If I haven’t introduced myself yet, my name is Jason Buchanan and I have been part of the team creating the Employee Life suite of products from the very beginning back in 2015. Whilst we probably described the first version of My Employee Life as a performance management tool, we quickly discovered that this wasn’t what we really needed. We figured this out when we asked ourselves two simple questions.
Question 1. Who is responsible for a person’s performance?
The answer to this question might seem obvious – the person who is doing the job – but humour me for a moment. What is the role of a supervisor or manager? Ever since I have been supervising the work of others, my role has been to ensure they are achieving what they should be. If they aren’t performing, then surely some of the blame must rest with me as the supervisor or manager? I am not saying that a person isn’t responsible for their own performance, they most certainly are. But when it comes to assessing performance, who’s performance is a supervisor actually reviewing when it comes to performance review time? Instead of creating a crazy situation where a supervisor is effectively evaluating their own performance, we wanted to create a framework that supports success rather than supports finger-pointing.
Question 2. When is the best time to influence a person’s performance in their role?
This might sound like another strange question but bear with me once more. Most performance review processes happen at the end of a period of time (3 months, 6 months, 12 months etc). I don’t know about you, but most people I speak with when you mention Performance Reivew cringe at the thought of a typical process. Whether it’s because one human being now has to judge the performance of another human being, or whether it’s the fact that the majority of us can only remember what happened in the last few weeks – something referred to as the recency effect – it’s a problem that these processes are often hated. But here’s the thing. Why wait? Surely the best time to influence performance and someone is performing in their job is at that moment in time? We wanted to create a process that supports necessary adjustments in real-time rather than waiting for a point in the future when the time has passed.
My Employee Life is about influencing performance when it really matters
There is nothing more frustrating than someone telling you what you should have improved or done different weeks or months ago. My Employee Life overcomes this problem because it focuses attention on just a few important success habits in real-time.
1. Agree and commit to what the future should look like
2. Reflect on what’s going well, not so well and what help is required
3. Use this data as the basis for better conversations between people who need to be speaking often.
In other words, My Employee Life supports better conversations rather than replacing them, which radically reduces the amount of unnecessary chaos that can invariably be created through crazy performance review processes.
If this sounds interesting, book in 15-20 minutes to discuss it with me personally (Jason Buchanan). Book A Time Here.
- Date - September 9, 2019