What You Absolutely Must Know about Performance Review Form
Keep in mind that as well as by increasing income, profits can also be ramped up by minimizing costs and by more productive use of assets. One concept often overlooked is superior business performance management software and all of its benefits.
Business optimization needs comprehension of the strengths and weak areas of its staff: where do they do their best work? How can your system adjust to use their strengths and suppress their weaknesses? This is the burning question. While this data is important, it’s not really painless to get your hands on it.
To look at one aspect of this — employee appraisal, for instance — determining progress and keeping track of it is a significant amount of work. First of all, you use employee appraisal techniques to evaluate and keep track of work done by each worker. Assessing this data comes next. After all, before you can put it to use determining goals and identifying future advancement you need to know what the data means in practice. Using performance appraisal software you can be confident that this appraisal is taken care of and you need only examine the various analyses and factors to find what the right targets for this employee would be. It also makes charting the employee’s development much less effort. This removes the need to spend time on analysis and is likely to be more accurate. It’s of course possible just to use the system to record raw information like performance reviews and to make your own analysis. Performance management software can do more than help employees. It’s often valuable to study suppliers and clients to be better able to reduce costs by precision buying. It’s easy to check which suppliers carry higher quality products, at the lowest prices and also reveal those with bad damage records or slow delivery times.
When it comes to your retailers the software can still offer a clearer picture there telling you just who your best seller is, their loss percentage and any similar negatives, and acting as a reminder of any payment issues. Having this information means you can customize your system of orders and supplies to maximize profits and cut costs. Who wouldn’t want to take advantage of that? As well as this, the better understanding of your market will make for more efficient advertising.
Analyzing both market and suppliers is simple with performance management software. With a program of regular employee reviews such software application can help streamline employee performance management. How much can be achieved almost seems unlimited when leveraging performance management software!
VeraTrack De-Mystifies Employee Work History
In an age where outsourcing work to other companies, or even other countries is normal, Employment Verification is the latest task to join this upward trend in outsourcing. Employment Verification is one of the most labor intensive employee tasks faced by Human Resource staff on a regular basis. Cutting down on this time by outsourcing the task to a verification company increasing productivity in-house. And since companies such as VeraTrack specialize in verifying employment, you can be secure knowing that the verification will come back accurate and in a punctual manner. Outsourcing some or all of the employment verification process can save the company money that would normally go towards human resources for a project that on average would take much longer to complete.
Human Resource departments spend much unneeded time on the phone verifying employee work histories. The redundant and time consuming job of conducting Employment Verification is not effective for an in-house Human Resources department in a large corporation. However, there has recently been a new development of an innovative service that a savvy company who hires a multitude of people, can now apply to outsource the burden of having to personally making calls that inevitably which waste valuable hours that could instead be spent assisting the needs of their current employees as opposed to being used for verifying others for possible employment. At conservative rates, there is no reason even the tiniest company needs to do this menial task for themselves.
So You Want Some Advice regarding Health & Safety Regulations, Huh?
It’s still a popular misconception in many companies that, by giving each employee some training in safety in the working environment, they now have everything they require to prevent an incident. The truth is that, irrespective your industry, a basic education in health and safety legislation and risk asessment simply is not sufficient. Equipping employees, hiring good supervision and coordinating regular safety exercises are fundamental to the safety of staff.
Anyone in a supervisory capacity has a bigger purpose to play than just supervising the floor. Whomever you choose as the supervisor needs to see that health and safety instruction is important and have the ability to get other staff feeling enthusiastic about it. On top of checking conformity with health and safety legislation, the supervisor furthermore needs to make sure that employees perform all work efficiently. Of course it isn’t easy to achieve all this at once. Good industry knowledge is an essential for a supervisory position in addition to an extensive knowledge of up-to-date regulations involving safety, risk assessment and CPR.
It’s just not sufficient to send any employees to a health and safety training course. They have to practise risk assessment and the recognition of hazards. Staff need to understand the best method of eliminating hazards and how to cope when the unexpected happens. Your staff are only really prepared when their training and procedures have become automatic.
The right safety apparatus is every bit as necessary to the well-being of your workers as the instruction itself. Without the proper supplies or alternatively if employees see that equipment is damaged only after something has occurred, even the most advanced instruction will not help them.
