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Posts Tagged ‘performance’

Use stop lights when working with your HR scorecard

December 18th, 2008

The Balanced Scorecard Designer 2.0 was released with support of stop lights, a small red triangle will appear next to indicator if the performance value of indicator is too low. The stop lights are fully customizable and easy to use. More over, these stop lights will also be displayed in a dashboard report.

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Key aspects of human resource management

August 17th, 2008

Great all-in-all review of all possible aspects of “life-cycles” in HR niche. The set of articles discuss all possible aspects of HR from searching perspective candidate to retirement plans. The review covers the key topics in HR management and how to keep business performance while your company hire new people or someone leave company.

  1. Life cycles in HR
  2. In-Between Happenings in Hiring the Best Employee
  3. Two Programs for Searching Future Employees before Graduation
  4. Five Helpful Tips on Job Sites’ Resume Browsing
  5. How It Helps Searching Employees from Existing Contacts
  6. Contributions of Training to Employee Performance and Organizational Management
  7. What a Holistic Education and Training Program can do for Organizational and Employee Development
  8. Giving Employees Time to Practice: An efficient Way to Enhance Productivity
  9. Choosing Training Models for Your Training and Hiring Needs.
  10. Management Tools to Enhance Employee Efficiency
  11. How to Align Employee Values and Aspirations towards Your Company Goals and Vision
  12. Managing Job Quality to Control Employee Output
  13. Using Various Rewards and Profit-Sharing Strategies in Motivating Employees
  14. A Pursuit to a Perfect Workplace
  15. Ensuring Employee’s Continued Success through Additional Training Programs
  16. Coping with employee loss
  17. Holiday fun at work
  18. Caring for employees’ health
  19. Employees on maternity leave
  20. Dealing with the resignation of an employee
  21. Appreciate the people in your company through proper recognition
  22. What should you do after an employee gets fired?
  23. Why people leave a company and stay with the competitor
  24. Make your employees stay through your retirement plan
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Key Performance Metrics as Business Performance Indicators

June 20th, 2008

Having performance metrics as business performance indicators is a huge advantage for any company or organization. This is because the indicators show a company’s status towards achieving corporate goals.

If you are in the world of business, then you surely must have heard about performance metrics at one point or another. This is because companies can make use of performance metrics as business performance indicators. Simply put, we can use performance metrics to check on how the business is performing, especially in terms of growth and productivity.

Another term that can be used in place of business KPI is the business KSI or key success indicator. These are created for the sole purpose of measuring the performance of a business when compared against organizational goals and objectives that have been originally set by the business itself upon its foundation. Once the aspects aligning the performance of the business are measured, it would then be easier to identify where exactly the business currently is towards the realization of these corporate goals and objectives.

Upon the analysis of a business’s mission, there would come a need to name the very people behind the business itself. These people would be the business’s stakeholders and even the founders themselves. But when the goals are stated out loud, then the business would inevitably be ready to identify and define the methods that it will use in measuring its current progress towards the realization of corporate goals. These are then the business performance indicators at play.

There are certain characteristics you have to look for when selecting which KPIs to use for your business. Bear in mind that these have to be relevant KPIs because it would not make sense to use KPIs that are not relevant to your business, as well as your goals and objectives. Also, you have to remember that these KPIs are not goals per se. these are just quantifiable aspects that are set up to make clearer the status of the company against its goals and objectives. This is precisely why the identification of goals has to be done before the KPIs are developed and set up. The goals serve as guiding forces in this endeavor.

Furthermore, the KPIs have to be predetermined because it would not be worth your while to do this at a later time only to find out that the goal for a particular KPI has already been met or achieved. In the same setting, if your organization is not quite sure if it would be able to tell whether or not their goals would be achieved, then it would be senseless to come up with these KPIs. Thus, predetermination is a must here.

Lastly, there might come a time when your goals would become narrowly defined, especially when the organization gets closer and closer towards achieving certain goals. This does not mean that the business performance indicators should be modified significantly during the company’s progression towards the goal. Remember that the performance metrics here have been predetermined already, and this means they represent measures indicating progress. Since this is the case, then there really is no need for the company to modify these measures. As tempting as it is, your business performance indicators should remain as they were from the very beginning.

