by Brian Clark | coaching, competency frameworks, DOTS LMS, LMS, Performance, performance management
Make performance reviews an effective contributor to your organisation’s health. You can utilise features within the DOTS LMS to help you create and deliver performance reviews without the dread and and trepidation so often part of this business process.
- Don’t accept a 6 or 12 month review cycle as default. You can set the system for shorter periods for review meetings that may include some ‘course correction’, praise and recognition and re-focusing on new objectives.
- Create scales for your key result areas [objectives] that are clear and descriptive. You can create as many points in your scale and add as much text as you need to make the scale very descriptive. The more accurate your scale the less likely there will be ambiguity and misunderstandings during the review process.
- The same goes for your competency scales. There may be a number of competency frameworks operating in your organisation so make the scales as extensive and descriptive to meet the needs of your workforce.
- Encourage the use of the Development Planning module for post-review action plans. You can use both pre-set plans and enable custom plans for people with specific needs or ambitions. One of the biggest complaints about performance appraisals is the lack of follow up actions.
- Show managers how to enter interim notes into to review system. These notes ensure information, ideas and observations are collected in one place and available for the review meetings. Interim notes are a great way to ensure your people receive the recognition they deserve.
- Explore the use of the 360 Profiling module. Many clients are using the 360 module for their senior leadership and developing a range of assessment types. You can also use the 360 profile as a self-assessment tool that is a great re-enforcer for development and learning plans.
- You can assist managers by enabling other managers to ‘review the reviews.’ This is very effective as a coaching tool to help mangers improve their delivery of performance appraisals.
Performance reviews are often met with trepidation by both employees and their managers. This contributes to both a reluctance to conduct them and if they are conducted the quality of the experience and the follow up often destroys any good that could flow from this activity. We recommend that managers meet regularly with their team members and build performance coaching ‘all the time.’ When it comes to review time there will be less friction to having the conversations necessary to help your team to performance improvement.
If you would like some help setting up performance reviews in DOTS LMS, other systems or even on paper, we can help you out. For an initial discussion please get in touch.
by Brian Clark | learning management systems, LMS, Performance, performance management, strategy
The process outlined here represents a project undertaken by a client to improve its management of development and performance. There are limited resources available outside the budget allocated to a learning and performance software platform and existing team members in human resources and learning & development. The organisation has approximately 2,500 employees.
The goals for this project were identified and quantified prior to being presented to the executive leadership team. Most of these goals had been on the radar for some time and were worked on but never completed as part of a formal project plan.
Goals-
- establish a centralised information source for performance and competency management.
- consolidate and standardise job titles across the organisation and map to remuneration packages.
- standardise competency frameworks mapped to job titles and business units.
- enable employees and managers to capture ideas and observations between reviews.
- provide the tools for employees to conduct self and 360 assessments.
This list of goals is ambitious. As you can see they are all integrated and interdependent. The core of the whole process outside of the software implementation has been the standardisation of competency frameworks. These competency frameworks are the hub for the performance management and job title consolidation.
The software solution comprises a learning management system that includes competency management, job titles, assessment tools and performance management. The LMS has been integrated with the payroll system and the HRIS. The HRIS has become the single point of truth for management reporting upstream. The LMS is the point of truth used by the learning and development team.
The change management program included a pilot launch of the software initially to a group of approximately 200 users. The pilot was run in parallel with the larger implementation of the job title consolidation, performance assessments and competency frameworks. The pilot program was 6 months and the system went live just after six months from commencement.
These are some of the benefits that were identified and measured one year after ‘go-live.’
- surveys indicate employees are more certain of their goals and how they align with the organisation’s big picture strategy.
- the HR and L&D teams are able to generate meaningful reports to assist senior leadership in planning.
- performance assessment meetings are occurring and followed up.
- productivity has been increased with automation of processes and notifications.
If you would like to learn more about this project and the processes that were used to achieve successful outcomes, please get in touch using the form on this website or contact our office directly.
by Brian Clark | coaching, e-learning, Performance, performance management, strategy
In our business we have the pleasure of working with some very successful organisations and each has a culture that oozes high performance when you walk in their offices. You can see clues in the way people interact; looking at each other in the eyes, greeting people with their names, and well organised work spaces with personal touches. I am sure there are many factors that contribute to a performance culture but here are three factors that have been mentioned most often in my conversations.
1. Follow up and follow through. Sounds simple enough but one of the biggest killers of a performance culture is lack of follow up with other people. When leaders do not follow up it show a lack of care. As a leader people know you are busy but that does not forgive your lack of follow up. The lack of follow through is just as damaging. When a leader commits to something and it gets dropped or fades away the damage is serious. You lose trust when you do not follow through. Both lack of follow up and follow through are like a disease, when leaders exhibit these behaviours it creeps into an entire culture. Performance appraisals are one critical area that must never compromised by lack of follow up and follow through.