You need to perform thorough checks on a regular basis to verify that all the necessary equipment is there and that everything is functioning properly. If your equipment is in poor order, get it repaired or call out a maintenance professional as swiftly as possible. The right health and safety education is essential for the health of your workforce, but in addition they must have good quality gear, frequent practise sessions, and a supervisor who can motivate your staff. When you put these ideas into practice you will find the safety regulations soon become part of everyone’s working habits and no longer something challenging everyone has to make an effort to think about constantly.
Effective Employment Verification
It’s a fact that trimming down the time it takes for an employee to complete a task cuts down on labor costs and saves employers money. One of the most labor intensive employee tasks faced by human resources on a regular basis is Employment Verification. With inaccurate information and unaccommodating references, phone tag and unanswered emails, employment verification is the bane of most human resource staff. In a standard forty hour work week, a human resources agent will spend up to eight hours on employment verification alone. This is roughly twenty percent of their time. This can add up and quickly spiral into a loss of productivity for human resources and a loss of money for the company.
Employment verification with VeraTrack is as easy as entering in applicant information, previous employer contact information, and the information to be verified. Verifiable data most likely includes dates of hire and separation, manager, reason for leaving, salary, and last position held. The next step (and the best part) is easy: simply wait. VeraTrack sends notice to the previous company via fax or email. The company then responds by going online, using a unique code to log in with and complete the verification. It is as simple as that!
Any business can go online and employ other links that can help to find other companies who perform different kind of background checks for a fee. Additionally, these links will allow you to choose by the particular location of your company. Many companies such as schools and school bus transportation will find links for many of the thorough background checks that are required in order to protect our children from harm. As the Human Resource representative has many particular jobs to perform, it is wise to dedicate their time to more serious matters than employee verifications of work history. This will eliminate the need to store private employee histories in an unsecured file cabinet.
Increase Profits Using Performance Management Software
The current economy requires that profit can most simply be raised by an examination of expenses, not a generating more income. An often forgotten asset in this, however, is superior business performance management software and all of its benefits.
Armed with the knowledge of the abilities of each of your employees are, you can adjust your routines to maximize their effectiveness, and thereby make the most of the company as a whole. Learning about and tracking this data is often where it may get difficult.
Identifying and keeping track of development through employee performance appraisal alone can turn into a significant task. First, you implement employee performance appraisal reviews to assess and track all work done by each member of staff. Should you be employing conventional approaches, the next move will be to manually assess all the raw information you have obtained simply to be able to follow further progress and define objectives. Using performance appraisal software you’ll find that this appraisal is done for you and you only need to examine the various metrics to find what the right targets for this worker would be. It also renders keeping track of the worker’s development much easier. Yielding as it does more useful information for less time invested, this is of course a major saving before putting these findings to use. Naturally, you can also study all of the findings yourself and use the process simply to collate and track everything.
And improving the efficiency of your employees is merely one of the advances you can make using performance management software. Both suppliers and clients can be studied using such software programs, giving you access to even more performance management tools. It’s easy to check who provides products with the best quality, at the lowest prices as well as reveal those with high rates of damage or poor delivery times.
As for affiliates, clients, and retailers, it’s possible to demonstrate who bringhs you the most resales if there are payment issues, which client experiences the worst loss percentage, and more. You can then customize your ordering and stock handling to increase your profits while cutting outgoings. As well as this, a greater understanding of your target demographics will permit easier planning of your marketing. You can study your suppliers in order to minimize costs and stay abreast of your market so that you can make more money employing performance appraisal software. In addition it streamlines the employee performance review and helps set precise goals for your staff decidedly. What can be achieved using this software is quite incredible…
What Everyone Will Want to Note regarding Safety Equipment
Nowadays some managers believe that, since all of their employees have decent health and safety education, they are well equipped to manage any situation. The truth of the matter is that, regardless of the industry you’re in, basic education in health and safety regulatory affairs simply is not enough. You must supply your staff with adequate supervision, not to mention equip them adequately and give them the opportunity to practice.
