So much of how employees (myself included) are evaluated is based on
performance relative to goals. And that, of course, makes those goals
pretty darn important.

Some thoughts on this from a truly interesting essay on goal setting as it relates to progress discovered via Bblog:

There’s
  two parts to defining progress. The first is in planning the work and outlining
  a set of goals the work is supposed to achieve. If I told you to put out the trash,
  and pointed you to 3 full trash cans and a street with a signpost that said “put
  trash cans here”, it’d be clear to you what progress looked like.
  Even with complex work, the goal of a leader is the same: you want everyone to
  know how the world should be like when they’re done. Then they can compare
  what they’re doing today with the goal and make adjustments. This vision of completion
  can change, but everyone’s vision should change together (and it’s the leaders
  job to make that happen). If there is no vision, the first goal leaders set can
  be for everyone to contribute ideas for the vision.

The HR Blog at Boston.com points to an article at PersonnelToday discussing the results of an Accenture global survey of executive priorities. The top of the list? Attracting and retaining skilled staff.  Beyond that, a full 40% of the list is related to employee or workforce related issues. See the whole list below.

Top 10 current business issues for senior executives                        Percentage of respondents selecting issues

1. Attracting and retaining skilled
staff                                                           35%                           

2. Changing organizational culture and employee attitudes                               33%

3. Acquiring new
customers                                                                             32%

4. Developing new processes and products to stay ahead of the competition       29%

5. Increasing customer loyalty and retention                                                     29%

6. Managing
risk                                                                                             29%

7. Improving workforce performance                                                                28%

8. Increasing shareholder
value                                                                        27%

8. Using IT to reduce costs and create value                                                     27%

9. Being flexible and adaptable to rapidly changing market conditions                26%

10. Developing employees into capable leaders                                                 26%

Check out this post by Phil Wainewright over at ZDnet. He talks about the Enterprise SaaS Working Group of which we are a charter member and interviews Greg Gianforte from RightNow  about how On-Demand vendors are working to make Software as Service make sense to larger enterprises.

White paper here (PDF), if you’re interested.

I was just pointed to this great post by a 15-year Microsoft employee named John Porcaro on doing annual reviews. As we all know, the process can be tough, and John provides some great advice for getting through them and focusing on the important stuff. His tips are as follows, but you should definitely read the original post for the thinking and explanation behind them.

1. Take time to reflect
2. Think of your review as a living resume
3. Be thorough
4. Go with metrics
5. Make it about YOU
6. Don’t worry too much about missing an agreed-upon deadline
7. Don’t forget the “extra credit.”
8. If there’s something negative to say, bring it up yourself
9. Sometimes mistakes can be the best thing
10. Realize that half the equation is perception
11. Don’t sweat the review
12. Ask your manager to edit some of their negative comments
13. Don’t put it off until the last minute

What advice have you or your employees found helpful in completing reviews? Let me know and I’ll post the results here.

Props to Kinkoi Lo for the pointer.

Anyone who reads it knows that Tom Peters’ blog is a repository of great thinking and a free window into a very well-paid mind. I admit that I’ve only been subscribed to the feed for a couple of weeks now, but I’ve been continually impressed with what’s coming out of it.

Lately, he’s had some posts on dealing with his own depression, his mom and other personal topics. Not things you’d expect to see covered by one of the world’s most well-known management consultants and thinkers. But today, Tom has a post that reminds me of what it’s really all about in our industry:

While an avid devotee of the Profit Principle (among other things,
confirmation that one is being of Service to one’s Clients), the larger
idea is that effective enterprise is all about people … PEOPLE …
seeking the best in themselves as they work together to produce
outcomes of value and significance for their various constituencies. In Search of Excellence message/s: It’s the People, stupid! It’s the Customers, stupid!

Even as we strive to quantify and analyze, align and motivate, we cannot forget that it’s about the people.

Just heard about some new development going on here around a product called iReview. Basically, the idea is for small businesses or business units within larger organizations to have immediate access to do performance reviews online. Think it one minute and do the reviews the next minute; all you need is a credit card and the will to review.

