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Is stress affecting your workplace?
Is stress affecting your work? Or perhaps you’re seeing warning signs that others in your workplace may be buckling under the pressure of too much stress?
In many work environments, being busy and under pressure is a sign of importance and stress is all too often worn as a badge honor. For this reason, many workers are often reluctant to let others know they’re stressed or suffering from the pressure. However, if you’re feeling too much stress, it not only affects you, but it can impact others around you as well as your company.
Here’s why:
Eustress, which experts define as “good stress,” helps to keep you motivated, focused, and push you through some challenging projects. On the other hand, distress can be crippling.
Distress is an overload of Eustress, where the good stress stacks up to become more than you can cope with.
So, what are the signs that your Eustress has tipped over into the danger zone?
You might notice symptoms manifesting in your emotions, behavior, thoughts, or physical wellness. For the sake of your long-term mental and physical health and for that of your employees’, it’s important to notice signs of high-stress levels as soon as possible.
Your Brain Just Isn’t The Same
One of the first things to go when we are experiencing high-stress levels is our cognitive functioning. If you find you are experiencing abnormal anxious thoughts, an inability to concentrate, or are having trouble remembering things, your body is likely responding to stress.
Emotional Slump
Your coworkers may notice emotional irregularities before you clue into them, but it likely won’t take long for you to ask yourself, “what’s going on with me?”Emotional symptoms can include feeling depressed, irritable, lonely, pessimistic, or anxious. In the office, these intrinsic shifts will quickly affect the way you carry yourself, interact with others, and the quality of your work.
Bad Habits Creep Into Your Routine
Last week, you were a healthy, responsible creature of habit with a great diet and regular workout routine. This week, you couldn’t be more different.Stress hits our eating habits hard. For some, stress may result in a loss of appetite while for others the release of cortisol produces intense cravings for anything fatty or full of sugar and salt. Your use of alcohol and cigarettes may also increase as your body attempts to relax.Sleep and work habits fall victim to stress too; Sleeping too much or too little and uncharacteristic procrastination are indicators of a body and mind being plagued by stress.
You’re Crashing
Numerous studies have shown that stress has a strong correlation to health problems like obesity, depression, and asthma - to name a few. Hopefully, you will notice the more immediate symptoms and avoid these serious health conditions.
Many people report having aches and pain throughout their bodies, often followed by catching a cold or the flu. With or without a cold, you may see other cold-like symptoms emerge like dizziness, nausea, a loss of sex drive, diarrhea, constipation, and chest pain.The perceived magnitude of the events stressing you out is not a reliable indicator of how stressed you actually are - your body can react just as strongly to an argument with a co-worker as if you’re facing a true life-or-death situation.
Choosing to push through stress, regarding it as a temporary state that you will leave behind in a week or so, is not an advisable choice of action. The more your emergency stress system is activated, the easier it becomes to trigger and the harder it becomes to shut off.
Conclusion
The real key to minimizing the impacts of stress is to catch it at its initiation and examine what you could be doing differently to help out your body and mind. A full day at the spa may have you on a cloud for a few hours, but come Monday - when you are back to your everyday routine- your triggers will be waiting for you.
Take some time to research techniques for stress prevention and management that you can use inside and outside the office. You may find breathing exercises, meditation, or a lunch-hour workout does wonders for providing mental space and inner calmness.
If you manage employees, be sure to check-in regularly with them about their stress levels. Remember that recognizing your staff for their hard work helps them feel valued and can infuse them with positivity and appreciation. You may also consider programs to promote recognition and wellness in order to boost overall morale.
Many organizations are getting an immediate ROI from investments in these types of programs in the form of a happier, healthier and more productive workforce.
Let Qarrot take the guesswork out of employee recognition for your team - book your free demo today!
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Is your body language demotivating your staff?
Have you ever considered how your body language affects your employees and colleagues?
If not, you should.
Body language is a powerful method of subliminal communication and reflects your energy levels, emotional state, and personality. Because it is extremely easy to misinterpret, it is important that managers and executives be aware of what their body language is communicating to others within their organization.