Your staff must have an excellent supervisor to observe staff performance, yet this person must also play a much more important purpose in the business. Whomever you employ as the supervisor needs to see their health and safety training as crucial and have the ability to encourage other people to share their enthusiasm about it. In addition to encouraging compliance with health and safety legislation, the person supervising as well must make sure that employees perform all work well. This is a tricky role. In-depth industry knowledge is a necessity in a supervisory job not to mention a very high standard of comprehension of up-to-date regulations regarding safety, risk assessment and first aid. It just is not adequate to merely send any staff to a health and safety course. To effectively discover a risk they must have to put their newly accquired skills into practise. Staff in addition require insights into the steps necessary to remedy the situation as well as how to act when disaster strikes. Your workers are only really prepared when everything has become second nature. Adequate safety equipment is equally as important to the well being of your workers as training. When employees discover they don’t have apparatus that is necessary, or discover that they’re not functioning properly only after an emergency has happened, then all the education available will not help them. It is crucial to check each item often to make sure that you are in posession of all the essential apparatus and also that all the supplies are working properly. Should you have a problem with your gear, be sure to get it remedied as speedily as you can and put it back in the proper place.
Health and safety education is critical to the well-being of your workforce, however they require good quality apparatus, frequent practise drills, and a supervisor who can motivate your staff. When you implement these steps you should find the safety regulations become ingrained in your business culture instead of an inconvenience for the workforce to think about all the time.
How to Improve Your Human Resources Management Skills
Effective human resource management is extremely important in reaching the best in your business success. With a little effort you can succeed in learning these skills. Having a innate skill for dealing with people and forging relationships can be an advantage, but you can do many things to make this procedure easier.
Relationship Development: Addressing staff by name will be a beginning. Talk to staff; make eye contact during a conversation. Develop a respectful attitude, also pay attention to what the other person says, irrespective of whether you agree with them. Paying attention to what employees say is one of the best human resources management skills you can develop. Show interest in what they can contribute to the team. Live up to your word: Don’t make promises you won’t keep. If you can’t keep your word, the fragile bond of trust is destroyed, and no-one will give you their best efforts without trusting you. Everytime you give a commitment or make a promise, you are squandering your time if you don’t act with integrity. You’ll discover, if your people can’t depend on you, they won’t be available when you actually need them. Welcome any feedback: It’s a two-way street. Having an open mind regarding other’s opinions is an important skill in managing employees. If you are willing to demonstrate that you are approachable and open, you show that other people’s ideas matter to you, and they will respect your opinions. Open discourse in addition boosts new ways of thinking, innovative ways of fulfilling goals, and develops the bonds of an excellent team. By allowing the staff a voice, the project will become important to every employee.
Promote communication: Dealing with people boils down to the same thing - communication. Maintaining an open door policy, listen intently to your co-workers, keep an open mind, and permit each of your team members to express themselves. Inspire staff not only to speak with you, but with each other. The exchange of thoughts is imperative in the creative process, and when the team communicate efficiently, you can identify problems early, and corrections may be implemented before things get out of hand.
A little time is needed, yet the rewards are worth it. By establishing the bonds of a good team and developing effective listening techniques, a successful business will be yours.
Web Conference Calling Create a Huge Chance to Slash Unnecessary Travel Expenses
Gas prices are soaring and as a result, business budgets are pressed short more than previously. As the economy lumbers along slowly and capital remains hard to come by, intelligent decision makers acknowledge extraneous costs should cut. Company directors across the country need to make some calculated decisions to shrink costs. Perhaps the best option to reduce department costs is to hack away at unnecessary travel budgets, and the secret is online conferencing.
Internet conferencing calls allow anyone to speak with clients wirelessly in a conference in another metropolis, in another time zone or even more significantly in an overseas country. The usual Internet conference calling make use of revolutionary networking technology. Because that they done through standard high-speed Internet connections, they just make additional use of no additional business resources. By going to web video conferencing, may an executive make a distant conference from just about any locale that has an Internet connection. Not only is it easy as a computer and an Internet connection, it has huge potential to reduce big travel more than five digits.
Break throughs in digital technology make online conference calls a good choice for businesses to share information and presentations seamlessly. Conference participants feel as if they are virtually there, even if they are halfway around the planet. The detail of the presentations audio and video is without flaw given the best in streaming video.
Obviously just about any business should increase profits by utilizing Internet conference calling in place of blowing thousands sending an executive on a big trip. A business shouldnt throw away money on hotels, meals or even transportation. These trimmings can amount to thousands. Any cost savings is more productivity for your business. Its commonly known that many firms are opting for Internet conferencing calls to reduce budgets on needless business journeys.