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Knowing How to Control Business Performance with KPI

June 6th, 2008

The performance of any business greatly relies on KPI or key performance indicators. Thus, knowing how to manipulate these can bring significant results for your business’s performance.

We all want our businesses to become successful, especially in terms of profit and stature. What businessman would not want this for his business, right? Thus, it is of import to exhaust all possible resources to control the performance of a certain business, so that performance itself can be guided accordingly. One effective way to deal with this is through the implementation and usage of KPI or key performance indicators. But just how does this work? What should every businessman know on how to control business performance with KPI?

The underlying concept here involves a lot of factors. For business performance to be controlled in a positive way, these factors have to be addressed. These include: the design of your KPI, the gathering of data that is to be plotted onto your KPI system, and the analysis and usage of the gathered data.

Your KPI design is just about the most important factor to consider here. There are a lot of indicators that you can include in your design. What’s important here is to choose indicators that are relevant to your cause. Now, these can vary from one company to another, since different companies inevitably have different corporate goals and objectives. For the most part, these are the indicators that frequent the usual KPI designs of so many companies: total monthly company profit, regional company profit, customer social position, and customer education. Having these indicators is quite important because a number of people from the upper management would be looking into this from different perspectives. To illustrate, the CEO of the company might want to take a look into the total profit metric, which is understandable since the CEO heads the whole company. The regional manager, on the other hand, might be interested on just regional company profit, since this is the scope of his or her job itself. Thus, your KPI design should bear in mind the needs of all people who will be viewing them.

However, the road towards successful performance does not end with just having a reliable KPI system. The inputted data and information have to be sorted out, analyzed, and represented appropriately and accurately. Thus, the very person who’s in charge of the analysis and representation of data gathered should indeed be as qualified as he or she should be. The analyst should be aware of the goals of the implementation of all metrics in the design. The analyst should also know why that particular metric was chosen, and not some other related one.

Keeping tabs with the limits of your KPI system is also important. You have to understand that there are also limits that come with your KPI design, no matter how awesome this might have been when it first came into play. Thus, it is of much importance to make sure your KPI system remains up to date because what worked well yesterday just might not produce any significant results today. What’s more, your KPI design is not really equipped to provide detailed facts about your business so avid representation is needed here.

By keeping these factors in mind, you will now have an idea just how to control business performance with KPI. Use these to the fullest so that your business, in turn, can also realize its full potential.

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Searching for Measure and Improve Employee Performance Tips

March 9th, 2008

One of the more important functions of performance management is to be able to determine how an employee is performing in terms of certain performance metrics. After performance evaluation had been made, strategies could be adopted to improve their productivity. While these may sound simple, they may be difficult to implement. Measure and improve employee performance tips will provide managers more insight on what they need to do.

Performance management is one of the vital functions of managers within a business organization. This is so crucial that getting to know some measure and improve employee performance tips could spell the difference between business success and failure.

A business organization’s manpower is one of its most powerful assets. It is the responsibility of top-level management to ensure that the overall productivity of employees will help the company achieve its objectives. Performance management requires keeping track or monitoring of employee performance, evaluating job performance or fulfillment of duties, and communicating relevant feedback.

Generally, performance assessment is done regularly within an employment relationship. Some managers do this annually while others conduct this more often. While this is something that generally occurs in organizations, there are several managers who are still not able to fully grasp the rationale of such action. In fact, many remain uneducated about the legal concerns associated with the conduct of these performance evaluations.

Basically, these are mainly done to help employees improve their performance and increase their productivity in relation to corporate goals.  Through this activity, managers help their employees identify their individual strengths and weaknesses. These formal performance evaluations also serve as a written record or documentation of the employee’s performance within a certain period of time. In evaluation, five important categories are usually taken into consideration. These include job knowledge and skill, interaction, communication, quality concerns and productivity.

Communicating performance feedback is just as important as doing performance assessment. This process allows employees to become aware of what the other people in the organization think of the job he or she is doing. When doing performance assessment, managers should make sure that any feedback, especially negative ones, should not border on a personal attack. Rather, it should be kept impersonal and should only be based on the working behavior perceived by both manager and co-employees.

