currently unemployed business studies or accountancy graduates who’ll do a first class independent business assessment in return for pub lunches, their expenses and something good to put on their CVs. NB: asking your team to help you find staffers for this project makes them feel more in control and more confident about your motives!
You ask your graduate “consultants” to guide the whole workforce (you included) on what the business has to do now and in the future to attract and keep sufficient numbers of profitable customers and supply them with services / products at margins high enough to pay everybody’s wages. The graduates should analyse the contribution each job makes to keeping the business viable; also, what simple, verifiable staff performance management measures will most help each job holder and the business keep track of how they’re doing.
Allow plenty of time for staff to question, dispute, discuss and refine the graduates’ presentations. The staff performance management measures eventually agreed will then be used by each worker for routine self-monitoring and for setting improvement targets from their current baselines of performance.
From then on, manager and team should regularly review what the staff performance management measures are telling them about the well-being of the whole business. The whole emphasis should be on celebrating and spreading good staff performance, dealing with any areas of weakness through a problem-solving / co-coaching approach. No, this isn’t a soft, cosy way of dealing with staff performance management issues – it’s one of the few methods that very small companies find practical and productive.