Adding Additional Performance Improvement Components To The Barebones Form / Worksheet

One problem with existing performance review and management forms is that companies use the SAME identical form for everyone in the organization, regardless of whether it fits. It also makes it hard to change the forms, since they are often printed, and companies may have thousands of copies done at a time.

The Hooper-Bacal performance worksheet can easily be modified, certainly across an entire organization, but more important, depending on circumstances, for even an individual employee. Need something else? Add a page. Have an employee that needs more support in planning out a project? Do an action planning section, page or column. Need to set out a performance improvement plan for an employee who's underperforming? You can do that too.

Adding An Action Planning Section To Improve Performance

Some employees need more structure and planning to do a good job. Or sometimes, a project is complex enough that it's a good idea to actually plan out the steps, along with sign-posts or interim goals to keep it on track. Other employees may not need help in organizing themselves about HOW they are to achieve their job task goals.

You can add a column or page to the form, and of course, to the process. Then the manager, in setting goals, or at any other time during communicating about performance, sit down with the employee to set up a plan of action to achieve the goal. It might, on the form, look like this:

Overall Goal: Pilot A Social Media Strategy

Action Steps:

• Identify two social media platforms that would be best to use, and set up accounts (By May 1)
• Do at least three status updates per day on those platforms (ongoing)
• Market the social media pages to achieve at least 100 followers/friends (June 10)
• Evaluate success and recommend to continue, expand, allocate more staff to project, or suspend.(July 7)

Notice that each step has a date for completion, so that progress can be evaluated as the process proceeds, not just when one does a performance review.

Also, it's best that the EMPLOYEE develop the action planning steps, with help from the manager, or for that matter, any other available experts.

Again, not all job responsibilities need an action plan. Not all employees need one, and the level of specificity will depend on the situation.

If you look at the barebones form, you'll see how simple it is to add this component. In fact, you can simply include it in the job task column. Or add a page.

What Else Might You Add To The Process?

You might want to add other things. Too obvious possibilities:

A Performance Improvement Plan

In another section we'll talk about how Hooper-Bacal can be used with employees who clearly require improvement, but it's not a bad idea to develop and use a plan that:

• identifies possible and current barriers to performance (lack of skill, lack of knowledge, poor resources, lack of cooperation from other staff)
• Sets out steps that BOTH manager and employee will take to overcome those barriers.

Remember that the job of the manager is to HELP the employee improve.

A Training and Development Plan

One can also add a section in the form package that sets out how the manager will enable to staff member to increase his ability to do the job through:

• formal training opportunities
• managerial mentoring and coaching
• apprenticing or shadowing other, more experienced staff

Conclusion

Remember that the form, in this case, should be under the control of the manager (and the employee). The manager adds components as needed.

So what's the role of human resources in this form stuff? Simple. HR's role is to provide enough optional tools, in addition to the minimum required, to managers to use, so that managers choose what's best. Typically HR provides a complicated mandatory, one size fits all process, and that's wasteful, and frustrating to managers who end up using the single supplied tool when it adds no value.