Take charge of how you are coming across; body language can be a positive contributor to overall effective leadership. Knowing how to utilize your body language and interpret others’ will give you some useful tricks to keep employee engagement levels up.
Show interest in your employees
When in meetings or having one-on-one conversations with employees, ask yourself: What message is my body language conveying right now? You may be engaged and interested in the discussion, but your employee won't be aware if your body language is sending a different message.
And while you may think you appear engaged, take note of those little habits that say otherwise. For example, are you checking your watch, replying to text messages, or scanning the room while an employee is speaking? Don’t discourage your employees from contributing by sending a message of disinterest.
Attentive body language will encourage employees to contribute and engage in conversations. Eye contact, directly facing the person speaking, and non-verbally responding to input by smiling, nodding, and tilting your head, are all clear indicators of an interested listener.
Your body language will also signal to your team what is expected in meetings. If you are actively engaged in your team’s responses, your employees are more likely to emulate you and demonstrate engaged, supportive body language.
How do you hold yourself?
From the moment you enter a room, your posture informs employees of your mood, attitude, approachability, and interest. Maybe you are fatigued, or maybe you have never thought about your posture. But, you should know that other people are seeing it - and it has an effect.
An executive who sluggishly moves around the office doesn’t exactly energize her staff or inspire them to be their best. Show you are physically and mentally engaged yourself through strong body language; stand tall, with your shoulders back, and don’t forget to smile.
Smiling lets everyone around you know that you are approachable, cooperative, and open to communication. If you want your workplace to encourage idea-sharing, foster an inviting culture, and to motivate employees, smiling is an integral ingredient.
Respond to each employee accordingly
When two people are communicating effectively, they are often mirroring one another’s physical nuances. This physical synchronicity is called body mirroring and often happens involuntarily. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t consciously employ it.
If you notice an employee keeps a few feet of distance between himself and his coworkers when speaking, he probably has a larger personal bubble. This may be because of cultural or personal reasons. You can demonstrate your respect for his boundaries and make him feel more comfortable communicating with you by being aware of his spatial preferences. This way, you avoid making an employee feel nervous or stressed, consequently distracted by his emotional state and unable to fully engage in the conversation.
The personal gestures an employee uses when communicating are also important to notice. Do they make eye contact? Do they use specific, unique hand gestures? The more you observe how your employees are trying to communicate, the more versatile a communicator you can become. Your message will probably come across either way, but these small adjustments improve your employees’ engagement by showing them that you are more engaged.
Book your free demo with Qarrot to unlock the power and motivation of peer-to-peer recognition!
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How to provide a welcoming employee onboarding
“If you want people to perform well, you have to get them off to a good start. That’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?”
— Dick Grote, author of How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals
After a lengthy search, you’ve finally found the perfect candidate to fill that open position on your team. Congratulations, but your job isn’t finished yet! The next crucial step is to properly welcome your new hire with a well thought-out onboarding effort.
Getting your new employee operating with maximum efficiency and effectiveness relies on a comprehensive onboarding process. In our view, a plan that goes beyond the usual formalities of corporate values, compliance, and org structure to include a fun and meaningful introduction to company culture, opportunities to meet and socialize with team members, and a few short-term goals to focus on while coming up to speed, can go a long way to engaging your new hire quickly.
Human Resource managers often refer to the four aspects of new employee onboarding as The Four C’s: compliance, clarification, culture, and connection - all of which are important. Yet, too often an onboarding plan can become bogged down with “compliance”. Sitting in a boardroom with pamphlets of information, your new-hire is left with an unexciting, solitary first experience.
As you plan out your onboarding process, don’t forget to schedule time for “connection.” Taking a few extra measures to ensure an employee feels accepted and at ease with the organizational culture of the company will go a long way to integrating them within your team.
Many executives are beginning to recognize the engagement power of a smooth, organized cultural integration. Some companies are going so far as to send over the benefits information and an employee handbook ahead of a new-hire’s first day.
