Performance Improvement

Many employees dread performance reviews, but they’re an important part of any business.

In addition to performance reviews, you may have heard the term performance improvement plan — this is the plan or strategy that comes out of employee performance reviews.

What Is Performance Improvement?

Performance improvement is a strategy that is often classified under the broader category of performance management.

Performance improvement helps employees achieve growth and enhanced performance within an organization. Oftentimes, the performance improvement plan considers both the productivity of the employee as well as whether their behavior and standards align with that of the organization.

There are 2 types of performance improvement:

Individual level – managers may look at time tracked and peer reviews to see how well employees are progressing.

Organization level – this often includes less granular details like sales metrics and customer reviews. This allows performance to be tracked at a higher level within the organization.

Once issues have been identified, it’s critical to make sure that employees are given a time-sensitive plan and that the goals for improvement are clearly set out.

How Do You Determine If a Performance Improvement Plan Is Appropriate for Your Business?

Here are considerations to keep in mind when introducing performance improvement into your business:

• Do you have the capacity to be able to work through plans with each employee?
• Should you do it for all employees or just those that are underperforming?
• If you identify problems, are they easily fixed? Sometimes issues like poor leadership are not best fixed with performance improvement.
• Is there a more significant problem at play? If several employees need to improve their performance, are the issues higher up? Don’t assume that your organization is free from issues — dig deep before putting multiple employees on performance improvement plans.

With performance improvement being a worrying prospect for employees, you should take steps to ensure it won’t affect the team’s morale before implementing it.

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