I am a manager in a company that employs just shy of 50 people, which means I am both a supervisor and a team member at the same time. It also means I am responsible for my own performance and that of my team. I also like the idea of enjoying my job because like you, I spend over a third of my time working. I am pretty sure most people on the planet would choose to prefer enjoying their work than not.
I didn’t know it before we started using it, but introducing My Employee Life helps me achieve my goal of enjoying my work in a number of ways. Here’s just a few I thought I would share.
1. Clear expectations and goals
There is no substitute for clarity of expectations in advance. Think about how much time is wasted when someone isn’t clear about what they should be doing. Our performance drumbeat is that we break the calendar year up into four quarters, and at the start of each quarter we have conversations about where we are aiming to get to by the end of the quarter. Planning and goal setting is hard because it is largely about the imagination, but it is critical to success. Whether things play out that way, at least we have a clear and agreed future state that we are all aiming for. The importance of common reality about goals can never be made more important.
2. Self-reflection and accountability
The problem with most workplace goals is that once they are set, they are put aside for review at some point in the future. Not with My Employee Life. At the end of each week, there are two things every team member does right across the company. The first is to update the progress of goals (agreed in point 1 above) which includes adding any comments that are applicable. Then, everyone completes a short ‘weekly worklog’ (some call it a weekly report) which prompts thoughts about what went well, what didn’t go so well, what help is required, and what actions need to happen next week. Everyone shares this with anyone that is relevant to, which means not only is everyone up to date with what everyone is else thinking, but it means I can pick up on Monday morning precisely where I left off on Friday. It radically improves the quality of my weekend because I know things aren’t slipping through the cracks.
3. Real-time adjustment
There is only one ideal time to bump, nudge and adjust something that isn’t going according to plan, and that is as close to real-time as possible. As they say, there is no time like the present. Whilst the weekly worklog highlights possible problems, it means my one to one conversations and scrum meetings with team members are even more effective. This simple process increases the quality of my conversations with others, which means we can focus on making real-time adjustments rather than waiting for the end of the quarter to have the conversation.
4. Performance conversations are way easier
Having a conversation with anyone about their performance isn’t always the nicest way to spend time. The really good thing about our My Employee Life process is that, because everything is clear and logged ‘on the fly’, and because there are regular conversations happening about week to week performance, there are no nasty surprises. We have the conversations in real-time, and challenges are dealt with accordingly. Clean and simple, which is way better for everyone. And if things do happen to go south, there is a clear record which protects everyone involved.
5. Everything to do with performance is in the one place
When I think back, I often struggled to review someone’s performance because the information was scattered through emails, spreadsheets, word documents, and random conversations. With My Employee Life, I know that everything to do with performance, both for myself and others, is in the one place. I don’t need to go searching, it’s all there because we have all agreed that is where it should go. Not only does this save time, but it ensures there is an ongoing real-time record of what is really happening, which means any form of evaluation is always fair.
If you are tired of crazy performance systems and processes, why not give My Employee Life a go. It’s embarrassingly simple and effective.
- Date - August 26, 2019