Before your new-hire even arrives in the office, you can set up some activities and surprises to make him feel welcome and express everyone’s excitement at him joining the team. Make things personal by having a small gift, decorating his desk, or getting the whole team to greet him when he first arrives. Within the onboarding plan, organize for him to buddy-up with other members of the team. Here, he can shadow colleagues, learn more about how the company works, and make connections with co-workers.
Once in the office, be sure to not only review your new hire’s core job responsibilities, but to discuss the company’s strategy and how his role fits into the overall picture. Ideally, focus on a few short-term tasks or responsibilities rather than jumping into too many different divergent tasks all at once. And frequently check-in over the first couple of months – don’t assume that your new hire remembers everyone or everything he’s learning right off the bat! In meetings and within projects, encourage questions and solicit his input - making him feel comfortable contributing now will solidify his ease at doing so throughout his employment with the company.
Onboarding is an ongoing process, so look for ways to fold your new-hire into the culture of the office in the weeks to come - looking beyond that first 24 hours. Does your company organize events? It could be a team lunch or maybe the company softball game, but he should be invited!
Another way to continue the trajectory of cultural integration and company familiarization is by assigning a mentor. A mentor can touch base with the new-hire in scheduled meetings or maybe a company funded lunch date. Never underestimate the power of peer-to-peer learning and communication.
This gives him a safe place to direct questions and a starting point from which to build those interpersonal relationships!
The most important thing to remember with onboarding is don’t wing it. Even if you have just 30 minutes to sit down and plan out your new-hire’s first 24 hours, you are doing yourself and your company a huge favour. Optimally, think about how you want your employee’s first 90 days to go: What will his training look like? Who will he connect with? How can you make him feel a part of the team from the get go?
Your effort to improve employee engagement and consequently, employee productivity, should start from Day 1, it just takes a little bit of effort.
On the hunt for more ways to engage your team from every corner? Qarrot might just be what you're looking for!
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Motivating different personality types
Here is a winning leadership strategy you may not have thought of: Know the ins and outs of your employees’ personalities and you will unlock exactly how to maximize their effectiveness within your organization.
The more an employer understands the unique traits in each team member, the easier it is to interact with them, inspire them, and have every individual operating at their full potential.
Not only that, but by understanding which personality types work best together and which tend to butt heads, you can more confidently ensure harmonious teams.
But apart from routine interaction with your team members, how can you learn their personality types?
Reliable personality tests take the guessing work out of employee placement and motivation.
Personality tests can be administered at any time - even as part of your onboarding process. Have your employees complete one online and get the results within minutes. An awareness of what your employee holds as a moral belief, what fills her with passion, what behaviour she can’t stand and what their own behavioural habits are is enlightening for both of you.
Take these insights one step further and arrange a personality-type education seminar for the entire office. Without having to point out an example in the office of every personality type, your employees are likely to recognize traits and behaviours in themselves and in their co-workers. An awareness of how to interact with and motivate co-workers is invaluable.
Personalities can be categorized in many ways: for a detailed analysis of the psychological traits in your employees, you can have them complete the Myers Briggs Personality Test. However, even simpler surveys can provide you with useful insights into the relative preferences, traits, and attitudes of your staff.
As an introduction to identifying the different behaviour styles in your organization, here is a brief description of A,B, and C personalities. This approach to personality categorization describes traits exhibited related to work ethic and communication style.
Below is a brief description of these personality types, how they tend to function, and where you may want to consider placing them in your organization
Type A
- These individuals are fuelled by achievement and recognition, often making them more vocal than other personalities in their pursuit of success.
- Extremely organized, impatient and decisive, you will typically see type-A employees’ work spaces covered in lists, schedules, reminders, and sticky notes.
Where To Use Them
Type-A individuals are often suited to leadership positions where the constant demand for decisions and action necessitate someone with their more aggressive, competitive, and achievement-oriented nature.
Type B
- Type-B personalities contrast strongly with Type-A; they are less stressed by external pressure, have more patience, are less competitive and achievement-oriented.
- Their perceptive, compassionate, and supportive nature drives them to make a difference in the lives of those around them, co-workers and clients alike.