The feedback should, in fact, be acceptable to the concerned employee for him or her to accept and integrate it into his or her working routine. In contrast, if a feedback is found to be unacceptable, the concerned employee will develop resentment and will no longer be motivated in doing better. Sometimes, providing good feedback is just not enough. Deserving employees have to be rewarded as proof that their efforts are recognized by the organization. By rewarding performance, companies will be able to show their employees that they are important to them.

Conducting performance assessments is also one way of identifying the current skills of employees and the important skills that they need to develop to become more productive. The managers should be able to determine the skill gaps in the organization and should be able to develop an appropriate training and development program that will narrow this gap.

Performance management styles may differ from one company to another depending on the unique attributes of firms. However, performance management, in general, is seen as a strategic approach to maximize the productivity of the entire workforce. Browsing through websites that give measure and improve employee performance tips should be advantageous for managers.

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In Search of Effective Control Employee Performance Tips

February 25th, 2008

Control employee performance tips help managers learn from other experienced managers on how to effectively manage employee performance. Fortunately, with the development of the Internet, having access to these is no longer a big problem.

For inexperienced managers, control employee performance tips are necessary inputs that will aid them in decision-making.

Performance management is a crucial aspect in the operation of every business organization. This involves the process of successfully channeling and managing employee knowledge and skills so that overall company objectives are achieved. Some of the most important managerial functions include assessing employee performance and providing employee feedback. In performance assessment, it is important that managers are able to develop an evaluation system that would take into consideration metrics that truly matters. In the assessment stage, five categories of job performance are usually measured namely; interaction, communication, productivity, job skills and knowledge, and quality concerns.

After an assessment has been made, the manager must be able to communicate to the concerned employee his or her feedback. An effective feedback needs to be specific, credible, timely, behavior-based and purposeful. It should provide positive reinforcement and should help employees identify what it is that they are doing well and what needs to be improved. Also, negative feedback or criticism should pertain to the working attitude or performance and should not be a personal attack. Or else, the feedback becomes an instrument of prosecution.

Another important aspect of controlling employee performance is to assess the skills that employees currently have and to identify what skills they need to develop or improve for future use. Once skill gaps or limitations have been identified, it is now time to develop a training and development program that would best address the needs of employees. Creating an individual development plan for employees or team members is also a good way of keeping track of employee performance. From these plans, management would have a better idea of the more immediate training and development needs of their workforce.

While it is important to recognize the limitations of employees in terms of their performance, it is equally important to recognize their efforts in helping the company achieve its goals. Awards, rewards or recognition are very effective incentives for good work. Good managers should know how to motivate their employees or subordinates, instead of manipulating them. The difference between both lies with the fact that motivation looks upon positive reasons for hard work while manipulation involves the use of punitive or coercive measures to make people do their jobs.
Employee performance problems naturally occur in organizations.

These stem from the fact that there are different personalities in an organization. Employees have different principles, priorities, values, work attitude and are affected differently by motivational factors. Therefore, meeting such problems should not be a cause of alarm. What is important is that managers should be able to address such problems as soon as they arise. Otherwise, employees would perceive their superior to be ineffective.

To address employee performance problems, managers should ask for suggestions from the concerned employees to prevent reoccurrence of such roadblocks. Since the employees themselves came up with a possible solution to their problems, they will develop a sense of responsibility or commitment to overcome their performance dilemma. For more control employee performance tips, managers can rely on the Internet as a resource tool.

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Basic Tips to Improve Productivity of HR Department

February 17th, 2008

The performance of the HR department should be monitored. There are tips to improve productivity of HR department that one can keep in mind.

The HR department is very important in the complete success of a certain company’s operations. A company just cannot do without having a productive HR department in its support system. This is exactly why it is important to monitor the productivity of the HR department itself. This is quite difficult, simply because this department has so many functions and responsibilities to handle. First and foremost, the department handles all aspects pertaining to recruitment and selection. This department also handles compensation and benefits packages for the company. And these are just some of the major responsibilities! Thus, there is indeed a need to monitor the productivity of a company’s HR department.

