All Posts Tagged With: "recognition"
Improving Team Performance
When is a metric not a metric?
In “Five New Management Metrics You Need to Know,” James Slavet suggests new metrics that great teams should measure. Few are new, and even fewer could be considered metrics since they are largely unmeasurable, but being aware of them may help your team improve performance, so here they are:
- Flow State Percentage. How many hours a day team members are “in the flow”—focused on a task without interruption—divided by the number of hours they work. According to Slavet, “studies have shown that each time flow state in disrupted it takes 15 minutes to get back into flow, if you can get back at all.” Find ways to reduce interruptions and productivity will go up.
- Anxiety-Boredom Continuum. People are more productive when they are challenged without being overwhelmed, and they tend to be unproductive when they are bored. Observe team members for signs of boredom (low energy, showing up late and leaving early) or anxiety (reacting to setbacks with anger or frustration, getting sick a lot), ask them where they are on the continuum, and strike an effective balance.
- Meeting Promoter Score. At the end of each meeting, “ask the participants to each rate from 1 to 10 how effective the meeting…
Best and Worst for Employees
Glassdoor.com just announced its second annual Employees’ Choice Awards for best—and worst—places to work. Nearly 100,000 employees completed a 20-question survey on the site in 2009. Survey questions addressed employee attitudes about career opportunities, communication, compensation and benefits, employee morale, recognition and feedback, senior leadership, work/life balance, and fairness and respect. Once the overall ratings are calculated, Glassdoor.com may exclude a company from the list for detrimental acts by management or other negative company events.
This list is obviously not scientific but it does provide a general sense of who does well or poorly on employee engagement. At the Glassdoor.com Web site, you can click on a company in the list or search by company name and get more details about how many people rated it and their pros, cons, and advice to senior management.
The top 25 best places to work are:
- Southwest Airlines
- General Mills
- Slalom Consulting
- Bain & Company
- McKinsey & Company
- MITRE
- Boston Consulting
- Continental Airlines
- Procter & Gamble
- Juniper Networks
- Northwestern Mutual
- Kraft Foods
- National Instruments
- NetApp
- Goldman Sachs
- FactSet
- Medtronic
- Publix
- Chevron
- FedEx
- Apple
- Edelman
- Edward Jones
- QUALCOMM
Companies in the next 25 included Caterpillar (#35), Turner Broadcasting (#36), Intel (#41), Best Buy (#45), and Whole Foods (#48).
The 10 worst companies to work for, according to Glassdoor.com, are:
- Gibson Guitar
- United Airlines
- Spherion
- AutoZone
- Rain Bird
- DHL Express (USA)
- Level 3 Communications
- Dominion Enterprises
- Hertz
- Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
To learn more about employee…
22Dec2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedMisguided Management Practices
The Baldrige Criteria ask (1.1a3) how senior leaders “create an environment for organizational performance improvement, the accomplishment of your mission and strategic objectives, innovation, competitive or role-model performance leadership, and organizational agility.”
In addition to the long list of things senior leaders can do to create such an environment, there is an equally impressive list of things they should not do. Aubrey Daniels compiled his own list of no-no’s in Oops! 13 Management Practices That Waste Time and Money (Performance Management Publications, 2009). BusinessWeek summarized them online:
- Employee of the Month. Only one employee can earn it, which means others who may deserve recognition go unnoticed. Instead, recognize all high-performing employees.
- Stretch Goals. They’re typically set so high people get discouraged and the goals are never reached. Instead, set min-goals and celebrate achieving each.
- Performance Appraisals. Deming hated them. Enough said. Instead, evaluate people continuously based on what each individual is expected to achieve.
- Ranking. Competition should be with competitors, not with coworkers. Instead, use external benchmarks to motivate people and, again, evaluate them in relation to individual goals.
- Undeserved Rewards. Rewarding poor performers for such things as perfect attendance sends all kinds of wrong messages. Instead, recognize active behaviors.
- Salary and Hourly Pay. Getting paid for showing up does nothing to…