2. Person to person engagement. Managers need to meet with their teams as individuals and groups regularly. It is priority one and it needs to be scheduled and committed to. If a leader consistently cancels these meetings it sends the signal, ‘you are not important.’ A performance culture has a meeting rhythm and this flows to information sharing, communication, collaboration and often innovation. Some managers and leaders do not really know how to run effective meetings and these people need some coaching. In one client the change identified as being the biggest contributor to their culture is daily team meetings with a set agenda.
3. Learning is readily available and encouraged. Learning can be in many forms and it need not be expensive. For example, one client has brown bag learning sessions that are facilitated by fellow employees. Online learning is great and you can use your own content as well as find online courseware that can be delivered from your own LMS or via an online portal. Blended learning in a manager to employee coaching framework is one program that one of our clients has used to increase productivity and align activity with strategy more effectively. This program involves short online learning content, forms for applying learning and fortnightly coaching sessions with a direct or other manager.
These 3 factors were the top three mentioned in discussions with some of our clients. I am interested in learning about others that have been applied to create and sustain a performance culture.
by Brian Clark | coaching, competency frameworks, DOTS LMS, e-learning, Performance, performance management
The new range of learning modules we have released are getting a great deal of interest. These modules are designed to deliver competencies to learners with a short video introduction, step by step implementation guides and downloadable job aids.
Research has shown that 70% of development happens on the job and these courses are designed to leverage a more natural way of personal development. Since these content modules are short and include tools to implement the learning in the work environment they are highly suitable for blended delivery.
The Development Plan, Performance Management and Profiling modules in DOTS LMS are ideal for supporting the successful roll-out of these modules. The key is ensuring that the learning activities are supported by coaching and collaboration either individually or in groups.
Development Plans – include these modules as part of your Development Plans and assign them or enable your people to enrol in them out of interest or need. Your managers will be able to track progress and meet to discuss outcomes and the application of the learning.
Performance Appraisals can be used to ensure that one-to-one meetings occur in conjunction with the enrolments in these modules. You can include the competencies delivered by these modules in the Performance Appraisal module. Both the employee and the manager will be able to comment on experience and observation. This has proven a highly effective way to embed these competency based learning modules in an organisation and improve engagement with managers and employees focusing on ‘positives’ [learning & development] in a regular appraisal cycle.
The Profiling Tool in DOTS LMS helps you create as many profile as you need. In one case we developed a 360 Profile that included feedback on a large number of competencies included in the Project Management course catalog. We created both self-assessments and 360 profiles mapped to these competencies to provide some peer review.
If you would like to have a look at these learning content modules please get in touch and we can organise a pilot for you. If you decide to use these modules in your organisation we can help you implement their roll-out using one or all of the DOTS LMS modules mentioned in this blog.
by Brian Clark | crm, customer relationship management, DOTS LMS, internet marketing, Marketing, Performance, social marketing, social media, strategy
Based on a quick survey including some of our clients and other RTOs, the biggest issues facing these businesses are:
- Attracting and retaining high value clients.
- Managing AVETMISS and other compliance requirements.
- Managing staff and contractors.
These businesses use enormous resources to support administrative functions to manage and execute key business processes. Many are also facing enormous competitive pressures due to commoditisation of their products and services. Commoditisation is making it harder for many RTOs to differentiate themselves to prospective clients and increase their sales revenue.
Here is a short list of some solutions that we have implemented for clients and were found to be effective.
- Get very clear on your target market[s] and your ideal client profiles.
- Adjust your ‘messaging’ and communications to fit your market and ideal clients. One size does not fit all.
- Get some help with your internet marketing. Unless you have some spare time or a resource available to do this critical work. Internet marketing includes your website, social media, search engine and content marketing.
- Automate as many processes as possible. Our clients use DOTS LMS as a multi-faceted business management tool for compliance, client and staff management. You may already have the tools to do this effectively but have not leveraged them effectively.
- Use technology to personalise the client and learner experience. Our clients have the option of creating unique learning management environments for their corporate and government clients. You may not have the resources for a comprehensive LMS but you can still set up online resources for your clients that cost little or nothing depending upon your objectives.
- Start having regular meetings with staff and contractors on a team and individual level. Create an agenda and use these meetings to make sure you are touch with every element of your business. Regular one on one meetings with staff that review goals, performance and roadblock issues are much easier than one big performance appraisal every 6 – 12 months.
- Use technology to support your sales process from prospect to client stages. If you have a system use it well and if you do not have a system look for one that is easy to use and includes reports. This type of software does not need to be super expensive.
If you have any questions about these points or you are interested in exploring some ways to make your RTO more successful in 2014, you are welcome to get in touch using the contact details on this website.
