Chapter 5, 8 and 9 summary
- 1. Supervision: Managing to Achieve Results Chapter 5 Employee Discipline: Managing Conflict
- 2. Employee Discipline • Good managers will handle conflict in a manner that improves the organization. • Employees poor performance and poor attitudes directly and negatively affect your work unit’s efficiency and effectiveness. • Poor employee performance effects morale and performance of your entire work unit.
- 3. Discipline Actions taken with the purpose of correcting problems and improving performance • Employee discipline can be a positive experience when done in the right way. – Discipline is defined as actions taken with the purpose of correcting problems and improving performance – Punishment consists of actions taken for the purpose of causing pain or embarrassment to someone in retribution for some perceived error (never in the workplace) • Two main reasons to discipline your employees exist: – Performance problems – employees fail to meet their performance goals – Misconduct – employees behave in ways that are unacceptable to you as a manager and to the organization • Always carry out discipline as soon after the incident as possible - you can deal with problems before they escalate.
- 4. Performance • If your employees are performing above standard, reward them for their efforts – you get what you reward. • If your employees are performing at an acceptable level reinforce their positive behavior and encourage improvement • If they’re performing below standard, you need to find out why (conduct problem-solving to determine if it is possibly a process, motivation, or training problem out of your employees’ control) and, if necessary, discipline them. • When you apply discipline, use it consistently and fairly.
- 5. Two Tracks of Discipline • The two-track system of discipline includes one set of discipline options for performance problems and another for misconduct. • Progressive discipline means that you always select the least severe step that results in the behavior that you want. • You definitely don’t want to make discipline only an annual event by saving all your employee’s problems for his or her periodic performance appraisal.
- 6. Performance Problems • If you’ve done your job right, each of your employees has a job description and a set of performance standards – measurements that you and your employees agree to use in assessing your employees’ performance. • When it comes to employee discipline, you’re primarily concerned with correcting unacceptable performance. • Use the least severe discipline step first. The steps below are listed in order of severity. – Verbal counseling. – Written counseling. – Negative performance evaluation. – Demotion. – Termination.
- 7. Misconduct • Misconduct is usually considered a much more serious offense than performance shortcomings because it indicates a problem with your employees’ attitudes or ethical beliefs. • When you discipline your employees for misconduct, you put them on notice that you won’t tolerate their behavior. • The following discipline steps are listed from least severe to most severe. – Verbal warning. – Written warning. – Reprimand – given by manager higher up in the organization – Suspension – leave without pay – Termination.
- 8. Five Parts of Disciplining (The Discipline Script) • Describe the unacceptable behavior. – Specify exactly what the employee did wrong and when the behavior occurred. – Focus on the behavior and not on the individual. • Express the impact to the work unit. – When an employee engages in unacceptable behavior the behavior typically affects a work unit negatively. • Specify the required changes. – Tell your employee the exact actions that you want him or her to adopt. – Tell the employee that his or her behavior must be in accordance with an established performance standard or company policy.
- 9. Five Parts of Disciplining (The Discipline Script) continued • Outline the consequences. – If the unacceptable behavior continues, you need to have a discussion about the consequences. – Make sure that you get the message across clearly and unequivocally and that your employee understands it. • Provide emotional support. – Give your employee an emotional boost by expressing your support for his or her efforts. – Make this support sincere and heartfelt—you do want your employee to improve, right? • Mold it all together. – Put the five parts together into a unified statement that you deliver to your wayward employees. – Although you’ll undoubtedly discuss the surrounding issues in some detail, make the script be the heart of your discipline session.
- 10. Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) • The performance improvement plan (PIP) is a crucial part of the discipline process because it sets definite steps for the employee to undertake to improve performance within a fixed period of time. • PIP is used if your employee’s poor performance is habitual and you’ve selected counseling or a more severe discipline • A PIP consists of the following three parts: – Goal statement. – Schedule for attainment. – Required resources/training. • To assist your employees in implementing their improvement plans, schedule regular progress reporting meetings with them on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. • Stick to your plan.
- 11. Determining Misconduct • Break into teams • Consider the following: You work in a consulting firm. Two consultants, one male and one female, have to travel to a client's location. The female consultant comes back from the trip and claims that the male consultant "hit on her" during the trip. • Develop your options for discipline
- 12. Summary Although disciplining an employee can be an unpleasant experience, it can also be an opportunity for growth for yourself and the employee. The employee will learn how to improve his or her performance, and you will gain practice in dealing with conflict in a positive, manageable way.
