Top Ten Performance Management Tips

By Stephanie Hammerwold

Earlier this year I spoke with John Wright of HR Today about performance management and outsourced HR. At the end of the interview, I gave my top ten performance management tips. You can listen to the interview on SoundCloud. For more tips on performance management, check out my post on performance management basics over at Blogging4Jobs.

1. Performance management isn’t just about the annual review. (See number 2.)
2. Provide ongoing feedback throughout the year.
3. Document! Document! Document!
4. Meet with employees for quick check-in meetings on a regular basis.
5. Observe how workers manage their time.
6. Keep job descriptions updated, so employees know what’s expected of them.
7. Communicate clear goals.
8. Have employees help draft their own goals.
9. Train managers on performance management.
10. Don’t forget about giving positive feedback.

Did I miss anything? Share your top performance management tips in the comments.

HR Lessons From Fictional Workplaces

By Stephanie Hammerwold

When you are trying to save the world one workplace at a time, it is hard to turn off the HR part of your brain. This means that I often find myself analyzing the work environments in my favorite books, movies and TV shows. Fictional stories are a great way to understand our lives better. Even if we are retreating into a world populated with dragons, magic and time travel, we can gain insight and think through problems in our own lives.

Lessons from Vonnegut on Workplace Automation
In a post for Blogging4Jobs, I wrote about the way reading shapes our understanding of work. Kurt Vonnegut’s books and short stories provide us with some food for thought on the workplace. Published in 1952, Player Piano was Vonnegut’s first novel. In the novel’s dystopian future, automation is to the point where human labor is nearly obsolete. To combat some of the problems caused by laborers with no purpose, people create jobs that are really just busy work in order to combat the idleness due to lack of real work.

While we still may be far from replacing all our human employees with machines, technology is evolving so quickly that it is easy to forget how it affects employees. Look at the shift in job duties caused by the personal computer. Secretaries have become administrative assistants, and most of us write our own emails rather than relying on someone to take dictation and type up the letter for us.

Rather than thinking only of how technology will improve a process, think of how technology can make work better for your employees. In addition, training needs to be a constant in the world of rapid technology evolution. This is the key to helping your employees grow with changing workplace technology.

Work on TV: Parks & Recreation and Downton Abbey
Two of my favorite shows are Parks & Recreation and Downton Abbey. Parks & Recreation ended its seven-year run recently, and Downton Abbey just announced that next season would be its last. The action on both shows revolves around the workplace, so they are full of all kinds of HR lessons.

Parks & Recreation follows Leslie Knope, Ron Swanson and other members of the Parks Department in the fictional city of Pawnee, Indiana. As I wrote about recently in a post for The HR Gazette, the best lesson learned from this show is about workplace friendships. Despite his anti-government, libertarian ways, Ron tolerates his job because of the bond he forms with his coworkers, which he calls “workplace proximity associates.” Sometimes we forget that one of the things people value most in a job is working with people they enjoy being around. Read more about my take on Parks & Recreation at Blogging4Jobs.

Downton Abbey gives us a peek at life in a large estate in early 20th century England. The house employs a staff of servants that include kitchen employees, footmen, lady’s maids and more. With all those folks under one roof, it’s no wonder that Downton is full of workplace drama. Check out my recent Blogging4Jobs post for more on the employees of Downton. 

Ten Signs It's Time To Hire An HR Person

By Stephanie Hammerwold

Small businesses do not often have a dedicated HR person. Usually HR responsibilities are covered by an office manager, the business owner or someone else with an endless to-do list. While this approach can work when employee numbers remain low, there comes a point when a growing business should consider a full-time HR professional on staff. Here are the top ten signs you need to hire an HR person:

1. You can’t find the time to adequately manage leaves of absence in accordance with state and federal law.
2. You have 50 or more employees. There are extra laws that apply when you reach this size, which can be a challenge when you are not an HR professional.
3. Your most recent employee handbook is so old that it was typed on a typewriter.
4. Your employee files are unorganized stacks of paper in a drawer.
5. You believe HR is only about paperwork because that’s the only part of HR you have time for.
6. Your new employee orientation and training consists of throwing an employee into the job and hoping they figure it out on their own.
7. Hiring becomes a challenge.
8. You find yourself googling labor laws on a daily basis.
9. Managing the people part of your business is all you do, and things like accounts payable/receivable, office supply ordering and such never seem to get done.
10. You desperately dream of the day you can hand off harassment complaints to someone who has experience investigating such things.

For more information on knowing when it’s time to hire an HR person, see my post over at Blogging4Jobs.