Do these things to help your employees exceed your expectations!

Imagine if all of your employees met, or even better, exceeded your expectations. And if not, have the processes in place to manage this? Here are a few simple methods you can put in place to keep your team on track.

Ensure you have provided a position description that details the role, responsibilities and the measures, so they know clearly how to meet or exceed your expectations.

If you take the time to create an accurate and fairly detailed position description, the rest often falls into place.  Don’t skip the importance of this step. Also note, if you change or elevate a persons role, and give people a different set of responsibilities, make sure you loop back into this step.  Most employees are looking for clarity. This document, along with their employment contract and policy handbook, tick the boxes of clarity 90-100% of the time.

You can never go past the SMART Goals approach to ensure that your team meets the expectations you set. Each goal should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.  

A good practice is to reference the position description in the employment contract without making it part of the contract.  Something like ‘The duties of this position are set out in the attached position description. You will be required to perform these duties and any other duties that may be assigned to you having regard for your skills, training, and experience.'

A position description should include the following basic information:

• A list of duties or responsibilities the employee will perform in their role, including the measure meeting expectations/success. (the measure is really crucial)

• Who the role reports to

• Skills list (competency levels with excel, word, etc)

An example of a responsibility and success measure could be:

• Responsibility – Record and circulate all incoming mail.

• Measure – Mail is recorded with accuracy in the register and delivered daily by 12noon.

If you are inducting a team member, weave the position description into their first three months.  Clarify throughout this time: what they understand, training they need to ensure they can carry out the tasks that enable them to meet:

• Are the tasks clear to them, do they provide more clarity or examples

• What have they learned and still need to learn

• Are the hitting the measures yet

• Do they need further training

  The first 3 months is critical to their success and you, a buddy, their manager all need to play an active part in ensuring they have the support, training and guidance they need to meet your expectations 

Allow the team member to self-manage parts of their role

This is important for the engagement of your individual employees. This means they know when they are meeting or exceeding expectations, without the need for constant feedback.  They can literally ‘get on with the job’.      To be able to do this however, they must be clear on your expectations which can only be achieved if you are providing clarity.  In the early days, this tends to be done regularly through an onboarding/induction process.  Once the employee passes probation, we can forget to check in with them on their role.  A new employee who is still figuring things out, should meet with their Manager every few months.  In HR land we love the 90 day check in!  It's a nice timing between too often where no progress is being made and too long where issues arent raised early enough. This meeting does not need to be overally formal or structured, however it does help to have a few standard questions/topics to base your discussion on.  Here are three really practical questions to use:

• How did the last 90 days go, what went well, what didnt go so well?

• Are there any areas of your role or your measures you need to discuss or clarify?

• What are you focusing on for the next 90 days and do you need any support?

• Do you have everything you need to meet or exceed expectations/targets/measures?

Discuss each question with your employee and identify areas that you can either reset, guide or clarify for them so they can continue to have success in their role. 

You want to be talking about where your employee is doing well and the areas where they need to focus.  This will help them progress, it will make them feel relevant and important to you.   If you are ships passing in the night, be prepared for a disengaged and rouge employee, who, by no fault of their own, are not meeting or exceeding your expectations, because you are not taking the time to clarify and guide.  

If you create a culture where the above questions are asked regularly, employees will become more and more proactive and ready with their thoughts.  You will turnaround issues and challenges a lot quicker.

Provide ‘in the moment’ feedback, regularly

On the job, in the moment feedback is the perfect way to keep your employees on track.  If you are witness to an error or way of doing something that isnt what you expect, guiding or coaching them on how to fix it, at the time, can have good results.  Enabling a team member to continually make mistakes (perhaps you may be avoiding a difficult conversation) to then only addressing it down the track via a more formal review, isnt great management.   You need to build rapport with your employees so that feedback can be given and received for all different things, at any time.

Saying thank you and acknowledging great work

This will make your team feel appreciated and give them a good indication of how they are going. This coupled with regular constructive feedback, creates a mutually beneficial environment where your team will grow in their abilities and confidence, the trust will deepen and they will naturally become more engaged.. 

It’s not working!

You are giving regular feedback, clarity, repeated processes, tried explaining expectations and its not sticking.  It might be time to get serious and start a performance improvement process.  You have kept notes of conversations and emails raising issues   

A performance improvement process can be the start of the end, or it can help someone turnaround.  Either it provides a framework to make changes the business requires.  

Fair Work have a simple performance improvement template that you can use to set the scene and carry out an effective and clear process, where the employee is treated in a fair and reasonable way.  This plan is designed to give the employee an opportunity to improve with business support but also the opportunity to be clear that if expectations are not met, you may consider ending their employment.    If you are not familiar with the best way to run an improvement process or steps on ending employment, please seek advice.  It is very easy to get this wrong and we see many business owners become unstuck with fair work, due to not following a very simple step by step process.

If you are classified as a small business by Fair Work (less than 15 employees) familarise yourself with small business fair dismissal code found here under their unfair dismissal section of their website.  They provide a checklist and guidelines you should be following.

Looking for a little support with performance or engagement in your business, reach out for a chat!