- 13. Supervision: Managing to Achieve Results Chapter 8 Inspiring Employees to Better Performance: Developing and Rewarding Employees
- 14. Employee Development • There are two ways to motivate employees: rewards (positive consequences) and discipline (negative consequences). • The best employee development is ongoing and requires that you support and encourage your employees’ initiative. • The terms training and development can have two distinctly different meanings. – Training usually refers to teaching workers the short-term skills that they need to know to do their jobs – Development usually refers to teaching employees the kinds of long-term skills that they’ll need in the future as they progress through their careers • There are numerous reasons why developing your employees is a good idea. A few are listed below. – You may be taking your employees’ knowledge for granted – Employees who work smarter are better employees – Someone has to be prepared to step into your shoes – Your employee wins, and so does your organization – Your employees are worth your time and money
- 15. Career Development Plan • The career development plan is the heart and soul of your efforts to develop your employees. • All career development plans must contain at minimum the following key elements: – Specific learning goals. – Resources or opportunities required to achieve the designated learning goals – including assignments to teams, job shadowing, stretch assignments, formal training etc. – Employee responsibilities and resources. Career development is a joint responsibility of an employee and his/her manager – Required date of completion for each learning goal. – Standards for measuring the accomplishment of learning goals.
- 16. Helping Employees • As a manager, your role is to be alert to the development needs of your employees and to keep an eye out for potential development opportunities. • To develop your employees to meet the coming challenges within your organization, follow these steps: – Meet with your employees about their careers. – Discuss your employees’ strengths and weaknesses. – Assess where your employees are now. – Create career development plans. – Follow through on your agreements, and make sure that your employees follow through on theirs.
- 17. The Top Ten Ways to Develop Employees 1. Provide employees opportunities to learn and grow. 2. Be a mentor to an employee. 3. Let an employee fill in for you in staff meetings. 4. Assign your employees to teams. 5. Allow employees to pursue and develop any idea they have. 6. Provide employees with a choice of assignments. 7. Send your employees to seminars on new topics. 8. Bring an employee along with you when you call on customers. 9. Introduce your employees to top managers in your organization and arrange to have them perform special assignments for the managers. 10. Allow an employee to shadow you during your workday.
- 18. Mentoring • A mentor is most typically an individual high up in the organization who isn’t your boss. • Mentors provide definite benefits to the employees they mentor, and they further benefit the organization. – Explain how the organization really works – Teach by example – Provide growth experience – Provide career guidance and discussion • Recognizing the potential benefits for the development of their employees, many organizations have formalized the mentoring process.
- 19. Rewards • You can develop employees by giving them habits that will make them successful. • If managers reward their employees at all, most managers reward the wrong things. • For an incentive program to have meaningful and lasting effects, it must focus on performance. • Everyone, regardless of how smart, talented, or productive they are, has the potential to be a top performer.
- 20. Performance • Managers must focus on performance-based measures to recognize and reward employees. • A well-thought-out and planned rewards system is important to creating a motivated, effective workforce. • There are several simple guidelines for setting up a system of low-cost rewards in your organization. – Link rewards to organizational goals – Define parameters and mechanics – Obtain commitment and support – Monitor effectiveness
- 21. What Employees Want • Bob Nelson’s survey presents the top ten most important items to employees. – A ―cash reward‖ ranked thirteenth in importance to employees. • Instead of using threats and intimidation to get things done, managers must create environments that support their employees and allow creativity to flourish. • Employees report that the most important aspects at work today are primarily the intangible aspects of the job that any manager can easily provide.
- 22. What Employees Want Top ten items Bob Nelson’s survey found employees said were most important • A learning activity (No. 1) and choice of assignment (No. 9) • Flexible working hours (No. 2) and time off work (No. 7) • Personal praise – verbal (No. 3), public (No. 8) or written (No. 10) • Increased autonomy (No. 5) and authority (No. 4) in their job • Time with their manager (No. 6)
- 23. Motivating • The simplest way to find out how to motivate your employees is to ask them. • Often managers assume that their employees want only money. • Plan to provide employees more of what they value and stick with your approach over time.
- 24. Being Positive • You’re more likely to lead your employees to greater results by focusing on their positive accomplishments rather than by finding fault. • Years of psychological research have clearly shown that positive reinforcement works better than negative reinforcement. • Seek out the positive in your employees and reinforce the behaviors that you want – Have high expectations for your employees’ abilities – Give your employees the benefit of the doubt – Catch your employees doing the right things
- 25. Being Positive • Reward your employees for their small successes as well as for their big successes. • Remember that praising your employees’ progress toward the goal is perhaps even more important than praising them when they finally reach it. • Praising guidelines – a basic foundation for a positive relationship is to give a good praising. – As soon – As sincere – As specific – As personal – As positive – As proactive
- 26. Rewarding Employees • Although money, in the form of a raise or bonus, may be the most obvious choice it is not always the best choice. • Many managers have thrown lots of money into cash- reward programs, these programs didn’t have the positive effect on motivation expected. • Because you know that money is not the most effective motivation tool, you can focus on using tools that are more effective—and the best forms of recognition cost little or no money! • Every employee needs to be recognized when they do good work in their job.
- 27. Employee Recognition • In Bob Nelson’s book 1001 Ways to Reward Employee he lists thousands of real-life positive rewards, most of which cost little or nothing. • The findings are prioritized in order of greatest importance and includes: – Support and Involvement. – Personal Praise. – Autonomy and Authority. – Flexible Working Hours. – Learning and Development. – Manager Availability and Time – Written Praise, Electronic Praise, Public Praise – Case or Cash Substitutes • Use the proven recognition strategies to create the most motivating work environment in which every employee feels valued, trusted, and respected!