Where to Use Them
You will want to place Type-B personalities somewhere where they can have frequent interaction with others such as in customer service or human resources. When it comes to rewarding these employees, letting them know you appreciate them verbally goes a long way.
Type C
- This last personality type tends to be highly analytical and detail-oriented, valuing time to themselves to achieve precision.
- Unlike Type-A and Type-B, these employees will be appreciative of autonomy. Although they may still enjoy a good conversation, the presence of other people with whom to connect and collaborate is not nearly as effective in keeping them engaged and inspired.
Where To Use Them
Often, these employees will naturally gravitate to roles where most of their work is done not with people, but with numbers or other inanimate objects. Most Type-C personalities will not crave a leadership role and can be relied on to get that behind the scenes work done reliably and accurately.
It’s not uncommon for someone to demonstrate a blend of these personality traits, making the need for each employee to complete a thorough personality test all the more evident!
Some of your work force will be capable of filling numerous roles, so the tricky part is deciding which one will take advantage of their unique qualities best—that’s where a thorough personality test like Myers Briggs comes in.
Strategic arrangement of your staff can introduce your company to higher levels of engagement and profitability than ever before!
Explore Qarrot to see just how easy recognizing multiple employees and teams can be - book a demo today!
Resources
- Crestcomleadership.com - 4 Personality Types that all Leaders Should Learn to Recognize
- Owlcation.com - What is Your Personality Type? Type A, B, C or D?
- Fastcompany.com - 8 Personality Types And How To Manage Them
- Smallbusiness.chron.com - How to Manage Different A,B & C Personality Types at Work
- Theundercoverrecruiter.com - Which Type of Office Worker are You?
- Thenextweb.com - 6 personalities in every office – and how to manage them
Boosting productivity through workplace wellness
Just think of how many hours a day you spend in the office...
It would be naive to think that the environment we spend most of our day in doesn’t affect our mood or health. To that end, the space employees live, breath, and work in can either support engagement levels or erode them.
If your office is plagued by gossip, high-stress levels, and limited opportunity for physical activity, know that your employees and your business are suffering. On the other hand, when our place of work promotes and enables healthy routines and positive interactions, we perform astronomically better.
But supporting your employees’ wellbeing doesn’t have to be complicated or costly. Below, we review some simple ways in which you can help your staff achieve a healthier and more productive workday.
Well-rested employees are more productive
This one is a no brainer. Sleep-deprived employees are not going to operate at peak performance levels. As a manager, you can play a role by monitoring how much time an employee is putting in and managing workloads.
This is not to say you should discourage your employees from taking on extra work or reaching out to fulfill tasks outside their job description. Rather, you must find the balance.
Workloads, new projects, and priority jobs can be shared amongst multiple employees to avoid one over-worked team member. If you notice employees putting in extra hours every night, let them know you appreciate their work and give them a morning off to catch up on their rest.
Not only will your team members be more awake and engaged, but also they are likely to stay healthier and have fewer sick days!
It’s a win-win all around.
Get up, get moving
Employees absolutely need to have the opportunity to get up and move. Sitting for long stretches of time zaps energy, engagement levels, and overall employee health along with it.
Your company’s productivity isn’t the only thing taking a hit. 70% of all healthcare spending can be attributed to lifestyle choices meaning insurance premiums are likely steadily increasing while your employees stay seated.
If the physical environment your team spends the majority of time in promotes healthy habits, you can effectively counteract rising insurance costs.¹ This could be as brief as a ten minute stretching or walking break all the way to company-wide fitness classes.
Your office space, however, doesn’t necessarily have to house the treadmills and weights: 51% of employers today are looking to launch wellness initiative programs to improve workforce health.² According to a 2016 SHRM survey, creating a culture that promotes wellness and/or providing incentives for healthy behaviour both ranked as top effective strategies for healthcare cost management.³
Gossip is never good
Negative talk and gossip spread like wildfire.
It only takes one grumpy or naturally negative employee to set off a string of unproductive, demoralizing conversations that put a black cloud over everyone’s day.
