Here is the fifth (and final) in a series of short articles addressing some of the more common compensation issues facing HR professionals today.

The fifth of the Five Biggest Mistakes is Performance Management.

Another New Form?

Improving your organization's Performance Management does NOT mean adding more color to your forms and adding more detailed explanations.  It's not the form - it's the process!

A Few Hints:

Some hints to improve your Performance Management system immediately:

• Get active sponsorship (not just approval) from senior management.  If you only have approval, it's an HR program - that will die a slow, painful death.  If you have active sponsorship, it's the CEO's program and HR is simply helping make it happen.
• Train evaluators, then hold them accountable for getting evaluations done timely and accurately.
• If most of your employees are rated above average (or whatever term indicates more than doing a good solid job), consider using a forced ranking for a year or two to regain control.  (Forced ranking does not mean you have to terminate the lower performers; it is simply a tool to ensure the organization can get back on track, i.e., most of the employees should be clustered around the "doing a good solid job" rating.)
  
  An example of forced ranking for a 5-level ranking system:
• 5 (Highest) - 8% of your organization
• 4 - 20% of your organization
• 3 (good solid job) - 60% of the organization
• 2 - 10%
• 1 (Lowest) - 2%

Bottom Line:

Focus on performance, not the form.  Routinely work on performance metrics.  If you can measure it, you can get results and communicate it well.

Next month, we'll begin talking about survey participation in our 2007 - 2008 surveys. Where has this year gone?

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Since 1992, Effective Resources, Inc. has been providing salary, wage, and benefit data for the Tampa Bay Area.  Expanding on that success, the survey has been covering the entire State of Florida for the past five years via their survey website at SalarySurveyOnline.com.  This survey is unlike any other in that it’s put together by compensation professionals with the active support of the HR Florida State Council and its network of thousands of Human Resource professionals.  In other words, it's developed by professionals for professionals. The survey is an invaluable source of information for Florida employers of all locations and sizes, business owners, Human Resource professionals, and educational institutions with graduating seniors.