- 28. Something to Consider You own a fast-food restaurant with many employees. What are some cost-effective ways for you to develop your employees and lower turnover?
- 29. Summary Developing and mentoring employees not only gives them the skills they need to be excellent at their current job but also prepares them for future jobs in their career. In addition to development, rewards and praise also motivate employees. Using these skills will increase the efficiency and productivity of your staff as well as improve employees’ morale.
- 30. Supervision: Managing to Achieve Results Chapter 9 Evaluating the Team Members: Measuring Projects and Performance
- 31. Measuring Progress • Your primary goal in measuring and monitoring your employees’ performance is to help your employees stay on schedule. • The first step in checking your employees’ progress is to determine the key indicators of a goal’s success.
- 32. Quantifying Goals When you quantify a goal in precise numerical terms, your employees have no confusion over how their performance is measured and when their job performance is adequate (or less than adequate). (SMART goals)
- 33. Giving Feedback • Although noting when your employees attain their goals is obviously important, recognizing your employees’ incremental progress toward attaining their goals is just as important. • The secret to performance measuring and monitoring is the power of positive feedback. • You’re much more likely to get the results you want when you put group performance measures out in the open for everyone to see, but keep individual performance measures private.
- 34. Performance Monitoring • Build your performance feedback system on the MARS system – Milestones – checkpoints – Actions – reaching your milestones – Relationships – sequencing your activity – Schedule – establishing your timeframe • You may not always measure the results in terms of the number of widgets produced or the percentage increase in an employee’s contributions to profitability. • You may simply want to measure your employees’ morale and their productivity.
- 35. Performance Improvement • If your workers performance is lagging consider implementing a multiple step approach to improve performance. – Create a program based on the behaviors you want. • Attendance • Punctuality • Safety – Assign points to the desired behaviors. – Measure and reward employee performance.
- 36. Charting Progress • For measuring your employees’ progress, reading and understanding a graphical representation of the project is often much easier for complex projects. • Bar charts, also known as Gantt charts, are probably one of the simplest means for monitoring project progress. • Gantt charts include a timeline, actions, and bars to indicate length of time and degree of completion for each action.
- 37. Charting Progress • Flowcharts are graphical representations of the sequential flow of projects. • Flowcharts include actions, events and time. • Longest path in terms of time is the critical path. • Once the employee performance data is obtained, – Determine whether the expected results were achieved. – Record the results. – Praise, coach or counsel your employees.
- 38. Measuring Progress • You decide you want to get a new job within the next six months. • Write down the milestones, actions, relationships and schedule for this goal
- 39. Evaluating Performance • You can find many good reasons for conducting regular formal performance evaluations with your employees. • Positive elements of performance evaluations include: – A chance to summarize past performance and establish new performance goals – An opportunity for clarification and communication – A forum for learning goals and career development – Formal documentation to promote advancement or dismissal • One of the most important things you can do as a manager is conduct accurate and timely performance evaluations of your employees.
- 40. Evaluating Performance • There is a broader scope of the performance appraisal process than just the formal, written part of it. • Five steps that help encompass the broader scope of performance appraisal are: – Set goals, expectations and standards – Give continuous and specific feedback – Prepare a formal, written performance evaluation with your employee – Meet personally with your employees to discuss the evaluation – Set new goals, expectations, and standards
- 41. Common Mistakes That Evaluators Make • Performance evaluators can easily fall into certain traps in the evaluation process. The mistakes include: – The halo effect – employee is good in one area so must be good in all – The recency effect – most recent behavior is poor – Stereotyping – preconceived notions. – Comparing – evaluating two employees and comparing their performance – Mirroring – like people who are most like yourself – Nice guy/gal role – managers dread acknowledging employee failings
- 42. Why Evaluations Go Bad • Few employee evaluations are done well and often fail to have the kind of impact that managers intended. • Real apprehension can surround the evaluation process from both sides of the equation. • Don’t be among the many managers who fail to give their employees ongoing performance feedback and, instead, wait for the scheduled review.
- 43. Evaluations • If you’re doing your job as a manager, the evaluation holds no surprises for your employees. • The average manager spends about one hour preparing for an employee review that required an entire year of performance. • The performance evaluation process begins on the day that your employees are hired, continues each and every day that they report to you and doesn’t end until they move out of your sphere of responsibility.
- 44. Continuous Feedback • Performance evaluation is a year-round job. • Providing timely and continuous feedback to employees makes the process easier for the manager, and also makes the evaluation a lot more meaningful and productive for your employees.
- 45. Summary Project and performance evaluations can greatly impact an organization. If they are done poorly, they have a negative impact leading to lower employee morale and poor performance. If they are done well, the positive impact can translate into high employee morale and improved financial performance.