Preventing toxic talk begins with upper-level staff. The leaders in your organization should embody the attitude and behaviours you want to see in everyone. If employees see their manager gossiping in the lunchroom, they are likely to fall into the same habit.
Once it exists, the only way to stop workplace gossip is to tackle it head-on. Although confronting the source of the problem may feel a bit awkward, addressing the individual(s) will allow you to make them aware of the big-picture implications of their actions.⁴
This conversation should always be done privately in person and never through an email or instant messenger.
If the office morale is suffering and you can’t quite determine why, it may be time to initiate a program that recognizes individuals for demonstrating positive behaviours.
Peer-to-peer recognition programs, in particular, can be an effective tool for promoting healthier attitudes and behaviours throughout the organization.
Everybody appreciates snacks
We're not saying feed the whole office lunch every day, but a snack bar with healthy food options is guaranteed to put some pep in your employees’ step.
Company-provided snacks let your employees know that the organization is thinking about their needs. But providing healthy food options is particularly powerful.
Vending machines are too often filled with foods that often lead to sugar crashes and sluggishness. Your healthy snack options will literally energize your employees’ bodies. Healthy options are a great supplement to promoting physical activity, supporting long-term employee health and lower insurance premiums.
Another option is to organize a bi-weekly or monthly lunch date with your team where everyone goes out or eats in together. Have your whole team schedule it in so it becomes a mandatory group affair. This will give everyone a chance to unwind, bond, and socialize!
While in-office gyms can be expensive undertakings for smaller businesses, there is a number of options for any organization to promote employee wellness, both physically and mentally. Simply starting by recognizing and rewarding the behaviours that lead to the wellness outcomes you want to achieve is a great way of building a healthier, more productive workforce.
Curious if your team could benefit from peer-to-peer recognition? Reach out to us, we would love to chat!
- ¹ SRFM - Employee Benefits: Benefits of a Healthy Workplace
- ² Zanebenefits Blog - Do Wellness Programs Really- Reduce Health Insurance Costs
- ³ SHRM 2024 Employee Benefits Survey Overview
- ⁴ Inc.com - Marcel Schwantes: If You Do These Things You Qualify As a Gossiper
Resources
Going green one pen at a time: how to be an eco-friendly business
Warming oceans, dwindling ice caps, and noticeable shifts in weather patterns… are you concerned?
Although Global warming is on everyone’s mind these days, Canadians and Americans are not pulling their weight in the global effort to save the planet. In fact, Canadians rank in last place for municipal waste contribution out of 17 developed countries with the USA not much farther ahead!
Both consumers and businesses need to adapt. They say old habits die hard, so do your part by starting with the little changes that you can make right now. Reducing your footprint on the environment is not only possible, it's urgent.
And hey, its not bad for your bottom line either! Green business practices can improve your ROI by significantly reducing the cost of office supplies and energy consumption.
Little Things Make a Difference
- Switch out those pens that end up in a landfill for refillable ones! Just think of how many pens one person goes through in a year…
- Look for companies that make products out of reused materials. Did you know you can get paper clips made from post-consumer metals? Well, now you do.
- No. More. Rubber. Bands.
- You’ve heard it so many times, but we have to say it again: Recycle. Even if it’s just a general recycling box in the staffroom or one for paper by the printer - it makes a difference.
- Make the leap and become a paperless office. Millennials grew up on computers and probably won’t miss it and you’ll earn points with consumers by being so green!
- If you absolutely can’t say goodbye to paper, use recycled paper. Or, save paper by not printing whenever possible and practice double sided printing when do you.
- We would never say stop drinking coffee…but think about all those filters you throw out! Thank goodness for recycled paper coffee filters. We promise you can’t taste the difference.
- Investigate what products are being used to clean your office. Eco-friendly cleaning supplies not only smell fresh but will actually leave your work space just as clean and less toxic.
- Turn off lights and computers when they are not in use. It will save you money on energy bills and decrease the overall power consumption being used by hosting servers.
- On that topic, make your website hosting green!
We know change is hard, so even if you can implement one thing from this list, at least it’s a start.
