Maximizing the Human Potential

Reward Performance

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As the end of the year is approaching, many of the business leaders I talk to are SUPER busy. They are in the final stages of closing out 2019, planning for 2020, employee reviews, compensation plans and merit increases. That’s a lot! Because often times merit and compensation are tied to performance and performance reviews, I thought I’d address some of the conversations I’ve been having to help you think through how you will reward performance.

Reward Performance

Over the last few weeks I have talked to many business leaders who were working through their bonus/merit increase plans. In most cases the business owner was struggling to make sure that the reward system actually rewarded the behaviors they wanted to see in their employees. This week let’s look at some of the intangibles that should be considered in your plan for rewarding performance.

Quantity or Quality

One of the most obvious paradoxes is the quantity or quality metrics. Many businesses, especially in a production atmosphere, have metrics on how many widgets get produced over a given period of time. One business leader was discussing the challenge he was facing. He had an individual that was a high performer. His production outpaced everyone in the factory. However, he also had the highest quality defects.

When there were quality issues, it often cost the company money, or at the very least their reputation took a hit. On the other hand, he had some “solid” performers. The solid performers didn’t perform as well, and maybe even struggled to meet quotas. However, their quality was superb. They might do 80% of the production but had almost zero defects.  Do you reward the high performer with the occasional defect or the sold performer that missed quotas but has an eye toward quality?

80/20 Rule

They say that 20% of your employees will take up 80% of your time. Another business leader was discussing her project managers. She had one project manager that she wasn’t sure how to reward. The manager had an excellent track record for completing projects on time and within budget. Who doesn’t want a project manager like that? However, the project manager was afraid of making mistakes and needed a lot of “hand holding” from her managers distracting them from their other responsibilities (and project managers).

On the other hand, there were other project managers, that would struggle on a project from time to time. When this happened, the manager would learn from the mistake and perform better next time. Who gets rewarded, the manager that had a good track record, but consumed her managers time, or the project manager that required less support but made the occasional mistake?

Attitude

Lastly, there is the manager that had some “brilliant” people on their team. They had some specialized skills that few in the company had, and because of that gave them a competitive advantage. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? They are brilliant and give a competitive advantage, they deserve to be compensated! However, they thought they were irreplaceable and therefore were arrogant. They refused to take direction or follow process and difficult to work with. They completed work because of their “brilliance” but it was often over budget because of the lack of process and taking direction.

There were other employees that didn’t necessarily have the “brilliance” but were coachable, easy to work with and took direction. They produced consistent results and their performance improved year over year because of their coachability.  Who do you reward, the arrogant team that is difficult to work but give you a competitive edge, or the solid performers that are coachable and constantly improving?

This Week’s Challenge

When you are developing a compensation or reward system, make sure it is rewarding the behaviors you think are important. I always went out of my way to reward those that took time to coach and mentor others, creating the next generation high performers. If you need help developing a system that properly incentivizes and rewards your employees contact us, we can help!

If you need help, or would like to learn more about how to retain your top performers, please reach out to me. I’ll be happy to help!

Improve Employee Engagement

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andrew shaffer consulting improving employee engagementThis month, I’ve been writing about different aspects of proactive leadership. Proactive leadership is all about keeping your head up while taking care of the day to day aspects of your job. Proactive leadership is anything from keeping ahead of industry trends, to actively looking to identify and develop the talent in your organization. By being a proactive leader, you create a highly engaged workforce. There is a plethora of surveys to help you measure your team’s engagement. There are also tons of stats showing how engaged employees help your business. Today I am going to write about three ways you can help improve employee engagement in your organization.

Improve Employee Engagement

What is employee engagement? When I ask many leaders, they think that engagement is somewhere between how “happy” employees or some sort of satisfaction survey. I’ll tell you first hand, that happy employees are not always engaged employees, but engaged employees are happy employees.

In my book Maximizing The Human Potential I describe employee engagement as an emotional attachment to your job. When someone is engaged, they are more productive and less distracted. Here are some things to focus on to improve employee engagement in your organization.

Elevate Performance

The best leaders I ever worked with helped me become better at what I was doing. This goes for athletic coaches, mentors, and supervisors. The best leaders always helped me become better. Proactive leadership is all about raising the performance of your team. Elevate the performance of each member of a team and the entire team performance is elevated.

To elevate performance, leaders should be having regular feedback and coaching sessions. It’s not enough simply to tell an employee what they can be doing better. That can lead to resentment, confusion or frustration. Leader not only tell someone how they can improve, but show them as well. Offer suggestions to improve productivity or customer service. If you don’t know, work with your team to find solutions that can show improvements.

Accountability

Believe it or not, your people like to be held accountable. Holding them accountable for doing their job is a sure-fire sign that their job is important. Accountability actually leads people to strive to do better. It isn’t necessarily the fear of being held accountable that motivates someone to succeeded. Success builds confidence and momentum. People genuinely like to be successful and it makes them feel good. We can all appreciate this, as we’ve all had days that were successful and others that just went down the drain. Which one makes you feel better at the end of the day?

Holding people accountable means, you, as the leader, need to hold yourself accountable. Hold regular meetings, or whatever form you use for accountability and stick to it. If you ask someone to finish a project by the end of the month, and wait until the end of the month to check for status, don’t be surprised when your team member lets you down. They let you down, because you didn’t tell them the project was important. Therefore, develop a schedule and a system for accountability, follow it, and watch your engagement sore.

