5 Tips for Performance Management for Small Businesses

According to 33% of respondents of a recent HR Support Center poll, the number one employer nightmare issue is “poor performers.” The concept of performance management is simply a method to enhance business success.

One key component of performance management for small businesses is to bridge the company’s goals with the employee’s goals by creating development plans. For example, an employee may seek to obtain additional computer software training and/or certification to gain specialized skills to become more competent in the current job position or better qualified for a potential promotion. In terms of a company’s business plans and goals, the employer can provide employees with a great opportunity to understand where a business is, where it wants to be, and how they fit.

When reviewing employee goals and business goals, sometimes there is a disconnect. Managers may have long assumed that employees were working toward certain business goals when they were not. Employees may have built interests moving completely in different directions – a very frustrating but avoidable situation.

Five Tips for Employers:

1. Constantly question, understand, and communicate how to align the company’s business goals while assisting employees to achieve their individual goals.
2. During the interview process, learn about each candidate’s goals early on.
3. During employee performance evaluations, determine how well goals have been reached.
4. In the course of planning and implementing new ideas or initiatives, take into account how the attitudes and motivation levels among your employees have changed, if at all.
5. Establish realistic goals that are time sensitive, measurable and achievable, and determine what you can do to assist your employees during the process.

While course corrections are expected, performance management is most effectively applied when managers and employees are in constant alignment and mutual agreement with their individual, professional, and business potentials.

Download a sample Performance Appraisal Checklist, and please contact us with any questions.