Rework occurs for many reasons: poor communication, inadequate skills, unmotivated people and no pride of ownership are just a few. If you are not a manager now, this will be a great lesson for you if and when you choose to become one.

I also suggest you share this information with your management team to help get them on the right track. Sharing ideas in a positive fashion that can assist your company in saving or making money is always a great way to be recognised for your upward mobility potential.

One major area of rework is employee retention. If you want to save tremendous amounts of money, you must hire the right people, retain the right people and motivate those people to perform as consistently close to excellent as possible. This is no easy task; however, it is not as difficult as most managers think.

Primarily this TYLER TIPS® will give you some excellent points on retaining and motivating employees. I will save attracting excellent people for another feature.

In employee surveys conducted by our research division, Tyler International Research Institute, as well as numerous other national research organisations, ‘feeling important’ and ‘receiving recognition for a job well done’ rank #1 with employees as to why they stay with or leave a company.

This is as long as a fair wage is offered for services rendered. You would think that as simple as this sounds all managers would be able to easily master this task, wouldn’t you? Well, they don’t!

Employers often tell me that their ‘supervisors’ are quick to point out the wrong and slow, if ever to point out the right. With that information as a starting point, one of your best tools to make improvements in recognition and performance should be your company’s formal employee evaluations or appraisals.

Notice I said should be. I feel very confident in telling you that 95% of all the evaluations or appraisals used today are counterproductive, a tremendous waste of time and could be thrown in the trash with no loss of productivity or negative effect on your company.

I say this for several reasons. They are:
1. Evaluations are not done frequently enough;
2. Evaluations are too generic;
3. Evaluations give very few specific enough improvement instructions; 4. Managers don’t know how to use an evaluation;
5. Employees don’t know how to improve from evaluations; 6. Evaluations are viewed by most as tools of punishment or deprivation; 7. Evaluations are not properly prepared for by anyone; 8. There is usually no clear-cut action plan with deadline dates and; 9. Evaluations are done unfairly or without consistency to employees for all the mentioned reasons.

Notice how the name correctly works from a positive rather than a negative premise. Recognition - the #1 reason for employees to stay or go is right in the title. Assessment - clearly indicates review of specific skills and or behaviours. It’s impossible to have an excellent tool if right at the start it turns the employee off.

1. Purpose
Clearly outline why this is important to the company and to the individual being recognised and assessed. Use an opening statement such as this one, which we developed for a number of our clients: To formally discuss with you the area’s ABC Corporation has determined are critical in striving for market dominance as they relate to your job function.
These areas have been determined through years of experience and by constantly evaluating existing market conditions. Some of these principals are unique to our industry and others are universal to all industries.

This assessment is meant to give you a straightforward analysis of how you are currently performing in the designated areas. This assessment is meant to recognise you for excellent performance so you may continue to develop and shape your strengths. This assessment is meant to give you a concrete diagram of the areas you currently need to concentrate your effort so that your performance standards may be elevated. Through this evaluation process you will better be able to achieve your personal and professional goals; thereby making it possible for ABC Corporation to achieve our company’s goals. Notice our Purpose outlines clearly our opening objectives.

2. Frequency
It is critical that Employee Performance Recognition and Assessments™ be done considerable more frequently than most evaluations are done today. I strongly recommend a minimum of once per quarter with monthly progress assessments based upon the formal quarterly Employee Performance Recognition and Assessment™.
If you truly want to retain and motivate employees this is critical. Imagine if the pilot of an airline only adjusted course one or twice during a flight. You would never reach your destination.

3. Specifics
Very specific, actionable areas must be outlined. They must be customised by; job, department and industry. As an example, if you were doing an Employee Performance Recognition and Assessment™ on a salesperson in the beverage industry you would have category headings like: Product Knowledge
• Merchandising, rotation, distribution;
• Sales - practices and performance;
• Personal and professional appearance and;
• Sales - technical skills.
Each category should have very specific action areas to recognise and assess.

4. Activity Programme
Every excellent Employee Performance Recognition and Assessment™ should include an activity program. This will list out the specific areas that the employee agrees to work on improving immediately. Activity programs should also make it clear that maintenance of other areas is necessary.

The activity program should include managerial review and an action plan with target dates. The employee and the manager should both affix their autograph to the activity program.

5. Resolution
Every Employee Performance Recognition and Assessment™ should have a specific set of resolutions at the end. Those resolutions are to be determined by the cumulative ratings on all the assessment points.

When all of these components are utilised properly in an Employee Performance Recognition and Assessment™ program you will begin to get excellent results. An additional benefit of this type of program is that it also makes an assessment of the manager since it clearly defines areas that the manager must be an expert in as well as the specific areas a manager must train in. Following these principles will improve your employee retention as well as motivate your people to excellent performance.

If you are an excellent manager or on your way to becoming one you will embrace these principles. If you are a weak manager, you will shrink away and say this ‘sounds too difficult’ or ‘that can’t work for our company or me’.
You decide. If you need help with developing your own Employee Performance Recognition and Assessment™ give us a call and we will design one for you.

©1989-2016, Richard Tyler. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means or stored in any database or retrieval system without prior written permission from Richard Tyler.

Company: Richard Tyler International, Inc.®
Name: Richard Tyler
Address: 5773 Woodway Dr., Suite 860, Houston, TX 77057-1501, USA Phone: Tel: ( 1) 713.974.7214
Websites: www.RichardTyler.com
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