At the beginning of the year I hired two new full time employees. One of them is now my Marketing Manager while the other is a computer programmer.
It was an exciting time bringing them on. I was able to delegate more tasks and move forward faster on projects I wanted to get done.
With March almost over I’m coming up to my first quarter with them and need to do a performance review.
I’ve typically done reviews on an informal basis but as my team is growing I’m looking to get a little more structure this time around.
Everybody in my company has one main business goal that they are trying to hit. The goals are all based around customer satisfcation. My Marketing Manager, for example, has to get 20 “wow” emails from customers every month. This means that my customers, on their own time and without prompting, have to write in to say what a great experience they had working with us. Getting 20 of these in a month is extremely challenging but it’s a good stretch goal for him.
Everybody also has a personal goal that they are shooting for. Mine is to come up with 25 new salsa turn patterns (I’m a salsa dancer by night). Others here have book writing, cooking, money making goals, etc.
What I’m going to do this quarter is check in on how they have been doing in terms of hitting their numbers. I also ask these questions every quarter:
- What do you enjoy the most about your position?
- What do you enjoy the least?
- Can we automate any of the tasks that you do for you?
- What do you want to learn? Where do you want to go? How can I help?
- What would you do differently if it were your company?
I’m sure I’ll get an influx of new ideas from the two new staffers as well as learn more about how they’ve enjoyed the past three months and how we can make the work experience even better.
For those of you Young Entrepreneur readers who have staff, what questions do you ask? What would you suggest that I add to my list?
Evan Carmichael
I was a human resources consultant for 20 years before getting into event planning. One question I always asked employees (and references) is “what would you like to have known about working in this company when you accepted the position that you know now.” Also, on the references, “what would you have liked to known about this employee when you hired them that you know now.”
Two points come to mind. First, it’s vitally important that each key executive have a business goal directly related to the top or bottom line of the company. A good question would be “How has your work contributed to sales and/or profit growth.” Second, consider replacing periodic (quarterly, annual) performance reviews with much more frequent conversations about performance and behavior. In just a few minutes you can say “Here’s what I like about your performance…, Here’s what I don’t like about your performance…, Here’s what I need from you for me to be successful…, and Here’s what you can count on from me to help you be successful…” Then, ask the employee to do the same for you. When done on a frequent basis everyone knows exactly where they stand and how they’re contributing to the success of the company.