I’m working on a Writing exercise and need support.
Part I
Performance Management is an integral part of providing employees with feedback about achieving goals and objectives. Establishing performance standards creates alignment with the company’s mission. The standards communicated, both verbally and in writing. If the language is too vague, misalignment occurs between the manager and employee, potentially having different perceptions of standard performance and actual performance. Employees tend to rank themselves higher and overrate their abilities than their managers. There are multiple methods to obtain the data for the quality and quantity of work produced by an employee. Recognizing performance is a continual process that assists employees in enhancing their development. According to Bates, “measurement is important to performance improvement because it helps related fundamental decisions to purpose and process.” To ensure employees are connected and engaged with their work activities, two essential methods in the performance management process are feedback and coaching.
Feedback provides information about an employee’s work performance in a constructive, without judgment way. Additionally, “feedback builds relationship because when major challenges are presented, the environment of dialogue – and hopefully trust – is already established” (Lee, 2020). Feedback and be informal, in-the-moment, or scheduled. Ongoing feedback increases motivation, which leads to increased productivity. Feedback should be accompanied by suggestions for improvement, direction, setting goals, and a plan involving follow up. This method is different from an evaluation, a more formal, written tool that scores meeting expectations on specified periods. Willer (2016) stated that ‘feedback is essential for people to connect and learn from each other”. If feedback is not timely, employees’ awareness of performance issues will go unchecked and uncorrected. Underperformers may not realize that their performance is lacking and need to change. By not addressing the mistakes, the employee will continue with the wrong behavior and actions, which negatively impacts the other team members, leading to its inability to achieve its mission. Constructive feedback will motivate and engage employees armed to improve their productivity by reinforcing the behavior.
Beyond feedback, the next step is coaching employees to gain the skills or resources to accomplish their tasks. The process takes time and commitment to supporting struggling employees. A manager or a peer can assist employees with the tools needed to understand expectations. Coaching also helps to motivate and improve work performance. The process should be customized to the employee, as each person has different skills and abilities that need improvement. The seven steps to becoming a better coaching leader by Meinert (2016) express “coaching is not about fixing someone but about finding out who they are and building them up.” The right coach does not blame or criticize; however, it makes a meaningful impact to help employees discover how to resolve issues on their own. Coaches are active listeners, provide tools and resources to gain knowledge as well as resources for questions. The 2015 Human Capital Institute survey statistics show that half of its respondents with strong coaching cultures reported return on investment above their competitors and higher than average highly engaged workforce. A coaching culture values employee’s growth and development. “However, there is one area that managers can’t control: employee motivation and willingness to change” (Roepe, 2020). If the employee is not accountable and buy-into the process, it is difficult to improve their performance.
Human Resource’s role is to provide training to its leaders to enhance their skills. The need is to develop leaders to be strong coaches. Workshops and interactive exercises focus on active listening, goal setting, and role-playing. Training includes establishing clear objectives for managers’ participation. Their success is measured by their team members’ accomplishments and holding them accountable as part of their evaluation goals. Embedding feedback and coaching into performance management is essential to employee engagement and productivity. To fill talent pipelines, educating, and investing in human capital is critical to achieving talent goals.
References
Lee, C. (2020). Don’t confuse feedback with a performance appraisal. www.shrm.org
Meinert, D. (2016). Seven steps to becoming a better coaching leader. www.shrm.org
Roepe, L. (2020). Here’s how managers can help underperforming employees. www.shrm.org.
Willer, P. (2016). 7 ways to re-think performance management. http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2016/06/29/7-ways-to-re-think-performance-management/#6a8a398a3f59
Part II
Workforce Alignment is fundamental
Feedback is Magic
The These Methods Would Be Used in Your Organization
Willer (2016) states in his article that aligning the employees to the right set of objectives remains the success factor. In other words, when the employer trains their staff to understand the goal and agenda the company has and explains how their role fits in that picture and what is expected of them in their job, then there is successful performance management (Willer, 2016, June 29). Unfortunately, most companies do not apply all of those steps with the staff and their annual performance review reflects this gap.