This short list reflects some of the easiest eco-friendly changes you can make. If you are ready to commit to change on an even grander scale, check out how other companies have gone totally green.
If you can’t get on board the ‘save the planet’ train, think about it this way: waste is waste, and waste means you are throwing away money.
Not only is physical waste adding up in dollars, but your company’s costs incurred by paying for health insurance and employee sick days are affected too; A healthier workplace can result in up to a 20 percent decrease in sick days taken by employees.
Whatever your reasons for going green, both the world and your bottom line will thank you.Wondering how to motivate greener behaviors in the work-place?
Contact us to learn more about connecting employee engagement to your drive to become more environmentally-friendly.
Recognizing a job well done is small gesture that can drive big results - book your free trial with Qarrot today!
The three people your startup can't live without
Why do 50% of startups fail after 5 years? What is happening within these companies, that after ten years, only 30% are still active?
The reasons for failure can be many, but a key building block for success is finding the right team.
Startups are small - very small. The foundations and fuel of the company are almost entirely derived from the skills of the team behind it. Because generous budgets are a luxury startups do not often enjoy, the available resources are limited to what your small group of ambitious visionaries is bringing to the table.
Everyone in your ranks should be a bit of a workhorse. In a startup, being driven, self-motivated, and passionate are essential. Each one of you would never say no to a task considered too small because you all know that every job is equally critical to the company’s success.
Because these qualities are a given, let’s look at the three people you absolutely need to find for your company.
The Visionary
This is usually the founder or CEO of the company, but the qualities would be equally as beneficial coming from any employee!
A visionary sees the big picture and empowers everyone around them to help build their dreams. Charisma comes naturally to a visionary, who is so impassioned by their ideas that they could get you excited about any new project.
Within the company, the visionary encourages all team members to share their ideas as well. While cultivating a work place culture of open communication and collaboration, they also reach out beyond the company to make connections and establish relationships with investors and partners.
A visionary brings an optimism that will keep you all encouraged through the bumps and hurtles which will inevitably come your way. Just make sure they aren’t too impulsive—a little self-restraint and level-headedness are definitely assets.
The Structure Giver
The Yin to the visionary’s Yang, a structure giver is the person who gives shape to ideas. This person sees the vision and identifies the steps needed to get there.
Defining roles, outlining goals, and monitoring performance fall under this team member’s to-do list.
When looking for the right person to fill this role, you want someone who is reliable, organized, inventive, and being a penny pincher also doesn’t hurt. However, for all of their type A personality traits, they are still adaptable. The structure giver within a startup must always maintain a certain malleability—listening to others, staying approachable, and communicating effectively will ensure the company functions as a democracy, not a dictatorship.
The People Person
You are all working very hard, but please, for your own sake don’t forget you are human beings! Putting your heads down and grinding the days out may be productive for a while, but it will inevitably tire everyone out.
Having someone on your team that is naturally a social butterfly and morale booster will keep the positivity alive. You can usually identify the talkative trait in a face to face interview very quickly, but it's not just about being chatty.
This person should be highly perceptive and able to shift their perspective at key moments. They know when a night out for drinks is needed or if the appropriate solution is to offer a helping hand to a stressed out co-worker. They are the consummate listener and mediator: when someone opens up about a problem, they know how to respond and find a solution.
Think of your people person as your HR department, but because you’re a startup, less of a department and more an invaluable force of positive, compassionate energy.
As you sift through resumes hunting for that perfect combination of dreamer and doer, take a moment to reflect on why these applicants are attracted to working for you. Yes, startups are exciting and offer a chance for rapid personal growth and innovation, but they are also agile, fast-paced, and demanding. Many hopefuls are not aware of how vastly different the attitude and skills needed in this environment are from those in a much larger and more stable organization.
But you do know.
So now, your job is to read between the lines of their carefully crafted cover letters and to find indications of courageousness: a startup is no place for the risk-adverse.
You cannot rely on their self-describing adjectives: so they say they are innovative, but what concrete examples of creative “outside-the-box” thinking can they provide?
