Effective people management and appraisals

**scottallison** · 08-05-2010 09:31 AM

In my last business I went from 1 employee to 10 employees over a number of years. The challenge I was having was how did I make sure they really delivered, and how could I keep track of commitments that were made to me. I was having hundreds of conversations with people face-to-face, by phone, by email or by instant messenger - it was overwhelming.

I asked employees to write down their top 5 weekly priorities and email these to me, and coupled that with formal quarterly appraisals.

I would be interested to know how do you do it in your business, and what's worked or not worked for you?

**BizDoc** · 08-09-2010 05:25 PM

Hi Scott,
I would submit the trick is to develop strong subordinate leadership. As the CEO, focus on building the skillsets of, let's say three senior people - call them Ops, Finance, and Sales for simplicity - and concentrate on training them to takeover your job. Do this by telling them they'll get your job if they train their people to takeover their job... and so on. You'll find you've created a learning organization that among other many great things, can easily heal itself, filling in the gaps when a member is absent or leaves.
Also, measure results, not activity. If a salesperson can make the cash register ring or an IT head can keep the network running, regardless of whether they choose to play golf or take a late lunch (or not show up at all), praise their ability. Only once results fall below expectations (and your hire should let you know this if you employ the right people) then you can drill down into activities.
Hope this helps. I talk about this on an upcoming article on my site you might enjoy: How to Hire

**genevie** · 08-11-2010 11:40 PM

Hi,
In my company i always focus in the performance of my employee. Performance management eliminates the performance appraisal or annual review and evaluation as the focus and concentrates instead on the entire spectrum of performance management and improvement strategies. These include employee performance improvement, performance development, training, cross-training, challenging assignments.
This are how My company done...

**genevie** · 08-11-2010 11:46 PM

Hi,

In my company I always focus in the performance of my employee. Performance management eliminates the performance appraisal or annual review and evaluation as the focus and concentrates instead on the entire spectrum of performance management and improvement strategies. These include employee performance improvement, performance development, training, cross-training, challenging assignments.
This are how My company done...

**Andy Hunt** · 03-02-2011 05:09 PM

Performance appraisals are essential for the effective management and evaluation of my staff. Employee appraisals have helped me develop individuals and improve overall businesses performance. We setup a formal performance appraisal system using a template. One thing I would say is don’t make it to complicated, we spent quite some time trying to set up our own system before one of my staff found the template performance appraisal we adopted

**Parvaze** · 03-02-2011 05:29 PM

I've built good sized organizations and found the key, for me at least, was to hire very good people and then get out of their way. I was always available and had a pretty good sense of where they were at any given point, but made sure I gave them both the autonomy as well as the authority to run with things as they saw fit.

Best

**Andy Hunt** · 03-02-2011 06:00 PM

totally agree about hiring good people..... But performance is not just about the individual in our business it’s about teamwork..... Sometimes good ideas come from unexpected employees... when you ask them!.... one of our packing department once suggested a new market sector we had never thought of