Diversity Training: The Worst Possible Reasons to Request Executive Funding
You’re on your organization’s diversity committee. You have the best of intentions.
And that’s the problem.
It leads you to appeal for funding for all the wrong reasons.
Take healthcare for example.
The US foreign-born population comprises a larger segment than at any time in the past five decades. And this trend is expected to continue(1). People of diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural heritage suffer disproportionately from cardiovascular disease, diabetes, HIV/AIDS and every form of cancer. In addition, their infant mortality rates are generally higher(2). Minorities receive measurably poorer care and they suffer for it.
Great reasons for diversity training. Disastrous reasons to ask for executive funding for your diversity program.
If you doubt me, just look at your budget. Chances are you’re getting sincere encouragement from the boardroom but not budget codes that represent significant financial resources.
Here’s the nut of the problem.
If you’re at or near the front lines–the medical floor if you’re in healthcare, or sales or service if you’re in a corporation–the discussions you’re having about diversity training are not the discussions your executives are having.
In healthcare, for example, when physicians, nurses, and their department heads discuss diversity training, they talk about the increased needs they experience in serving minority populations.
That conversation centers on health disparities among ethnic and cultural minorities, how they might be overcome, the new treatments that are called for, and new techniques and perspectives staff need to be educated in.
That discussion is all good. All well-intentioned. And every part it increases the expense side of the income statement.
Your executives are having a discussion of their own.
What they want to know is how diversity training impacts the business of whatever business you’re in. In healthcare, that means increasing your appeal to minority patients, competing for private purchaser business, responding to public purchaser demands, and improving cost effectiveness.
In other words, while frontline staff are talking about diversity training in a way that increases costs, executives are looking for strategies to decrease costs and increase income. As long as the frontline and boardroom talk past each other, programs like diversity training will fail to receive the recognition and funding they deserve.
But you don’t need to wait for a more enlightened day. In fact, you can turn a few switches on yourself.
If you’re a real advocate of diversity training, I recommend you start assembling a “business impact model”, the sharp dark line that connects performance on the front line with your organization’s ultimate business goals. There are some very good books where you can learn about this quickly. “The Success Case Method” by Robert Brinkerhoff and “Performance Consulting” by Robinson and Robinson are good places to start.
Here’s the short course.
Instead of asking for money for diversity training, start from the top down. Look at your unit’s business needs. In healthcare, this shows up as patient satisfaction scores, days in treatment, staffing levels, number of adverse events and law suits, and such.
Next, recognize that when your organization fails to work effectively with minority consumers, it’s not only the consumers who suffer. You need to point out how your organization is missing its numbers, how improved performance on the frontline will help your unit meet it’s goals, and how diversity training will create the improved performance you need.
Let me give you an example. Here’s how diversity training translates to lower liability costs in hospitals.
Hospitals administrators have a significant incentive to reduce medical malpractice claims. If you do a little digging, you’ll find out that four of five patients who sue haven’t suffered medical negligence(3). Patients sue because they feel devalued, deserted, misunderstood, and misinformed(4).
Combine that with the knowledge that minority patients are less satisfied–in fact African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans are 10-15 times more likely than whites to believe they would receive better health care if they were a different race(5)–and you have a recipe for trouble.
It will cost your hospital $25,000 to mount a defense for each claim, even if you win. And your hospital has scores of claims, possibly hundreds.
Put an argument like this together and see the mileage you get.
The discussion starts like this: “We have a problem with medical malpractice that we all want to solve. Each claim costs us $25,000 to defend. And X number of them have come from our staff’s difficulty in engaging minorities effectively. How many cases do you think we could head off if we trained this group of staff to perform more effectively in their interactions with minority patients?”
Now you’re talking about saving money and meeting organization goals.
And that’s a welcome reason to commit funding.
Whatever cultural issues your organization is facing, they have business impacts. You just need to point them out, and make your proposal part of the solution.
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1. National Center for Cultural Competence, Why is There a Compelling Need for Cultural Competence?
2. Cohen E, Goode TD. Policy Brief 1: Rationale for Cultural Competence in Primary Health Care. Washington, DC: National Center for Cultural Competence; Winter 1999.