Lastly, when you think you really have found the right person, have your entire team interview them. A startup is no place for big egos. Put in a room with the rest of your A+ quality team, an arrogant applicant will likely let their need to be the biggest star in the room slip out.
Don’t rush into hiring someone- hold out for the person who can work with every member of your team. Your company’s life depends on it.
You know what else your startup can't live without? A full circle recognition and rewards program!
What’s the best approach to employee evaluations?
A look at the three most common formats
Employee reviews can be a concrete way of identifying strengths and opportunities for improvement, evaluating overall job satisfaction, or giving well-deserved recognition.
There are many different types of performance reviews out there and knowing which ones will work best for your company is not a straightforward answer you can get through a Google search. Some reviews have been shown to work ‘better’ than others, but the reality is that their effectiveness is as variable as your company is unique.
Deciding on the format of the review—whether it is to be conducted by a manager, peers, or the employee herself (or some combination thereof)—should take into consideration the culture of the company, the employee’s role, and the extent to which their job requires interaction with co-workers. For instance, a review given by an absent superior in a company where most interaction occurs between teammates risks being uninformed and demoralizing for the employee.
Because your ultimate goal is to facilitate conversation and collaborative goal setting, the best results will come from choosing an approach that is also harmonious with your management style and your team dynamic.
We're just wondering; do you know which approach fits best in your company?
Should you try the “Self Evaluation”?
If your employees perform the bulk of their work autonomously with little collaboration or interaction with a manager, there is really no one better equipped to do their review than themselves!
In a self-evaluation, an employee is asked to judge her own performance, usually against predetermined criteria. Self-evaluations have received some criticism as to whether they improve productivity since the subject may exaggerate or undervalue their accomplishments.
However, there is just as much support in favor of this form of assessment under the belief that when completed honestly, the process can provide invaluable insights. Employers can use this information to more accurately customize a plan that will achieve higher engagement and stronger manager/employee communication.
For example, one format for self-evaluation is the Critical Incident System. Here, an employee will be asked to evaluate her performance against the core responsibilities of her job. She may be required to give her performance a numerical rating or to describe specific examples that illustrate her on-the-job performance.
Because the self-evaluation gives the employee a direct say in her evaluation, it can be a great way of starting a healthy dialogue with her manager and together identifying objectives and putting together a plan of action.
You may be already be using the common “Manager Evaluation”
When successfully implemented, this is more than just the standard six-month performance evaluation template.
If your workplace functions with high manager-employee interaction rates, adopt a coaching approach to guide your teams. Employees today are seeking a constant stream of feedback with very brief lag times between the event and feedback: Stop treating reviews as once-a-year check-ins and connect more regularly. The relationship between an employee and her manager should consist of both informal and scheduled conversations to build trust and promote an open work culture.
That said, the scheduled reviews themselves are a great time to formally look over employee successes and areas for improvement, set goals, and evaluate how an employee can best contribute to achieving the company’s objectives. Take time to prepare for these.
Performance reviews are only effective in improving job performance when there are specific examples used. The more effort you put in, the more likely your employee is to feel valued and to respond constructively to feedback and areas for improvement.
When it comes to the review itself, there are numerous options for managers to use with employees, each with its own strengths. Decide what skills and qualities are important to the company and choose a grading system in line with those priorities.
Some of the most frequently used formats in organizations today include Management by objectives, Essay Evaluations, Weighted Checklists, and Numerical Rating Systems.
Have you considered obtaining a 360-degree view with “Peer Reviews”?
There is some highly insightful and honest feedback available to you via the input of an employee’s co-workers. Co-workers witness and experience the strengths and weaknesses of one another in a way that a manager may not be able to; having their feedback as well as a manager will give you and the employee the benefit of knowing what the team appreciates in their work and where they should focus next for overall improvement.
The one disadvantage here is that co-workers may be overly critical of one another if they feel there is competition for a promotion or pay raise. Keep this method separate from any such considerations and make sure peer reviews are done anonymously to avoid any unfair evaluations.