In my organization Workforce, alignment and Feedback would be beneficial to not only our new hires but to the current employees as well. With workforce alignment, is designed to make sure the individuals understand how important their role in the company’s overall plans to grow and prosper the business. Fully understanding their job tasks and what is expected of them every day is vital to the business and employee’s success. To implement this method, Medtronic would need to start at the top and have individual meetings to make sure each person understands their roles and what is expected of them. This could be done in the meeting with a handout of what the position entails and have the employee sign this paper and give them a copy.
As for Feedback, Willer (2016) says feedback is essential for people to connect and learn from one another. The better people can exchange feedback, the stronger their network, and its outcomes in terms of collaboration and cooperation. If Medtronic will take the time to stop and find the things the employee is doing right instead of just coaching or approaching the employee when something needs to be corrected. Whether it is praise or correction, feedback needs to be prompt. If the supervisor waits months it may never take place and get worse or the individual begins to feel what they do does not matter.
How will HR implement these Methods
Moritra’s (2019) article confirms that feedback is an important part of making talent feel appreciated, noticed, and fully invested in cultivating relationships with co-workers for better company culture. This means that feedback should be a strong presence in any organization. To successfully implement a feedback loop in the firm HR create a regular system for feedback. Make sure there is a feedback system in place this way it is not an afterthought.
Feedback needs to become an essential part of how the company operates daily (Belyh, 2019, September 20). Then making the feedback feel safe and secure. Individuals will not usually give honest feedback if they do not feel secure when doing it. It is pointless to just be told what you want to hear. The more open communication is the more comfortable the staff will feel. (Belyh, 2019, September 20). There must be a balance of both positive and negative feedback. It takes both for people and the company to grow and change. Remembering no one is perfect. Feedback should not be used as another meeting but something the company is doing every day in their everyday routines. Keeping in mind each employee is different and the way one person receives or gives feedback may be different than someone else. Understanding how your team members give feedback is important too.
Aligning a company’s workforce to the strategic plan of the company can be a challenge because the leader is trying to guide a compilation of people toward the same goal. This can be difficult. (Bamford, 2019, October 3).To get everyone going in the same direction, meeting with your team and reviewing strategies and how to make things better is helpful. What is the mission, vision, and values of the company and what do they mean? Does everyone understand them and why they are important? Are the tasks in the department in line with helping the organization meet its goals? (Bamford, 2019, October 3). These are all questions to answer within the group. Connecting the dots of the work done and how it is moving the company forward is important for the employees to see. It makes their work seem more meaningful. There should be a clear connection for employees to see between what they do daily and the big picture of the company and technology can help with this (Bamford, 2019, October 3). By creating a spreadsheet that is accessible to everyone they can follow along and see how the work being done is propelling the business towards their goals and agendas. (Bamford, 2019, October 3).
Linda Cleven
REFERENCES
Bamford, A. (2019, October 3). Three steps to align your workforce to your strategic plan. Portland Business Journal. Retrieved from https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2019/10/…
Belyh, A. (2019, September 20). How to Implement a Feedback Culture in Your Company. Cleverism. Retrieved from https://www.cleverism.com/how-to-implement-feedbac…
Moritra, T. (2019, October 28). Clear Steps to Implement an Effective Feedback Loop. Cake HR.Retrieved from https://blog.cake.hr/moving-company-forward-clear-…
Willer, P. (2016, June 29). 7 ways to re-think performance management. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2016/06/29/7-ways-…
Part III
Ashford’s Writing Center offers three helpful resources for students. The online website consists of Grammarly, Live 24/7 Writing Tutor Chat, and TutorMe. This week’s assignment focuses on the Tutor Me’s feedback and suggestions to improve our Final Paper Rough Draft. The paper review process is as easy as one-two-three. Submissions must include a summary of the areas seeking input, upload the document, and wait for the constructive feedback. The three opportunities that the writing specialist provided me on the assignment were paragraph development, provide additional outside sources to back up the analysis, and lastly, deliver clarity on the assignment’s purpose. While the tutor’s review was positive overall, he had great insight towards improving the main point and purpose. This feedback is very beneficial to gain an outsider’s perspective and ideas on enhancements. Since my first course, I have used this tool for all of my assignments. Sometimes there are little tweaks and in other situations, a change in direction and thought process was essential to focus on broader concerns. I find this resource as well as Grammarly a vital part of the learning experience. The tracking number for this assignment was e1f686d7e88bc011.