3. Focus June 4, 2004, How Doctors Might Curb Malpractice Claims, News from Harvard Medical, Dental, & Public Health Schools
4. Beckman HB, Markakis KM, Suchman AL, Frankel RM. The doctor-patient relationship and malpractice: lessons from plaintiff depositions. Arch Intern Med. 1994;154:1365-1370
5. Center on an Aging Society Georgetown University, Issue Brief Number 5, February 2004, Cultural Competence in Health Care: Is it important for people with chronic conditions?
Tim Dawes is the founder of Interplay, Inc., a firm that helps healthcare organizations to exceed their strategic goals by demonstrating unexpected empathy to patients. Learn about a step-by-step process that helps your staff make their natural compassion more deliberate and consistent for patients, and sign up for monthly “how to” articles at http://www.interplaygroup.com
Ten Fun Ways to Liven up Any Presentation
Most of us would agree that having humor in our lives increases rapport, strengthens our relationships and overcomes communication barriers. People who work in a positive, often playful environment are more likely to stay. Productivity and creativity increase while stress is reduced. We just feel better after a good laugh. Think funny!
1. Open with a humorous story. . I remember the time the lights when out and I fell off the stage. I wasn’t hurt and quickly said, Now I will take questions from the floor. I’m at my best when taking questions in the dark. Before you can be funny, you must learn to see funny. Find the humor around you, in your life every day. The lady who takes an aisle seat rather tan sit next to the window . . . doesn’t want to mess up her hair. Practice telling the story out loud, and cut out any parts that aren’t crucial. As Shakespeare so wisely said, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
2. Use props (candy bars, hats, funny faces, etc.) Props can be used as a metaphor or an analogy for a point you are introducing. They get your creative juices working while providing an anchor for your audience to focus on.
3. Cartoons use your own or others a picture saves a 1000 words. Put cartoons on an overhead or use as part of a PowerPoint presentation.
4. Humor - should be relevant to your topic. Tom Peters said, I deeply believe in humor; not in jokes. Humor is spectacular. Humor relieves anxiety and tension, serves as outlet for hostility and anger, and provides a healthy escape from reality. It lightens heaviness related to critical illness, trauma, disfigurement, and death. It comes as no surprise that many people are utilizing humor to deal with the trying times. But is the humor timely? Is it appropriate?
Do not use ethnic, racist, political or religious jokes. Include a joke that helps bring back the attention of the audience or as a way to lighten up your remarks. We all can use a good laugh from a well timed, funny joke.
5. Self effacing humor- it is better to admit you made a mistake than to admit that you are one. One of my lines as a mother of five is: For someone who isn’t Catholic, I sure did my share for the pope! Phyllis Diller is in the Guinness Book of World Records as having the most laughs per minute. A laugh is measured by:
5 points if everyone is laughing and applauding
4 points if everyone is laughing and there’s a smattering of applause
3 points if everyone laughs but there’s no applause
2 points if some people are laughing
1 point for a titter or giggle
6. Mime- Marcel Marceau makes us laugh and moves us. Charlie Chaplin was an all time great without using the spoken word.
7. Move Your Body Try lifting your nose, look off to the side, jut out the bottom of your jaw, and notice how you become arrogant or aloof, Take a wide stance, shift your hips forward, and now you’ve just gained 50 pounds. The use of body movements will help to visually enhance your remarks.
8. Repetitive oral recitation- (repeat after me, Remember, if you can see funny, you can be funny. Repeat a particular sentence throughout your presentation to encourage audience retention.
9. Use taped music for a stretch break. Get the audience to sing a funny song. Pass out words to a song. Lighten up your attendees have some fun and your audience retention will increase. Don’t be afraid to be theatrical or silly. It’s why we pay actors the big bucks; and your audiences won’t forget you. Be outrageous. It’s the only place that isn’t crowded.
10. Group exercise a fun way to conclude your presentation is to use a group exercise. Use the football huddle to get the group to repeat a cheer or an affirmation to take some action.
About The Author
Sandra Schrift 13 year speaker bureau owner and now career coach to emerging and veteran public speakers who want to “grow” a profitable speaking business. I also work with business professionals and organizations who want to master their presentations.
To find out How to Become a Highly Paid Professional Speaker, go to http://www.schrift.com/ProfessionalSpeaker/
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