Gathering all this information will mean committing to a review format that is somewhat time-consuming in comparison to the first two approaches. That said, you are gaining 360-degree feedback: a multi-dimensional, comprehensive look at your employee that is guaranteed to be the most accurate.
Don’t be afraid to experiment. You are working towards a successful system that yields identifiable results in employee engagement and satisfaction. This will likely require some reworking throughout the life of the company as the organization grows and takes on new employees.
Not surprisingly, your current employees are the go-to source for feedback on the review program itself. Ask them if they feel they are being supported in their growth- is there a sense of appreciation coming from the company or does the review feel like a test? Action plans and objectives should always be the product of communication between management and the employee, so the sooner you find a way to maximize that dialogue, the better.
While we're on the topic of a 360-degree feedback loop, book a demo with Qarrot to learn about peer recognition!
Group meetings vs the one-on-one
Meetings are a necessary part of company management but have a bad reputation for often being ineffective and time-consuming. Employees and management alike are all too aware of those meetings that run far too long and don’t accomplish their goals. Even with an agenda, group meetings can easily be thrown off track and one on ones can become one-sided lectures. As attention spans dwindle, employees disengage, and the clock ticks away valuable company time, you may think to yourself, there has got to be a better way!
Well, there is!
Group meetings and one on one sessions can be utilized strategically to achieve different results. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the two models will save your company time without sacrificing any of the benefits.
The Group Gathering
There will never be enough time in the day for everything on your team’s to-do list, so setting aside time specifically for a meeting guarantees you a chance to address the entire office. Now that you have this distraction-free period, how should it be used?
A group meeting can benefit your organization in several ways a one-on-one cannot. This is a chance to get everyone on the same page and foster communication, collaboration, and workplace culture.
Departments that wouldn’t regularly interact with one another and employees who work remotely and rarely make it into the office can all be called into the same room. With a group meeting, you have the ability to create an interactive environment where new perspectives, ideas, and knowledge can be shared. Something someone says or proposes may inspire a new collaboration or project, fostering an ongoing relationship beyond the boardroom.
With group meetings, watch out for the age-old problem of “too many cooks in the kitchen.” When there are multiple voices vying to share thoughts and comments, the meeting’s schedule can fall off track and that allotted thirty minutes may turn into an hour. Make sure there is a clear leader in the conversation to ensure you stay on track and cover everything on the agenda for the day. Don’t be afraid to cut a conversation short - make a note to schedule a follow-up time for those involved and move onto your next topic.
The One-On-One
The best part of a one-on-one meeting is just that: it’s one-on-one. Making time for an employee shows you care and is the optimal time to check in with that member of your staff on how they are doing in their role, their strengths, weaknesses, and what you can do to help them succeed.
This is your chance to have a personal, honest conversation. Whether it be with a new employee or someone who has been with the company for years, an individual meeting gives you both an opportunity to build a stronger relationship and trust. You can use this time to ask about anything! You may want to know about your employee’s experience with new policies the company implemented, their overall job satisfaction, or even provide feedback yourself on their job performance.
The key here is to be careful that you don’t monopolize the conversation, or you will miss out on learning more about the person in front of you.
Understanding the members of your team on a personal and professional level will help you utilize their personality and skills to their maximum potential. You are effectively assessing the parts of the whole; knowing the members of the team will give you invaluable insights on how to help the group function as a whole.
One-on-one meetings are extremely useful when time is tight. If hitting all your pertinent topics is crucial, a personal meeting will be the better option since you can manage the conversation and won’t have other voices to contend with. Also, shy employees who wouldn’t necessarily feel comfortable speaking up in front of the office will be more engaged and involved in a one-on-one.
If meetings are something you are just beginning to implement, it is important to let staff know that this is a new company-wide practice. Be clear that the intention is to help management connect the team and establish a new workplace culture; employees may feel singled out or concerned that meetings are a punishment if they are not aware of the actual reason.
Whatever meeting model you choose to use, always have clear objectives and an organized timeline going into it. There is nothing more frustrating than setting aside that invaluable time, and at the end of it realizing you haven’t accomplished what you needed to.
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