Today we are going to understand why a manager shall be evaluated, how to give feedback, what performance review is and how the practice can promote the company's growth. We spoke to Sky World Community's HRD (Human Resource Director) Alisa Jalalova about this.
In Russian corporate culture, the tendency to work with feedback is scarcely developed — we are not used to giving and receiving feedback. This issue is particularly acute in the manager work system — not every senior manager knows how to adequately and competently accept and respond to feedback.
However, many companies are now seeing an increase in the number of employees who need to understand their role and their impact on the business outcome in addition to their earnings. And in order for the employee, including the manager, to best achieve the goal, it is necessary to implement feedback practices. This is the only way to correct their actions or confirm the correctness of actions. One of these methods is the practice of performance review, which Russian companies borrowed from their foreign colleagues.
In practice, it is a method of increasing efficiency through individual evaluation of the work period with a focus on the employee. Performance review is carried out at least once a year. But ideally this kind of analysis shall be carried out every six months — it allows you to keep up with the rapidly changing reality, as well as not to lose contact with your employees. And in this article we will talk about the performance review of the managers.
The method is based on three metrics:
1. evaluation of the manager by colleagues and employees by means of questionnaires
Before you begin the questioning, it is important to communicate the goals of the polling to the entire team. Emphasize that the questioning is completely anonymous and the answers to the questions will help determine the strengths and weaknesses of the supervisor. Explain that this anonymous document provides the basis for building the most effective individual growth plan. In this case, the team will be interested in providing truthful and well-considered comments.
With the help of anonymous questionnaires we check not only the effectiveness of the person as a manager, but also assess how comfortable it is to work with him, whether he complies with occupational etiquette and subordination, and what atmosphere creates in the team. These indicators are necessary because only a healthy team can be the place of the development of each individual and the company as a whole.
Be sure to add free response questions to the questionnaire. This will allow employees to describe positive and negative experiences of interaction in a free manner, point out the strong competencies of the manager, and understand what processes in his work need to be improved.
At this stage, the main task of HR to interact with the manager — to teach the latter to accept feedback. Many people, especially those in high positions and working in that position for a long enough period of time, are supersensitive to criticism and often refuse to admit mistakes and correct them.
2. Assessment of professional success
The assessment is carried out at a meeting of the manager with HR, who in this case acts as a coach. Managers and CEOs have their own KPIs. As a rule, it is business growth, increase in profits, factors in the growth of financial performance and others.
One of the most important KPIs for a manager is to understand why certain indicators were not achieved. The main task — to build the most transparent work process at all stages, so that if there are negative indicators one could immediately see in what section there was a failure and analyze how to fix it.
3. Individual development plan
The manager determins his goals according to the objectives of the company. At this stage, HR helps to analyze previous achievements and adjust the path to the new ones, based on the experience and capabilities of the management.
A common problem that occurs with directors, — going into micromanagement. Instead of managing human resources, they are busy setting up small processes, which takes up all their time. In this case, there is a simulation of work — actually the manager is fully loaded with the tasks, but in fact most of the processes shall be executed by the performers.
An effective manager shall not be a professional in every area, he shall, together with HR, find the best of the best and build a competent interaction with them, conveying the values and mission of the company, as well as their main tasks. Then the system will start to work.
So why is it important to implement performance review practices for managers?
1. Inclusion of employees in the general idea concept — the opinion of everyone in the company is important
In the questionnaire stage, you show the importance of each employee's opinion. When choosing between a company with a higher salary and one with less financial offerings, but with a conscious approach to developing its employees, a person is most likely to choose the second option. This is due to the need for specialists to be heard, to be in a healthy team, where the leader is constantly working on himself and is willing to listen to their ideas.
2. A flexible management model is more competitive in a volatile environment
In the current environment, there is only one rule — adapt or die. There is also very fierce competition in hiring the best professionals on the labour market — this is especially true for middle and senior managers.
It is still quite common to find old-fashioned managers who are not prepared to listen to feedback and are convinced that only proven methods work well. They deny modern trends and are not ready to change to fit the new world. This leads to all companies with similar approach to team and process management closing sooner or later, some sooner, some later. If you want to grow in income and scale, it's time to remember the rule of thumb that «any change starts with you».