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End of Year Performance Reviews in a COVID World

Everybody’s ready to call it a wrap with 2020. Yet, not all is lost this year. Your organization may still be able to carry out effective end-of-year performance reviews as a way to start a conversation about challenges still looming over next year.

In fact, performance reviews in 2020 are the perfect jumping-off point for discussing what is and isn’t working in the time of COVID. Your organization may need reviews more than ever this end-of-year to reset goals impacted by the pandemic and discuss what obstacles – personal or professional – are in the way of achieving them.

Let’s go over what successful EOY performance reviews can look like during the pandemic and how they can further manager-employee understanding and professional growth.

1. Back to the basics during the pandemic

Managers often see performance reviews as a means to give promotions or fire employees. However, their role is much broader.

This end-of-year, most organizations aren’t making any more big staff changes. Instead, performance reviews can be a channel to work out challenges, build manager-employee rapport and strengthen organizational values.

In this way, performance reviews are an opportunity to get back to the basics during the pandemic and identify your employees’ core purposes and goals.

2. Evaluate employees within a business-not-as-usual framework

This year is hardly business as usual. As you go to evaluate employee performance, it’s important to keep the pandemic framework in mind. A few pointers to review employees fairly include:

Analyzing employee performance from the entire year, including pre-pandemic.
Considering the employee’s adapted role and metrics during the pandemic.
Looking at personal or professional challenges in this adapted role, including remote work.

At LaSalle Network, for example, a recent performance review revealed that an employee named “John” was struggling to meet deadlines due to juggling full-time parenting and working. His manager empathized with his situation and adapted his schedule to help strike a better balance.

3. Highlight highs and lows with rewards and grace periods

This end-of-year, some organizations are opting for simplified performance reviews such as pass/fail. Others have ditched scales and percentages entirely for a more conversation-based review. Whether you decide to have standard assessments or adapted ones, it’s important to emphasize highs and lows.

A good performance review during the pandemic will reward employees for working hard under challenging conditions, as well as granting grace periods for those who weren’t able to overcome them. For each employee, you should discuss these highs and lows openly, so that you’re both on the same page for next year.

Capturing these highs and lows in your performance reviews will be important towards making sure your employees feel appreciated and setting clear expectations moving forward.

4. Remotely but not impersonally

Another aspect to consider for end-of-year performance reviews is the remote factor. Conversations can be tricky over video conferencing software because of the lack of cues such as body language, as well as possible connection issues. It’s hardly ideal when your employee doesn’t hear a comment for improvement because the audio cut out.

It’s essential that you put on the video feed for the conversation and try to create a comfortable atmosphere for open discussion. In fact, CEO of Know Your Team, Claire Lew argues that the first 10-15 minutes of the performance review should be dedicated to catching up. This can set the stage for greater reflection and takeaways for both the manager and the employee.

5. Following up for ongoing feedback

Ongoing feedback is key to keeping your employees engaged. Managers hate giving it and yet, doing so over the course of the year can ensure that you’re supporting employees’ professional development.

In a COVID world, ongoing feedback is also essential as organizations adapt to the changing situation. Your team may have to pivot once again, which means the goals you set during the end-of-year performance review season may need to be revised.

Ongoing feedback can resolve the challenges of a dynamic workplace by discussing areas of improvement all year round.

6. Getting started early for meaningful performance reviews

Meaningful performance reviews are possible but don’t wait until the last minute. You’ll have a better sense of how to evaluate your employees by starting early. Think ahead to next year and brush up on your performance management skills now.

At Enterprise Training Solutions, we offer courses to help you navigate performance reviews in the time of COVID. Specifically, we have expert-created instruction in:

Professional in Human Resources: Performance Management
Planning an Effective Performance Appraisal
Detecting and Dealing with Performance Problems
Keeping Top Performers Challenged
Creating a Plan for Performance Management

This November, take control of one area you can: performance reviews. Your organization will benefit from conversations that strengthen employee-manager rapport and company values moving into next year.

Even if assessment tools are naturally more lenient this year, performance review conversations may have a positive impact on your workforce next year.

Experience the proven, easy-to-use, and cost-effective benefits of online training by scheduling your free online training consultation today!

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6 Effective Strategies for Managing Remote Employees

You can start managing remote employees effectively by using a few different tactics and strategies

Employees regularly working at home has grown by 115% since 2005, resulting in 3.7 million employees (2.8% of the workforce) now working from home at least half the time.

