Business Management Articles
Boss ISN’T a four letter word
John Watt
BDO Dunwoody LLP
March/April 2005, Okanagan Growers Journal
It’s surprising how many managers and supervisors find it difficult to give firm directions to their staff. This issue keeps coming up over and over again, particularly when it’s time for the performance appraisal.
In my 25 years in business, I have yet to meet an individual who does not want, and even appreciate, feedback on their performance.
I do quite a few human resource audits in the course of a year and this issue keeps coming up over and over again. (A human resource audit is basically sitting down with employees in an informal way and finding out how the company is doing, what things could they be doing better, issues making it difficult for the employee to do a good job, how the company assists the individuals, etc.)
In general, managers find these audits are difficult to do and they are usually done by an HR person or outside consultant, but these are not “bitch” sessions. However, the indication is given to employees that information passed back to the managers is done so on a general basis without anybody’s name attached.
A frequent comment from employees: “I wish the boss would tell me exactly what he/she expects of me”.
I think most of us have been in the situation where we aren’t really sure if we are doing exactly what the boss wants us to. It’s one of the issues that lead people to switch jobs.
When I ask bosses what the deal is I really get two answers.
Number One
And they are not happy about saying this -some bosses say they don’t know enough about the job to give the kind of direction that staff would like.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to have the employees doing jobs when the manager doesn’t know what they are suppose to be doing.
Number Two
But by far the biggest concern managers have is - what happens when they don’t agree with their employees.
Sounds a little bit surprising doesn’t it? But I have had some very good supervisors tell me they are concerned employees will tell them, “Well I don’t want to do that or I don’t want to do that in a certain way.” Or “my job should be like this or I prefer to do these things.”
Here are some suggestions:
Number One
Make sure the right person is doing the performance appraisal. In some companies, everybody wants the managers, partners or vice president to do all the appraisals. Of course, these individuals should have some input, but the person who should be doing the performance appraisal is the person who best knows what the job is about.
Number Two
The individual doing the appraisal needs to start with a job description and make sure it is up-to-date. If I had a nickel for every employee who has told me: “I didn’t know I was suppose to be doing that” or “I’ve been doing that for a long time, I didn’t know it wasn’t part of my job”, I’d be very wealthy.
If the job description needs to be changed then change it. If you and the employee have a disagreement over what the job description ought to be, make sure you give all the comments serious consideration and then finalize the job description.
But remember: You make the final decision – and make sure the employee has a final copy.
When your people know what the job is and how the job is to be done, they can go off without much direction and get the job done correctly. They will be much happier knowing what they are doing and how they will be judged on it.
Once the job description is done then it’s relatively straight forward to go through the issues and identify what is important.
Again the question comes up: “What if I don’t agree with my employees about how things are to be done”?
Ask yourself this question - if you went to your boss and said to him or her: ‘Look - I don’t like to do some of these things in my job description and I am not going to do them.’ And additionally, ‘I will not be doing some of the things you want done the way you want them’, where would your next job be?
Seasonal Workers
Performance review comes up for seasonal employees quite often with managers either thinking it’s not worthwhile to do or sometimes they are very nervous about the quality of staff but are more nervous they might lose them in a tight labour market.
Let me go back and say, nobody will get terribly upset about a performance appraisal as long as it is fair and done positively. But, there is no question that dealing with marginal staff can be a problem.
The first part of the appraisal is about you; knowing why you are doing this, and what you should expect out of it, and why it will be of benefit.
Make sure the first part of the performance appraisal is about the job, what you expect to be done and why it is important. Even if it is hard to find employees, do you want an employee there who is not doing what you need?
Where you change your performance appraisal is in telling people how well you think they are doing. If you are dealing with employees who are not doing as well as you like, and you feel they are not likely to change, but it would be very difficult for you to get new ones, continue your appraisal. Deal with what they are doing, by dealing with their performance at the level you think they can work at.
For example, if you have workers who are picking fruit at so many baskets per day and find that some employees are picking well below that, determine whether they are likely to change. If you don’t think they will change, you may have to accept this and change your level of expectation.
If it’s not a matter of performance, but a matter of attitude, you have to be very concerned about this. If the person’s attitude is bad, it may be poisoning the rest of the individuals and you may be very well served by getting rid of this individual even if you are a couple of people short.
I don’t want to belabour the point, but using performance appraisal in any situation, if done properly, will almost always help. If it does not help, then make a decision to accept the situation and don’t hassle yourself or the employees about it.
Obviously, employees who can’t or don’t want to reach a certain level of performance, aren’t going to benefit from more attention. So, don’t waste anymore time on them. But more importantly, don’t “beat yourself up about it”.
You’ve made a business decision. Maybe it is not the one that you’re most happy about, but accept it and move on. But don’t forget about it -there is always next season.
John Watt, Director of Regional Human Resources, in the Vernon office of BDO Dunwoody LLP, can be reached by phone @ 250-545-2136 or by e-mail jwatt@bdo.ca.
