Managing Associate Performance For Your Small Business Success!

How do you manage associate performance? Just like you would manage driving a car. You need to know where you are at the start, where you want to be at the end, and a roadmap to help optimize the distance from point A to point B and receive some redirection in case you are off the path.

Managing associate performance can be in the form of written documentation for reporting the results, personal follow-up/open dialogue with that associate, constructive feedback, timely reviews, accurate assessments, direct and specific directional action tasks that have been accomplished, and what needs to be accomplished for future goal platforms.

Along with these items, you need assessment tools that determine upward mobility capabilities and strategic skills currently in place or underdeveloped ones needing attention, placement within current and ongoing organizational charts, open dialogue with direct supervisors, customer satisfaction scores (if applicable), and financial performance metrics (if applicable). By combining the information and resources above, you know where the associate is and where he wants to end up, so you are giving the associate a “roadmap” on how to get there, and he can now “drive” his own career achievement by daily, hands-on deliverance within the business unit’s success structure.

Each associate has a different want and need from a workplace environment, but by assisting each to accomplish his end results by managing his performance from the very first day of employment to the end, both the associate and business unit will see the most productive outcome. Only when a business unit focuses on managing associate performance through each associate as an individual part of the whole and manages career path/performance to those individualities; can the sum of all associates’ efforts be combined into one goal for the achievement of the entire organization.

Start managing associate performance and doing the reporting on it today, because we are all connected and dependent on one another. Your success depends on other associate’s within your business unit, and managing associate performance is one way to guide that success in the right direction. Remember, “We win as one!”

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Correctly On-boarding New Associates For Your Small Business

What is one of the fastest ways to increase HR expenses and create workflow stoppages? On-boarding new associates incorrectly and not having enough candidates in your HR pipeline, that’s how. “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” The precedent is set on the very first day of a new hire’s career with your business unit. Whether they are digging ditches or filling out paperwork and watching EEOC videos, the company’s professionalism, operating procedures, the employer’s commitment to its associates, and the overall workplace experience is entrenched within the mind-set of that new associate within those first few weeks.

Do you have a standardized, detailed, 0-90 day on-boarding action plan in place with performance metrics and benchmark accomplishments for correctly evaluating the progression of all new associates and transitioning them into long-term team members? Do you throw new hires to the “sharks” or provide support platforms to them in the form of training (all media and hands-on types), coaching, mentoring, monitoring, corrective actions for redirecting, S.O.P.s, support (technical and non-technical), and progress measurement indicators?

Go look at the last two years of associate turnover in their first ninety days of employment with your business unit and understand the reasons why. Once you find the whys, you can identify the missing steps of the on-boarding process. After those system steps have been reorganized, look at what steps should be created for the future to produce a better on-boarding system. Why would you do that? Because, businesses will always have new hires and turnover, so this situation is not going away. In fact, as the marketplace grows tighter and tighter for good and qualified new hires, correctly on-boarding associates is a major factor in retention, lowering HR expenses, successful integration of them into the workflow, converting them into long-term associates, and productive team members for the success of all.

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