Right now, iReview is in Beta and we’re shooting to launch it sometime in the next few months.  More details as soon as they are available. It’s pretty exciting stuff though. Who says performance reviews (and the benefits) are only for the big guys? 

Stay tuned. Oh, and here’s a link to the little teaser image on the website.

Keywords: Small Business, Performance Reviews

Dave Lefkow from Jobster has a new article up at ERE discussing the possibility of a nearing labor shortage.

The gist: The possibility of such a shortage is debatable at best but –

Organizations that do a better job finding and deploying their human
capital can increase productivity and be better positioned to succeed
in the face of new labor market realities. Workforce planning and
building pipelines for future hiring needs — instead of reacting to
openings when they are already beyond mission critical — can help
employers stay one step ahead. And strategies to retain older workers
without sacrificing some of the benefits of retirement can be put in
place, whether they are specific to certain industries like healthcare
and engineering that have aging populations, or more widespread."

My view on this dovetails with Dave’s. It’s impossible to accurately predict the size of the labor force, and even if one could, demographics alone don’t help. We’re better off focusing on the things we can control.

Pay for Performance is everywhere these days; software vendors hawk it, speakers at
conferences yak about it and professors preach it. But when you sit down and
think about it, it seems like it’s a long way off. And who knows if it’s right
for your organization or if it’s even a good idea in the first place. Any HR
practitioner that I’ve ever met is still working hard to make performance
management work and to most, real Pay for Performance is a still pie in the sky
idea, even if it is a very alluring one.

In a 2004 report on the subject, Mercer Consulting revealed “that for 42%
of organisations “improving the linkage between performance and
reward” is among their top two reward priorities for the coming year, with
38% stating they intend to take action within the next 12 months. But if you
want to take the breath away from any HR director, you might ask, “So,
what do you propose to do about it?”"

Though it’s definitely a foggy issue, my take is that a step by
step approach to Pay for Performance is the only way to think about it – with
performance management being the first step. After all, how can you even begin
to think about paying for performance if you don’t have a really good idea
about how your employees are performing? In any case, what is clear is that
regardless of what you do first – automated performance reviews or distributing
compensation, for example – Pay for Performance is not an issue that is going
be solved overnight.

Ultimately,
choosing a partner who can walk you through the steps, be it a software vendor
or consultant, is probably the most important decision you can make when
thinking about pay for performance.

Here are some good articles I’ve found that discuss the topic in
some depth:

• Washington Post: “Long,
  Hard Road to Performance Based Pay”

• Workforce Management: “Can
  Pay for Performance Really Work?”
• Mercer Human Resources Consulting: “Getting
  what you’re paying for: Linking performance and reward”

Do you have thoughts on Pay for Performance? Questions? Do you disagree with what
we’ve written? Submit a comment below.

Keywords: Pay for performance, Pay-For-Performance, P4P

Johnny Taylor, chairman of SHRM, is pushing HR to be more courageous and position itself for more strategic roles.

The topic is covered today over at the Wisconsin State Journal by Cindy Krischer Goodman for Knight Ridder.

How do you measure the effectiveness of HR? Cost per hire? HR headcount per number of employees? If you do, Dick Beatty thinks you’re wasting your time.

Dick is a professor of Human Resources Management at Rutgers and in an web cast today over on HR.com, he says that the one percent of organizational costs generated by HR is besides the point. In most organizations, 70% of costs relate to the workforce in one way or another; that’s where the leverage is and that’s where our attention belongs.

He also speaks directly to the topic of Performance Management:

We want you to think about metrics differently. First, think about metrics
having to do with the mindset of the workforce. How do we shape the strategic
mindset of the workforce and how do we measure that mindset? Secondly, is there
competency growth occurring in the strategic part of our workforce? Other
metrics we might think about are the percentage of A players we have in A
positions. What percent of B players do we have in A positions? Those are some
of the metrics questions we should begin to ask.

Here is some more information on Dick, and his new book.
For more information on the webcast, click over to HR.com.