The appraisal cues a manager on how to counsel workers on a day-to-day basis. Workers who perceive they're not working fast enough, when they are actually fast but careless, can be reinforced on their speed and taught to recognize the cost of being careless. A manager who's actively coaching every day is appraising every day. And that's the best and earliest alarm system you can have.
At Datatec, benchmarking prevails. Datatec measures everything -- defects in receivables, late orders, length of service calls, you name it. It also requires all employees to rate everyone else's performance either monthly or quarterly. And it surveys customers for their opinions. The results are published monthly for everyone in the company to see.
So imagine this: After a week of training, you, the new guy at Datatec, start being graded at the end of your first month. You see immediately how you rank on every aspect of your job. It's obvious where you need to improve. Because the surveys are so frequent, problems are caught early and better performance shows up immediately. And because managers are using the same survey results as workers to evaluate performance, differences in perception are minimized. The strength of Datatec's system is that it allows employees to correct themselves.
* Fix the problems. Evaluating what's wrong and changing it require far more skill than anything else you'll do as a manager, because no one can fix the problem but its owner, the weak performer. You're the facilitator, the person who makes that problem so crystal clear that the employee can't resist fixing it herself.
At Modern Business the manager sets up a special session with the employee. The manager states the performance failure, produces evidence that it's an issue, and gets the employee to agree that it's a problem. "We never say, 'Do you sometimes come in late?' We say, 'Our team is having a problem because you're arriving after 8 a.m.,' " explains Richmond. Evidence might be attendance records.
Next the manager and the employee list all the possible causes, perhaps 20 or 30 of them. Then, the two list as many options as they can think of for solving the problem. They select one option that will help most in the short term and one that will be most effective over the long run. Finally, they create an action plan for implementing the solutions. "The power of this approach is that when the employee gets up and walks out the door, he's committed to it because he's part of it," says Richmond.
Other companies find other forms of remedial action effective. American List's Rappaport believes in probation. Not probation as an on-your-way-out-the-door technicality, the way too many companies use it, but as a kind of shock therapy administered along with other steps. For example, an employee with a pivotal role in American List's research department wasn't getting his work done. After repeated coaching sessions between the researcher and his supervisor, Rappaport told him the company would have to let him go if his project wasn't done in the next 30 days. He met the deadline.
At Advanced Network Design, a third-party telecommunications-services company in La Mirada, Calif., Dave Wiegand uses what he discovered during the hiring phase. He asks all job candidates, "How should an employee who fails to get to work on time be disciplined?" Wiegand can use the employee's own suggestion, and a reminder of where it came from, to cure problems.
* Fire when it's time. If nothing has worked, take the advice of every experienced businessperson we talked to, and don't sit on the decision. You will have to make sure the termination follows your company's policy guidelines, but by all means, act.
Try to appreciate the employee's strengths and understand why your company couldn't harness them. The most genuine delivery of the bad news we found was Richmond's: "When you came in the door, the last thing I wanted to do was put you in a position where you couldn't be successful. But I seem to have done that. Here are some of the problems we worked on. . . ." In fact, scripting yourself is a good idea. By writing out your comments beforehand, you can individualize your treatment.
Rappaport suggests having two people in the room in addition to the employee -- the immediate supervisor and someone with whom the employee does not have a day-to-day relationship. The manager delivers the bad news, answers questions without engaging in an argument, and then leaves. The neutral person's major role is to listen, but he or she should also be prepared to answer questions or offer specific information on how the relationship is being severed. Will the worker receive severance pay, assistance in job hunting, good references? How long will his or her company health-insurance benefits last, and what will they cost? Is the terminated person eligible for unemployment benefits?
Before the meeting make a checklist of things to do, from collecting keys to finding a replacement for the employee. Two items that should be on it: addressing other workers' concerns and helping the fired employee find another job. No matter how isolated the firing incident or how good the reason for it, other employees will figure they're next. Sit them down, briefly explain what happened, and assure them you have no plans to fire anyone else.
Finally, make a serious effort to help the fired employee find another job. Remember, if you really did do your best in hiring the right person, you do believe in his or her basic qualities. You needn't hire a costly outplacement firm. You could alert vendors, customers, and people in your industry, providing a formal introduction in some cases. For a limited time you could also make available some of your office's resources.
* Conduct an exit interview. What you hear in an exit interview could be the most candid, insightful criticism you'll get. But hardly anyone does one after firing an employee. And yet, it's worth it. The best approach: keep it simple. Chris Carey, CEO of Datatec, conducts exit interviews over the phone a week or two after the terminated worker has left. "I ask them what it was like to work here and if they could give me some advice on what I could do to make it a better place to work." Assure the ex-employee that what he or she says won't cause you to withhold a good reference or other benefits you've already agreed upon.