These statistics come from Global Workplace Analytics, and they showcase the trend of companies allowing or encouraging employees to work remotely.

Government agencies are also riding the remote employee trend.

According to the United States Office of Personnel Management, the number of eligible teleworkers in the Federal Government has increased from 29% in 2012 to 46% in 2015.

So how do managers effectively manage remote employees?

As you might know (or have experienced), managing remote employees requires different tactics and strategies than what you commonly use to manage office workers.

For that reason, we have a video for you below that details ways to manage a virtual team effectively.

The main point of the video is this:

“The key to making those kinds of situations work [managing remote employees] is…clarity of what good performance looks like. The clearer you are on what good looks like, the easier it is to evaluate.”

You can hear all of the points made about managing a virtual team by watching the video below.

After that, we’ll give you 6 tips for better managing remote employees.

Best Practices for Managing Remote Employees

There are many things you can do as a manager to help your remote employees improve their productivity, stay connected to their team, and deliver great work on time.

Here are 6 best practices for managing remote employees:

Build Real Relationships with Your Employees

In general, if you want your employees to respect you and respond to your requests, then you have to establish rapport and build a genuine relationship with them.

This will be the foundation for working through both job-related and personal problems with employees.

Strong relationships also protect you from unwarranted condemnation from employees if you make a mistake.

And a strong relationship with your remote employees will make them more likely to motivate themselves and deliver what you ask of them because they’ll no longer just care about doing their work to get paid, they’ll want to do their work to please you, too.

Use Video as Often as Possible When Communicating Remotely

Similar to building solid relationships with your employees, video communication helps you connect on a more emotional level when conducting meetings remotely.

Since over half of human communication is nonverbal, you’ll need a better medium than email to deliver your message.

Video calls help you be more persuasive, but they also help you judge your employees’ reactions to tasks given, and help you understand your employees’ feelings about their jobs, and gives you insight into any issues your employees might be dealing with.

All those nuances are lost through text.

Video helps you maintain a strong relationship with your employees, and helps you detect and fix any problems quickly before they get worse.

Schedule Meetings That Accommodate Every Employees’ Time Zone

If you have quite a few remote workers, chances are they don’t all live in the same time zone, which presents a serious scheduling issue:

One or more of your employees will be meeting early or late in the day, or at some other inconvenient time to make the meeting work for everyone else.

Managing remote employees is all about making that faraway person still feel appreciated and part of your team.

To maintain that kind of relationship, you should try to schedule meetings that work for that one person or group of people who always sacrifice their time to meet someone else’s requirements.

This proves to your remote employees that you value their time and you’re willing to work in their best interest – which compels them to do the same for you.

Set Clear Expectations

As the video in our intro pointed out, the key to managing remote employees is “clarity of what good performance looks like.”

Remote employees have more freedom, which means they need more structure and clearer targets to stay on track.

Make sure you create individual development plan goals for every new and existing employee and regularly review those goals with your employees, especially the ones working remotely.

Furthermore, every employee should know their daily and weekly tasks and projects.

By making your expectations clear, and precisely defining your employees’ work requirements, you’ll avoid confusion and incomplete tasks.

Focus on Completed Tasks, Not Activities

One other expectation you should set with your remote employees (and yourself) is to focus on completed tasks (deliverables), not activities.

You can’t monitor your remote employees’ behavior, so you have to focus on the one thing you can monitor: what they produce.

Let them know that all you want is the correct finished product – which requires setting clear expectations – and that they can use any methods to get the job done in the way that works best for them.

This can actually increase employee engagement by allowing them the freedom to be creative and inventive. They may even create better work processes that they can share with other members of your team.

Encourage Continuous Learning

Building a culture of continuous learning is essential for agencies to continually improve their processes and develop skilled employees.

But remote employees usually can’t attend in-house training or instructor-led seminars – it’s often too expensive to fly them out for just a one or two-day event.

But the cost of eLearning changes that.

With eLearning, your remote employees can educate themselves on essential subjects and topics in their home office or hotel room.

This type of education is often superior to long-form training because it uses a method of education known as microlearning.

Microlearning uses quick, easy-to-consume lessons instead of extended learning sessions – resulting in learners absorbing the information faster and retaining it longer.

