Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Right Development

Key to keeping the right people in your organization engaged is to ensure they are given the proper training and development to perform their function. Unfortunately, in many organizations, training and development are seen as cost items. In truth, training and development should be considered an investment. The return on investment realized for effective development of personnel can often outstrip that of any other single investment an organization can make.

Like any other investment, because it involves use of assets of the organization, investment in development of staff needs to be carefully planned, evaluated and made at the appropriate time. To do otherwise is to set in place a self fulfilling prophecy that training is money that does not generate a financial return. The development of staff should be viewed as a process. Like any process it should be structured in such a way as to create an environment and culture for success.

While it may seem appropriate to address perceived needs, this very fact is more often than not the cause statements such as: “training is just a waste of time and money”. Why, because scarce resources were used to train before truly identifying the root cause of the problem.

Professional training and facilitation consultants can be invaluable in understanding the difference between perceived and actual needs.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Right Performance Management

All too often the performance management system is viewed by management as a tool to catch employees doing something wrong. On the other hand, a system of catching people doing things right has proven to be the best model for a successful performance management system.

Target tracking links objectives, activities and resources required with due dates to manage employee efforts toward accomplishment of short term, mid term and long term objectives. It is recommended that the maximum number of objectives per employee be no more than five.

Of course the rewards and recognition program of any organization must be represent the rewards wanted and desired by employees. As a general rule employees will owrk harder towards what they are rewarded for and then only if the reward come soon after the activity and is consistent with what the employees observe others receiving for similar efforts.

I get into this entire concept of making sure you have the right performance management system in place in much greater detail in Chapter 6 of my recent book There Has To Be A Better Way.