Once the caldendar flips to January, everyone can expect to begin the long process of annual performance reviews--employee self evaluations, ranking performers, negotiating the rate of raises, etc... However, this is also a perfect time to review your employee infrastructure.
Employee nfrastructure refers to such crucial things as job descriptions, pay bands, performance metrics, training manuals and programs, HR web sites, and communication venues.
Many times it is easy to become so focused on filling out reviews that managers may fail to conduct reality checks to ensure the parameters for an employees work still makes sense. Pull the official job description for every employee within your responsibility, and then compare what this document thinks an employee's job is to what they are actually doing. For any descrepency between the two, determine which activity is correct, and either adjust the job description, or enact coaching changes on the employee's behavior.
When was the last time employee pay was benchmarked? Your organization could be losing quality people because you are not paying competitive to your industry, or you could also be overpaying/ If not done annually, this check should occur every two to three years.
A major tenet of our management philosophy is "What gets measured gets managed." Do the performance metrics for each employee correspond to the requirements listed in the job description? Do the metrics promote your organization's effort to produce customer satisfaction? If not, this is a great time to make changes for the upcoming year.
Next review your training manuals and overall training programs. If employee performance is average or lower, maybe the problem began at the training stage. During your review process, ask employees what they think is missing from the training program.
Finally, how well do you keep employees informed? What information do you in fact communicate? Review your employee newsletters and web site to determine if the message supports your organizational mission. If not, this again is a great time to make those changes.
Employees are an organization's primary asset. Take time in January to fine tune its performance by updating the tools used to drive outstanding customer satisfaction.