Loyalty

Lastly, we all want our employees to be loyal. I’d be willing to bet that the majority of my readers will think that they have the most loyal employees. You’d be surprised. Loyalty is different than your team liking you, or liking the company. I read an article the other day saying that 80% of employees will start looking for a job after just ONE BAD DAY. So, unless you have the 20% of the workforce that will stay with you through a bad day (or month or quarter…) loyalty isn’t that easy to come by.

I have worked with companies where there is an us versus them mentality. Typically, it is employees versus management, but not always. Other examples would be one department versus another department or even worse, one click versus another click.

I have found that the best way to foster loyalty in the workplace is to show loyalty to your employees. Leaders become part of the team and are not positioned above it. Each case is different, but here are some ways you can build loyalty in your organizations:

  • When overtime is required, stay as late or come in on Saturday with them (and buy lunch)
  • Offer help, guidance and solution when a problem arises
  • Trust their expertise. It doesn’t have to be your way, they can be right too.
  • Get to know them on a personal level. People are more loyal to a friend than a colleague.

This Week’s Challenge

In conclusion, enhance your proactive management skills by focusing on these three areas – performance, accountability and loyalty. Even if you already have a loyal staff, and are doing these actions, give them a little extra effort. There is always room to improve employee engagement.

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.

Triangle of Success

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andrew shaffer triangle of successBecause we are still in January, I have decided to help you focus on getting 2019 started on the right track. My blogs this month aren’t going to be a rah-rah pep-talk (although, I hope they are somewhat inspiring), but offer practical ways to help you focus on your goals and achieve the success you desire in 2019. My goal is to help you and your business grow and reach its maximum potential. Today, let’s talk about the triangle of success.

Triangle of Success

Early in my career, I was taking a career development class the company offered. The course offered many of the strategies that you might expect, like determining what type of work you enjoy, like management or a technical career. We did exercises to help us find some of our strengths and personality preferences. The discussion was of course directed to help us find a career path within the company by helping us decide which career path (and steps to take) to be successful. If you’re curious, the results of the exercises did align with my interests and future career choices.

Aside from all that information, the HR Business Partner presenting the material suggested that there were three pillars to success. She referred to it as our PIE. PIE is Performance, Image, and Exposure. All three pieces of PIE are equally important to your success, and unless you focus on all three, you will not be able to reach your full potential.

Performance

Performance means exactly what you think it means: how well you do your job. Ironically performance isn’t related to how hard you work or even how well you think you do your job. Sometimes performance isn’t even how well your boss thinks you do your job.

Your performance is a measurement of how well you execute against a set of corporate or industry standards. Basically, your performance is an objective measurement of your production measured against a set of established standards. Standards might be: revenue generated, customer satisfaction scores, units produced, projects completed on time, projects completed in budget. Each of these things can be measured and evaluated against specific standards.

When you start measuring your performance, you can then compare your performance against:

  • Peer
  • Competition
  • Industry

With this data you will know if you are within the top 10% in each category. If you find you are not within the top 10%, you can develop and execute a plan to get there.

Top performance demands top pay. Which means you can charge a premium for your goods or services. If there is any doubt, you can buy a Chevy and get to work, but if you want the “Best or Nothing” you buy a Mercedes. If you want “The Ultimate Driving Machine” you buy a BMW. There is a reason Mercedes and BMW cost so much.

Image

Your image is basically your reputation. Before I’ll buy anything from YOU, I have to buy you. I have to believe what you are saying. I have to trust you and I have to like you. Otherwise, I am buying on price or desperation and if that is the case you probably won’t get repeat business.

Before any business meeting, I’ll research the person I am meeting and the company. I will view Facebook and LinkedIn pages. I’ll Google you and I’ll Google your company. Also, I’ll look on Glassdoor and Indeed to see what current and former employees are saying about your company.

I do this so I know who I am doing business with and their reputation. Think about it, if we’re doing business together, I want to be able to refer you to others. I want to be associated with companies that demonstrate integrity, honesty, and strong ethics. Anything else will be a poor reflection on me.

When I research you and your company, what will I find? Most people tend to ignore the Glassdoor and Indeed reviews because they think they don’t matter, but they do. They tell a clear story of how employees (current and former) feel about your company. If everyone seems disgruntled, what can your clients expect in terms of customer serve? If there is high turnover, what can you customers expect from your relationship? And, if your LinkedIn resume shows you change jobs every 6 months, can they expect to build a relationship with you?

Image is the hardest of the three to control, but you can influence it. Make sure when someone looks you up, they see integrity, honesty, and strong ethics. When you meet someone, show the same qualities.

Exposure

Exposure boils down to who knows you and what you do. A few weeks ago, I was talking to a potential client about a service I offer. I was asked who was using the service and what types of results were they having. He was asking about exposure. This is why business book authors have CEOs write and endorsement, and why companies list their high profile business clients on their website.

Your company and personal social media sites are prime examples of exposure. Use these to promote your business in a positive light. When you and your employees are recognized in the community, share it on your social media sites. If you are invited to speak at conferences or for an organization promote it. If you do charity work, promote that as well. I’m not saying do charity for the publicity, but if you are sponsoring a 5K run, let people know.

To improve your exposure, do great things, and be seen doing it. Represent your company in charity or community events. These things get positive publicity, and get people talking. As Jeffrey Gitomer says “It’s not who YOU know it’s who knows YOU!” Get out there so people know you and your business!

This Week’s Challenge

What ways can you improve your performance? What is your image and reputation? Does it reflect who you really are? What are you doing to improve your exposure to help your business or career grow? Set a plan in place to improve your PIE and execute your triangle of success!

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.