There are actually a lot of tips to improve the productivity of HR department. But one particular tip is very efficient that it begs to be discussed in detail. This tip actually involves the installation of an efficient computer system, more like, a database for all the data and information that any HR department would acquire about their employees and such over the years. This database is actually a piece of software that installed onto the system. Now, this can be costly. But if you think about it, the benefits would definitely outweigh the costs entailed in the long run. Imagine the bulk of information any HR department collects about its employees over time. That much information can then be organized by means of this database, which entails much convenience for any company.

This concept is not new at all. There was indeed a time when the basic tasks HR departments handle would be stored right onto main frame computers. These were the only computers at the time that could handle that much data for the whole system. However, being main frame computers, the operation and maintenance of such required the skills of many IT professionals and such, just to make sure the system is up and running. This is very costly, so this practice was cut short.

Today, however, HR departments can now enjoy the benefits of what are known as client server HR management systems. These systems primarily focus on the main responsibilities of HR departments, which are payroll issues, time management, labor management, compensation and benefits packages, and HR management issues. Because these are the only aspects a client server HR management system focuses on, then running such a system would not be that costly anymore.

There are actually many software applications that you can choose from today. The important thing to keep in mind here is to put into context the nature of your business, and the needs of your HR department. This way, your needs would be prioritized and the applications would be made to fit your needs.

There is even one such software application that allows you to gather all kinds of HR information and data that you need for your system. Once you are done collecting such data, all of these are then converted into a single format, so that the process of inputting them is made easier as well. The relevant information can then be weeded out from those that are not relevant, and then processed accordingly.

The convenience this brings is indeed a tip that can do wonders in improving the productivity of HR departments. You just might want to consider getting one of these software applications for your company now.

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The Importance of Measuring HR Performance

December 5th, 2007

HR performance is an aspect to be measured in ensuring the success of a company’s overall operations. Certain elements have to be considered when measuring this.

Measuring the productivity and performance of each and every department is necessary. There have been procedures developed and recommended in measuring these aspects when it comes to the effectiveness of a company’s management team. Such procedures have also been developed to measure the same when it comes to a company’s workforce.

But have you heard of such a system being used to measure HR performance? Yes, there is indeed such a need to measure this. Thus, there have also been procedures developed for this purpose.

First of all, it is important to recognize the fact that the HR department is very vital in the existence and overall success of a company. This is because this is the department that handles the hiring of the company’s premier assets: its workforce. Thus, it would make sense to measure the performance of this department in this aspect.

And this is just one of the many responsibilities the HR department carries out, you know. Thus, it would make further sense to have some sort of system set up to evaluate HR performance as a whole.

Now, there are certain elements, or what is known as indicators, that should be used in evaluating HR performance. The first of these would be, as expected, workforce productivity. It is important to take note here that productivity for one company can be completely different from that of another company. This is simply because companies have different goals, objectives, and purposes.

Still, there would be established measures that are common amongst companies. If workforce productivity is going strong, then it’s safe to say that HR performance is productive in this aspect.

Employee engagement is another aspect to keep in mind here. This pertains to the work relations between the employees themselves and the management. If this aspect scores high, then this would mean that the employees value their jobs. Just like workforce productivity, HR performance would score high if employees are satisfied with the jobs that they keep.

One way to know this is to hold surveys, so that the employees can express whatever thoughts they have about their jobs. You best look for answers wherein employees would say that they wake up and find themselves looking forward to another day at work.

Recruitment is also an aspect as well. If you think about it, recruitment is the most important job responsibility any HR department has. To check if HR performance is strong in this aspect, then the average performance appraisal scores of the employees should be monitored. If a company is consistently promoting its employees to higher positions and better opportunities, then HR performance is at an all-time high.

The last concept is employee retention. Turnover is something that no company wants to experience. However, this is quite inevitable in any company because there will always be better opportunities coming by for any employee in the workforce. There are also times when the company itself would decide against retaining some employees, especially the unproductive ones.

This is something any HR department wants to avoid. Thus, it is important for the HR department to hire only the productive ones as much as possible. If the retention rate in a company is high, then HR performance is also positive in this aspect.

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