What if your client asks about appraisals?

Some of your clients may ask about the benefits of appraisals and how to do them.  This shows they understand that developing their business means developing their employees, which is good.  Don't just rush into appraisals though.

A client who owned a fast-growing business once said to me that he was concerned that he hadn’t had time to “do all the HR things I should do” for the past couple of years.

Two years before, business growth was being hampered by quality and delivery problems. His staff were avoiding answering the phone because they knew it would be an angry customer. Sales, Design and Operations were at loggerheads. The company did have, however, lots of HR stuff going on. Appraisals, reviews, training and so forth ran like clockwork and my client devoted a lot of his time to HR initiatives.

We spent a lot of time when I started working with him talking about structure and how to solve the customer service issues. He had an effective project manager (he called him “a Rottweiler”) but was nervouse about putting him in charge of operations “because he won’t look after people”. We agreed that the critical thing was to sort out operations and that the business could tolerate a few ruffled feathers for a year or two to achieve this. This approach was adopted more generally, with managers being asked to focus on their “one number” and far less attention being paid to side activities. Management meetings started to focus on performance and coaching.

The result was that the company (mostly) started to deliver what the customer wanted when they wanted it. My client started spending his time (mostly) on strategy and growth. Staff attrition did not rise, productivity did. The reduction (elimination, really) of the HR machinery seemed to have no negative impact, at least in the medium term

What do I take from this story?

Winning teams focus on a single simple goal.
Individuals need to be given a single simple goal – don’t distract them with non-essentials.
People are motivated by being part of a winning team, feeling that they contribute something important to that success, that they are good at what they do and that their contribution is recognised.
A caring boss with a failing team will have unhappy employees whilst a less-caring boss with a successful team will have happy employees.
Appraisals and formal reviews are no substitute for good management.  They may add something on top of good management.

If you’d like to learn more about helping your clients overcome the challenges of growth in SMEs then look at this website.

Taken from an original article on my www.nickbettes.co.uk website.

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