As I reflect on my progress in the past five week, my learnings have been enriched by my peers’ posts and feedback. It is impressive that everyone takes time to ask questions, provide personal insights, and give encouragement along the way. Over the past decades, my human resources experiences have evolved to more strategic and analytical support for leadership. Workforce planning is one critical topic as is fundamental in filling roles with the most qualified top talent. Ensuring new hires obtain an onboarding experience that is meaningful, is secondary. In these challenging times, HR must think differently to attract and retain employees with the utmost concern for their safety. Balancing performance with morale is also difficult too. Lack of townhall meetings creates a void of personal interactions and team building activities due to social distancing. One key re-enforced learning is from this course is the importance of employee engagement. Without employee participation and buy-in, employee relation issues escalate, turnover increases, and the cycle of sourcing and hiring becomes a never-ending loop. The challenging assignments were interactive that require videos. My equipment is limited due on company policies, which becomes frustrating to meet program requirements. The company puts blocks on some external sites and has size requirements for uploading documents. The biggest challenge is balancing school and full-time work. Trying to keep up and remain ahead of readings and assignment takes commitment and dedication. The six-week timeline to learn the material is sometimes exhausting.
Part IV
This assignment has been very helpful with my planning for week’s sixth final paper. All of the classes at have a final paper in the sixth week and with every class. I find it harder and harder to write the final paper. I know what I want to say but typing it out gets so hard. This assignment has helped me to plan ahead and for that I am most thankful!
In the past classes I have used the writing center but sometimes find it hard to navigate. In this assignment we are asked to share our tracking numbers but unfortunately I can not find the tracking number so I am attaching the copy of my paper that has the comments from the writing center tutor. In the comments you will see that most of the mistakes I have made are grammatical errors. Grammar has never been something I am real good at so it is so helpful to have this service to assist with these needs.
The concept that I struggled with the most in this class was the talent management process. I had a hard time understanding the concept because it was a lot of new and unfamiliar information that was given all at once. I do not think the book for the course did this subject justice. The process that seemed to be the easiest for myself to understand was the onboarding process. I have gone through many on boarding sessions so that week’s topic was the easiest to follow.
I personally think that this course was very informative and the book was probably the best one with a course that I have taken thus far. I would have liked the interactive assignments to be done as assignments rather than discussions because of the amount of time it took to do the assignments correctly. With week 4 interactive assignment was unable to use the video equipment so I was unable to complete the assignment which was a bummer. Thank you Dr. Tom for the wonderful learning experience.
Part VII
To: Vice President
From: Human Resources Manger
Date: 22-september-2020
Subject: Performance Management
You raised a perpetual issue last week when you stated the concern about the decline in employee performance. That meeting made me consider creative ways to meet the challenge.We can work together as the company fate depends upon it. We have been working for so long for the company. We are short on staff in some of the departments due to some ongoing interoffice conditions because of some incongruous situation in the company.
The proper check about the performance of every employee in to be the top priority, Percentage of their performance should be checked every week. As the status of the company cannot be considered posterior, firing the employees are not the only option, we can consider all the ways we can make the progress. By firing the employees we might end up being bankrupt and of course after we fire, it will take a lot of time to hire new employees, and since they won’t be familiar with the company situation and our work we will have to make them understand from point zero, we do not have resources to waste on the new employees.
Many of the customers have showed discontent regarding not having reliable online ordering system. We can start by making our online system better as some consumers are more comfortable with online buying. We can change some employee services to the online departments, as they can handle online dealing much better. Employees who give low performance should be given a chance as keeping the company in check is the first priority so if the employees don’t take the chance seriously they should be suspended immediately.
As everyone in the company is aware of the critical situation our company had been since the start of the year. So formally, firing the employee is the luxury the company cannot afford. Since the reputation of the company had been at stakes bunch of employees already left and we are already short on IT department. However, I will personally make sure of the employee work and their performance; ensure that they work their best. To the ones who do their best and progress we should put forward some kind of incentives so they perform their jobs with honesty.
