Improving employee efficiency and effectiveness.

In our first article, we looked at the difference between being efficient and being effective.

Efficient people follow the rules - they do things right, whilst effective people do the right thing- they add value.

We saw that efficient people are good at ‘maintenance’ and ‘crisis prevention’ whilst effective people add value through ‘continuous improvement’ and the ‘management of change’.

When we appraise our staff, we either want them to be more efficient or want them to add more value.

So appraisal is all about improving people performance, so much so that in many organisations, appraisal is often referred to as the ‘Performance Improvement Process’.

Why appraise employees?

• Helps develop an individual’s skill so they are more efficient and/or more effective.
• To discuss with the individual new skills that may be required as the job changes.
• To review past performance as a guide to future performance.
• To assess career planning. Are they in the right job, what other jobs could they do?
• To assess future potential. Could they take on other roles or take on more responsibility.
• To set objectives for the coming year.Objectives to do with improvement or objectives to do with new tasks and responsibilities.
• If we look at some of the aims of appraisal outlined above then it is obvious that another aim of appraisal must be to identify an individual’s training and development needs as well.

What are the benefits for the individual?

• Others are constantly evaluating an employee’s performance, so they have a right to know what others think of them.We all need some feedback about how we are getting on in the job, especially if the job is new to us.
• Employees can use the appraisal meeting to discuss the detail of their work with the Practice Manager.What do they gain satisfaction from? What do they find difficult and what other things can they do?
• The individual can check that their ‘key result areas’ correspond with those of the Practice Manager. It is no good trying to spend more time on those activities that the Practice Manager feels are less important. Not all employees know how to prioritise.
• The individual can explore ways to add value in the job. They can add value in their role through ‘continuous improvement’ activities (improving the job) or radically changing things (the ‘management of change’).
• The individual can discuss their career prospects, or how they can be ‘developed’ within the job.
• The ‘appraisal meeting’ is also a chance for the individual to discuss problematic issues to do with their role or issues to do with the team. A chance for an open dialogue.
• Above all, the individual expects the appraisal meeting to leave them motivated and encouraged.

What are the benefits for the Practice Manager?

• The Practice Manager can find out how the individual feels about work and what motivates them.
• The individual’s strengths and ‘development areas’ can be identified.
• The Practice Manager can use the process to talk about changes in the practice and strategic developments.
• The Practice Manager can identify training and development needs for individuals or even groups of individuals.
• The Practice Manager can use the appraisal system to improve the overall performance of the Primary Health Care Team.

SMART objectives!

One of the outcomes of the appraisal meeting is to set performance improvement objectives with the employee, these objectives should always be along SMART lines.

SMART stands for:

Specific
This means that the objectives should be well defined.

Measurable
The objective should be measurable in some way. For example it might be an objective that saves time or money.
It might be an objective that improves patient care or improves communication with other health service agencies.

Agreed
The Practice Manager and the employee should agree together the performance improvement, whether it is to do with efficiency or effectiveness.

Realistic
The objective should be one that is achievable for the individual and for the resources available. It is no good setting objectives that are unrealistic.

Time bound
The objective should have a start, a review and an end date.

Appraisal Style

There are three styles of appraising individuals: Tell and Sell, Tell and Listen, and Self-Appraisal.
Let us look at each in turn and identify their strengths and weaknesses. We will note that the best style is self-appraisal but the other styles may have to be used on occasions.

Tell and Sell
In this case the Practice Manager just tells the employee about how he or she sees their performance and sells, or persuades them, that this evaluation is the correct one. The Practice Manager also tries to get the employee to follow the Practice Manager’s own improvement plan.
Unless this is a very new employee, or a poor performer who has to be told what to do, this style is not likely to be acceptable.
No one likes to be told what to do and how to do it. Also the employee is less likely to take ownership for the improvement plan.

The employee is seldom going to be motivated by this approach and they can also become hostile and defensive, especially if they feel there is some degree of ‘criticism’ in the appraisal.

Tell and Listen
In this case the Practice Manager conveys a provisional assessment of the employee’s performance and listens to their response.
Again the employee can still become defensive or just reject the appraiser’s evaluation. In addition the Practice Manager may also become defensive if their recommendations are rejected.

Self-Appraisal
In this case the Practice Manager aims to get the employee to appraise, or evaluate, their own performance. The advantage of this approach is that the employee is very likely to take on ownership for their performance improvement. Most employees have a realistic view about how they are performing and in many cases they can be modest and over critical of themselves. Only in a small minority of cases do we find employees who are overconfident and unrealistic in their selfevaluation. We will show how to deal with these ‘difficult’ employees in a future article.

Appraisal in practice

The Practice Manager should prepare to appraise the individual by looking at their performance over the past six months. If there were issues or problems they would have been clearly raised at the time so there should be no surprises for the employee in the appraisal itself.

In this preparation, the employee’s strengths need to be noted, with the intention of building on them for the next period. If there are areas of poor performance then the Practice Manager should select just one or two to deal with in the appraisal itself - very few people can cope with more than one or two areas of poor performance.

Start off the appraisal meeting - it is a meeting, not an interview- with an open question about how they feel they are getting on. This allows them to raise any worries or concerns they may have. Then move on to ask open questions about how they evaluate their own performance. The idea is to be able to praise and motivate the employee.

In the self-appraisal process, some employees may not mention some areas of poor performance. The reason for this is that they are unaware of them or want to hide them. In this case the Practice Manager asks more open questions. Let us assume there was an issue with a patient or another member of staff, ask an open question such as “what went well?” and then another open question “what went less well?” or “what would you do differently next time?”

The Practice Manager only resorts to the “Tell and Listen” approach if the employee avoids, or is unaware of, the problem or issue at hand. In very rare cases, such a totally new employee, or a resistant employee, then the Practice Manager may have to resort to the Tell and Sell approach, the ‘this is what is wrong and this is what you have got to do about it’ approach!

In self-appraisal, the Practice Manager can ask the employee how they see their own learning and development. Don’t forget, development can mean taking on new responsibilities, self-study, coaching others and so on. It does not always mean external training courses.

A final point worth making is that in the appraisal meeting the word ‘weakness’ or the term ‘criticism’ should never be used-it only makes people defensive. Always adopt the ‘merits and concerns’ approach. Mention people’s strengths or merits and then, if you do have to mention some aspect of poor performance, use the term ‘concern’. “You are very good at ABCD and have done very well, but I am a bit concerned about…”

Next issue we are going to look at job ‘competencies’ and show how the competence approach can supply the criteria by which we appraise people. We are also going to show you how to use a simple checklist when giving feedback to ‘difficult’ employees.

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Geoff lectured in Organisational Behaviour at postgraduate level for 20 years and has wide experience as a management consultant and trainer.

He currently works for the Oxford Centre for Innovation as a ‘Leadership Development Adviser’.

He also runs regular management workshops for Reading University as well as managing his own consultancy.

Geoff Ribbens is a joint author with Greg Whitear of “Body Language” part of “Instant Manager Series” coming out this autumn published by Hodder Arnold.

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