As a company owner, you most likely give your employees quarterly or yearly evaluations or at least it’s a good practice. These evaluations typically address an employees overall performance. It also tackles areas such as strengths and weaknesses, goal setting for the up coming months or year, and often gives an employee an opportunity to express their opinions. Although each review will differ, we’ll address some common areas of improvement for employees, which can add value to your business and enhance your employees’ overall performance.
Communication
Examples of what and how to measure. As with all areas, it’s important to start with identify your employee’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, your employee may be great with explaining services to customers, but lacks confidence when it comes to reaching out for help. Goals might include sharing techniques with fellow employees on how to communicate products and services to customers, which is a way of acknowledging your employee’s skills. A second goal may be setting aside 15 minutes each week to cover challenges your employee faced during the week.
Customer Service
Examples of what and how to measure. If your employees don’t know the products and services you provide, it may be difficult for them to assist customers properly. A related goal may be to allocate a certain number of hours for researching products and services, such as reading through the manuals of top products. You may even consider sending your employee to training courses as a goal. For employees who provide excellent customer service, perhaps designating them as an individual for new employees to shadow during orientation would be beneficial. Your company may even consider implementing a customer feedback program with the goal to acquire a set number of customer comments within a time period. Obtaining customer feedback will also identify strengths and weaknesses, not only for individual employees, but for your company in general.
Effective Time Management
Examples of what and how to measure. If your company has a time tracking system in place, you might consider a goal based on efficiency. For example, over the next quarter, the goal might be to improve efficiency by 2%. Not only should the goal include finishing quicker, but also reducing the number of times needed to return and correct problems or finish a job. After all, it makes little sense to do a crappy job in record speed. A time efficient employee might be tasked with the goal of writing time saving procedures.
Improving Sales
Examples of what and how to measure. When I think of sales goals, I think of my 8 year old son’s academics, such as counting. I encourage him to beat his best. Similarly, you can help employees set similar goals or even go with a method similar to the time management example above and improve sales by a certain percentage. You might also have goals related to professional development and have employees attend a certain number of sales training sessions.
Producing Ideas
Examples of what and how to measure. For the louder employees, you might give them the goal of collecting feedback from other employees, which they can then present to the group as a whole. To get the quieter employees more involved, you might considered meetings where each employee has the opportunity to share and contribute to the group. A goal would be associated with coming to the meeting prepared with his or her input.
Final Thoughts on Areas of Improvement for Employees
Though we covered quite a few areas. Keep in mind, not every area needs to be tackled at each review. In another post, I mentioned working on the low-hanging fruit… those skills employees already excel in and perfecting them. Remember, you’re not cultivating perfect people. Rather the goal is to help your employees improve in select areas.
I really like how you outlined the 5 areas of improvement for employees Renee. I would love to know more about how you were able to help your clients with funding! This is something I am trying to work towards myself. I am a one man show at this point in time and am looking to spread my wings a bit. Very impressive site. thank you.
Thanks for dropping by, Maria! Networking is a big piece of my day job. When I first started working as a business advisor, my boss made introductions, and still does from time to time. Those introductions lead to other introductions, and I initiate a few contacts myself. The people I meet share their programs with me, which in turn I can share with my clients. Though there is some federal funding available, most of my clients benefit most from state and local programs.
Hi,
That is a great idea for those who are under employment. It tells them how to create an opportunity to grow for themselves. I had the chance of evaluating employees before as a manager and those ones you showed are precisely the ones I explain more to them. I would throw another one where I include behavior. We don’t change the personality of our employees, but we need to tame their behavior at work. Customer service is important for business, but it customers also include internal ones like: new employees, co-workers and superiors. To ensure that you instill proper professionalism to each employee. That would be my 2 cents. 🙂
You make a great point, Paul. Behavior is extremely important. I’ve been in a situation where an employee’s behavior was less than satisfactory. It resulted in individuals being afraid to reach out to the business for assistance, for fear they may encounter that particular employee. Regardless of how efficient an employee is at his/her job, if he/she is driving away business, the efficiency is meaningless.
Thanks for sharing.