Instead of firing our employees we should think about making progress surely it’s hard without united effort but we need those employees. They are not experienced yet but they can be an asset months from now if we try to polish their abilities. We can provide them some kind of workshops to prepare and make them understand our terms and policies. We can let our old experienced employee train the newbie’s. First of all we can set up the meeting for the whole company’s employee to hear their side of the story and then we can make them sure that their problems would be handled if they compromise with the company’s financial problem. As we cannot afford to rebuke anyone’s opinion how much disparaging their offer might be.
The company is on the road to financial stability. But the entire deserving employee would be provided the incentives. With all the goals in our mind and by working unified we can work better. This potential is what we require now. Few experienced employee can be of very big help for the newbies as guides, and we also need a driving desire to achieve our upcoming obstacles to earn or goals. By this we would be able to meet the needs of our customers properly. The company cannot work without its employees neither its customer.
Part VIII
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ABC Athletics |
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To: |
CEO & Vice President of Operations |
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From: |
Janna Boyer |
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CC: |
Shareholders |
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Date: |
9/23/2020 |
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Re: |
Recommendations for the operations department |
Introduction
During a meeting held with the CEO, VP of Operations, and myself (HR Director) on September 23, 2020, we discussed that the employees within the operations department are not meeting the requirements of their position resulting in productivity issues contributing to a loss in revenue to ABC Athletics. The Vice President of the meeting shared his frustrations with the employees and recommended termination of all underperforming employees. The CEO gave the HR Director a project to assess the current use of development plans and make recommendations on the necessary steps to provide employee development and properly manage performance to mitigate risk to the ABC Athletics.
Following the meeting on September 23, 2020, through an assessment of the current use of development plans, new hires are not provided with formal on the job training, coaching, and or mentoring. Generally, the employee is hired and the HR Representative has them complete new hire paperwork. It was discovered through meetings with front line leadership that the employee is not offered any formal on the job training and often thrown in the fire to sink or swim. The majority of the front line leadership stated they are not holding regular one-on-one meetings with their staff given all of their competing priorities. Additionally, the majority of the front line leadership shared their frustration with their underperforming staff but had no documented performance management discussions outlining the expectations set and the outcome if performance standards were not met.
To mitigate risk toward the organization, I would like to propose an onboarding program and on the job formal training for new hires. The onboarding will consist of a day of New Hire Orientation (NEO) to review the background of the company, mission, vision and values, benefits, and HR policies. According to De Cenzo, D. et al. (2018), “Effective onboarding procedures can address these issues, reduce turnover, and increase new employee productivity, engagement, and success” (chapter 8). After day one of NEO, the new hire will be assigned to a buddy to help them learn the ropes of the department. The buddy is a seasoned employee in good standing with the organization and will train the new hire for two weeks. Leaders will be required to hold regular in-person meetings to provide feedback, coaching, and mentoring to a new hire. In addition to the regular one-on-one meetings, the leader will hold 30, 60, and 90-day checks in for their new hires to ensure they have the support needed.
Through an assessment, the job descriptions on file are outdated or do not exist. The HR Representative will meet with each leader to update the job descriptions. According to Friedman, L et al. (1986), “Job analysis is any systematic procedure by which one describes the way a job is performed, the tasks that constitute a job, and/or the skills and abilities necessary to perform a job” (p. 779). The job description is an important legal document for employees to understand what is expected of them. Leaders use the job description to hold staff accountable.
Each leader will be required to attend training offered by Human Resources (HR) on how to manage work performance, when to document and how to properly document to mitigate risk to the organization. This workshop facilitated by HR will review real scenarios that occurred at ABC Athletics. The scenarios will be an interactive process for leaders to discuss the scenarios and propose recommendations on how to address them.
Furthermore, through an internal and market data review, it was discovered that the staff was not paid in line with the market. I am proposing that we provide each new hire with a market adjustment. Ensuring the pay rates are market competitive will contribute to attracting, retaining, and selecting the right talent.
