Performance Criteria Explained

Performance Management is a tough task to manage. Providing right feedback so that individuals understand in a proper context is hardest thing to do. Individuals will be emotional about their performance. When everyone does their best, an attempt to rate them always looks unfair.

In recent times, my thoughts were focused on how can we make it easy for someone to understand their own pperformance.

I have come up with a metaphor to make it easy for individuals to evaluate their pperformance.

Imagine tasks individuals need to performance on job as pebbles, bricks and rocks.

Pebbles: These are routine and small tasks. Every job has a bunch of them. You need to do them regularly.

Bricks: These are projects that you are responsible for.

Rocks: These are tasks, projects that involve significant effort. You cannot tackles them in one shot. You need persistence, effort to tackle them.

Now to benchmark and measure performance of an individual, ask the individual to identify as one of the following

Kid: A new employee in the organization
Normal Adult: An employee with good amount of experience.
Well Built Adult: Very experienced employee
Body Builder: Highly experienced employee

If you leave any of the above individual for an hour and instruct them to move as many Pebbles, Bricks or Rocks they can move, it is common sense to understand how they performed.

There are a variety of outcomes that can happen in one hour. Following are a few examples and how you can interpret the performance

Kid:
- Moves lot of pebbles: Normal erformance
- Moves a few pebbles, one or two bricks: Good Performance
- Moves no pebbles, attempts to move bricks: Below Normal Performance as failed to perform routine tasks.
- Moves no pebbles, no bricks and is trying to push the rock: Below Normal Performance as he seems to be focused on wrong things.
- Nothing Moves: Does not know what to do (wrong person, wrong job)

In a similar way, you can extend this common sense approach to understand an individual’s performance and let individuals identify what pebbles, bricks and rocks they moved.

If you are an employee, will the above approach make it easy to understand performance criteria?

If you are a manager, will the above appraoch make it easy for you to put employee performance in a proper perspective?

Share your thoughts.

Skill Assessment Guidelines

People have skills and improve their competency in the skill over a period of time. The following is a guideline which can be used to rate the competency of an invidual in a skill. Skills can be learned and competency can be improved over a period of time. The guideline itself suggests that as people start using the skill the rating will improve.

Such a skill assessment should be done on a periodic basis in organization perferably with Appraisal and the information should be updated to HRIS (Human Resource information system) for reference purposes. This will HR in understanding the potential of employees in the organization. The guidelines stated are generic enough to be useful for any skill.

Factor	Guideline
Months for which skill has been used	This basically assumes that as a person continues to use the skill his familiarity increase his skill level. If the skill usage is less than 6 months a rating of 2 can be given and as period increases the rating can be increased
Application of Skill relative to period	People use the skill based on opportunity. This factor assumes that the person got to use the skill and a value to be assigned for the usage quality
Creative/Innovative use of Skills	Some people use the skills in innovative problem solving and enhance their learning by adding flavors to the same
Troubleshooting skills	While applying the skills overcome the problems encountered independently, find solution on own instead of depending on others
Sharing with Others	When people share their knowledge it displays their self confidence and skill level
Ability to be a faculty	When the skill level reaches high value they will be willing to teach in formal training sessions.
Ratings as Faculty	This has to be arrived as an average of rating in various training sessions as faculty
Ability to Guide people	Instead of just learning and applying a skill if a person can motivate others, guide them to find creative solutions, this displays high skill level
Initiative to provide solution without being asked	An expert in a skill will always look for opportunities to solve others’ problems. This gives a unique opportunity to person to display his skills and gain professional satisfaction
Reputation inside/outside the organization or group about his capability	This can be judged based on number of instances his help is sought as an expert within and outside the group/organization in helping others professionally with his skill set.

Example

Skill: VC++
Factor	Points (on a scale of 10)	Examples
Months for which skill has been used	5	Has been using the skill for almost 2 years
Application of Skill relative to period	6	Has been using the skill to develop product functionality during this period and has been good at it.
Creative/Innovative use of Skills	8	Developed a graphical interface using the skill and helped in designing better interface
Troubleshooting skills	8	Solved technical problems himself
Sharing with Others	8	Shares his knowledge with others by giving demo of his innovative usage
Ability to be a faculty	5	Not confident enough to be a faculty, needs to be persuaded and encouraged to handle sessions
Ratings as Faculty	2	In internal sessions was effective in demostrating his skill
Ability to Guide people	6	Can help others in one-to-one sessions
Initiative to provide solution without being asked	7	Willing to solve problems when he observes one
Reputation inside/outside the organization or group about his capability	8	Other groups seek his help in solving problems they are unable to solve
Sum	63
Overall Rating	6.3/10

Such quantitative rating will avoid assigning wrong competency level to individuals.

Hope you will find this method useful.

Be a Professional

‘Professional’ word is used as a quality attribute for individuals at work. What does the word Professional stand for? The following is my interpretation of word ‘Professional’.

A Professional

• Knows his job
• Is an expert in his field
• Knows his Strengths and Weaknesses
• Is not afraid of competition
• Knows his success is based on his work
• Does not feel jealous of competition
• When he finishes his job you feel the touch of ‘class’
• Takes Pride in his job
• You can ‘trust’ him for his work
• Possess specialised skills in his area and makes excellent use
• You have to tell him what is to be done, he knows how to do.
• You will be glad of availing the ‘professional’s’ services.
• You will enjoy watching a professional at work.
• You never feel cheated when you get the work done by a professional.

There have been instances in my life when I felt individuals are professional in their approach. Professionalism does not mean he has to perform a white collar job. Anyone who does a good work is a professional in my opinion. Examples of professionalism:

Whenever my vehicle needs servicing I take it to the garage and tell him to do servicing. I trust him for his work. He knows he has to do the best and I always found him doing a good job. I expect him to correct any faults unnoticed by me and return the vehicle in ‘better’ condition.

I requested service of an electrician sometime back my house. Not knowing anything about his job, I just kept quiet after stating my need. In a matter of two hours he did a thorough and neat job. I was impressed by the systematic approach, quality of work. That is what I felt is a professional job.

Every individual needs to understand the need to be professional. Recollect your experiences when you felt happy receiving professional service. Add what factor made you feel the service was professional. Analyze your own work and rate yourself on the professional aspects.

Be your best, do your best, that is what gives you satisfaction in your work life.

*Add your own observations to the above.

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Questionnaire

Use the following questionnaire to rate yourself as a professional. Determine the gap and work towards being a better professional. Rating is on 1-10 scale. 10 being maximum. Rate yourself for each question and calculate total.

Name:

Date:

Question	Rating
Do you know your job expectations?
Do you know skills required for your job?
Do you have adequate skills for the job?
How do you rate your expertise to the job you are doing?
Do you enjoy your job?
Do you always do your best in each of your task?
Do you have pride in your job?
Does your boss Trust you for your work quality?
Do you receive good back from people other than your boss?
Are you aware of your strengths?
Are you aware of your weaknesses?
Are you afraid of becoming extinct? (i.e. your services will not be needed anymore)
You have personal standards for each work you do?
You ‘rarely’ get detailed instructions on how to do the job.
Do you always adhere to personal standards?
Do you say ‘no’ when asked to perform work you cannot do?

Score:

16-40: Low: You have to work hard at your weaknesses

41- 80: Average: You have some weaknesses to work on

81-120: Good: You seem to be going good.

120 – 160: Excellent: You are a ‘Top’ Class Professional

Suggested Methodology for improving the score:

• Identify the question with lowest score.

• Identify reasons for the same.

• Discuss the problem with your colleagues or boss if required

• Initiate action to improve the score.

• Re-evaluate yourself after you feel you have improved.