The performance improvement is a continuous process to help the employees achieve better than before performance by getting the peak efficiencies of all the supporting tools, processes, procedures etc. The performance improvement plans are designed to help the underperforming employees meet the best standards and requirements in an organization in terms of behavior and productivity.
The plan can be subdivided into the operational or individual performance improvement to address the identified performance gaps at team level, organization level and department level. Numbers of measures are used to scale the performance. Getting the accurate insights through a manual process is often a time-consuming task that needs involvement of many employees. The customized ‘Performance Improvement Software’ provides the true-color picture of performance gaps, scope of improvement at different levels and cost for changes etc.
Why Performance Improvement Is Essential:
Why do employers have started to invest in implementation of performance improvement plan instead of firing out the underperforming employee? The professionally designed performance improvement plan (PIP) delivers several benefits for the employees and organization both:
- Sustainable Company Culture
PIP promotes a unique sense of accountability for individuals because everyone comes to know what and why they are expected to do. The higher-ranking employees start getting the support from the lower level employees; the employees know that they will get the support from management level. The developed culture encourages everyone to contribute the best for a common goal because their efforts are recognized and appreciated. The performance improvement is highly effective not only for low performing employees but for the good performing employees also.
- Time and Money Saving:
Businesses do everything possible to minimize the staff turnover to save the time and training cost. Supporting the existing experienced employees to improve their performance instead of firing them is a better option. Although the employees need training for getting fine-tuned to the introduced changes for performance improvement, but the strategically planned performance improve training delivers long-term effective benefits for employees and employer both.
- Better Than Traditional Reviewing System:
Traditional performance review system has lost its effectiveness and hardly inspires the employees to better than today or before. The underperforming employees expecting the consequences of review reports see themselves less associated with the organization; and, they start planning for switching over. The sense of instability badly affects their interest in the organization growth and their contribution to it. Also, some employees see the reviews incorrect or biased; it hammers the team spirit to achieve the common goal of peak efficiency. PIP provides the employees a clear idea of performance gaps and the ways to fill those gaps.
- Formal Process:
PIP is formal; thus, improvement is achieved in formal process. The formalities under PIP give the employees enough opportunities to concentrate over a particular weak area of performance. Unguided informal approaches for corrective action to improve the performance often derail. Employers lose sight over the long-term achievable performance goal. Performance improvement consultancy company addresses the current problems and management challenges through the customized formal processes. PIP includes essence of performance improvement goals, strategies, implementation tactics, milestone for different stages, progress review system, continuous learning and awarding etc.
- Early Stage Diagnose and Management of Problem:
| For performance improvement, management people need to be tough-minded on the performance standards but tender-hearted with employees. |
The performance improvement plan guides the managers to take early action if they find an employee’s performance under the set standards. Early intervention corrects the worker’s behavior, practices or task-oriented performance before it could harm the organization’s profitability and growth. The collected data base reports support the management people to explore the possibilities for switching over the roles of employees to get the better performance; it avoids tough actions like demotion and termination that affect the entire environment within the organization.
Different Performance Improvement Strategies for Different Objectives:
Performance Improvement Strategy for Low-Quality Work:
If an employee is delivering low quality work or is under-performing, PIP doesn’t support to take harsh actions; instead, it advocates to train the employee for producing and-fault work and to meet the deadlines. The strategy also creates a collaborative environment where a low performing takes support of senior team member.
Performance Improvement Strategy for Unprofessional Behavior:
| Don’t lower your expectations to meet your performance. Raise your level of performance to meet your expectations.” – Ralph Marston |
Misbehavior or unprofessional behavior directly affects the total productivity; sometimes, the productivity loss starts in hidden form.
The habits of coming late, leaving office early, engaging others without a purpose, taking too many leaves, not attending meetings etc are measured on the basis of reports prepared by the tailor-made performance improvement software. Professionally structured PIP sets the behavioral guidelines to make the employees at all the levels respected and valuable. The numbers of missed deadlines and reported activities are the key metric to judge the employee’s behavior.
Performance Improvement Strategy for Poor Customer Service:
Many times, a company starts getting complaints of customers about the poor behavior or inadequate knowledge of support staff. Why does it occur? The reason is either the support staff not trained or is not comfortable to tackle the customer service issues. The PIP strategy to improve the customers service is to organize the training and to encourage the employees work in close association with the customers. The customer satisfaction score is the key metric to scale the employee’s performance.
Five ‘SMART’ Tips for Performance Improvement:
- Determine parameters for acceptable performance with increased collaboration
- Create well-defined Measurable Objectives on the basis of identified performance issues
- Define the resources and support available for the employees; the key resources are training, meetings or upgrading the process and incorporating new technologies etc. The management needs to think continuously what the next it can do support the employees for better performance.
- Schedule for periodic meetings; it will help you share the feedbacks vice-versa. Instead of waiting for the deadline to receive the reports, make it a short-period exercise of regular check-ins.
- Make the consequences of low performance improvement clear; it encourages the employees to apply their efforts and skills not for saving their jobs or position in a team but because they know they will be awarded for the improved performance. Emphasize on improvement rather than tough punishment actions.
Concluding Note:
Live and measurable and performance improvement software and management tools like Hoshin Kanri Proprietary System are helping the businesses to improve the performance in identified areas through fine-tuned objective-oriented strategies. The performance management company analyzes the available reports and collects the data from the ongoing activities. The deep analysis of data-oriented reports helps the performance improvement consultancy company to customize the software for overall performance improvement.