The easiest way to provide eLearning opportunities to your employees is to find a proven platform that teaches a multitude of courses across a range of subjects.

And since you’re a Government agency, it would be helpful if the platform you choose specializes in teaching and training Government employees on both the Federal and State level.

Where will you find such a platform?

Right here at Enterprise Training.

Take Care of Your Remote Employees’ Education with eLearning

We provide courses for remote employees teaching them how to communicate effectively when telecommuting and how to maximize their productivity.

But we also provide courses for all types of jobs they may be performing, from IT training for IT exam preparation to project management training for getting things done efficiently and on time.

Whatever you need to run a high-functioning agency and manage remote employees, we have it ready for you.

Experience the proven, easy-to-use, and cost-effective benefits of online training by scheduling your free online training consultation today!

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Maximize the Effectiveness of ELearning with These 5 Strategies

You can improve the effectiveness of eLearning in your agency by applying the right strategies.

Have you implemented an eLearning program in your agency but aren’t seeing the results you expected?

We understand how frustrating that can be.

You probably see all the obvious advantages eLearning offers your agency – low cost, easy to use, available on-demand, etc. – yet you still struggle with optimizing the program’s usage and adoption.

Why?

Because implementing a program alone isn’t enough.

You have to work with your employees and managers to set forth the right plans, policies, and procedures to improve the effectiveness of eLearning in your agency.

In today’s post, we’ll help you do just that.

We’ll give you 5 tips for making your eLearning program effective both for learning and productivity.

By the end, you’ll be armed with proven strategies for building a long-lasting eLearning program that delivers the results you’re looking for.

5 Tips to Improve the Effectiveness of ELearning

Create Individual Development Plan Goals

Individual development plan goals are part of a formal agreement between the employer and the employee regarding how the employee will grow within your organization.

These goals establish the expected results that your employees will accomplish over a set period of time.

One of your employees’ major goals should be the development of their skills and knowledge.

Once identified, you can help your employees put together a concrete learning plan that will teach them the information and abilities they require to reach their goals.

WIthout clear learning goals, your employees may jump from one resource to the next, educating themselves haphazardly, and never making any real progress.

That’s where managers come in to help employees align their skill gaps with the necessary courses and resources for achieving their objectives.

Use Microlearning

While long-form learning is critical for educating your employees about big and important subjects, microlearning is useful for most other subjects – and makes learning more productive.

According to Bersin by Deloitte’s infographic Meet the Modern Learner, The average employee only has time to devote 1% of their work week to professional development. That means only 24 minutes a week or 4.8 minutes a day can be allotted for training in a normal 40-hour work week.

Microlearning maximizes your employees’ retention by delivering bite-sized concepts in an easy-to-consume format – enhancing the effectiveness of eLearning.

Also, microlearning makes it easy for you to organize training within the context of the work your employees actually do.

For example, if one of your employees needs to brush up on microsoft network security, they can watch a short video and get back to work in a few minutes. The same is true if they need to read a short white paper or flip to a certain chapter in a book.

Giving your employees microlearning resources they can access and consume quickly will make your eLearning program more effective and engaging.

Increase Employee Engagement

According to Wikipedia, an engaged employee is a person who is fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work and who takes positive action to further the organization’s reputation and interests.

Engaged employees work harder without being asked. They stay late because they genuinely want to perform well for their department and agency. They don’t complain about playing catch-up on work because their coworker was out sick – they gladly shoulder the load.

The engaged employee is the person who lives and breathes your agency’s mission because they’ve made it their own.

By increasing employee engagement in your agency, you’ll make it more likely that your employees will take your eLearning initiative seriously, contribute to enhancing the program, and work hard to achieve their goals.

Cultivate a Culture of Continuous Learning

A culture of continuous learning means that all of your employees are teaching themselves and helping each other be better, achieve more, and advance their careers.

This type of culture will encourage your employees to optimize the effectiveness of your eLearning program and maximize their results.

Also, continuous learning is key for well-executed Government succession planning by making it easier for leadership and institutional knowledge to be passed on and absorbed by the employees filling the vacant positions within your agency.

Here are a few ways to create a culture of continuous learning:

Establish policies for ongoing training, supportive management, specific office hours dedicated to learning, etc.
Tell your employees about your goals to create a continuous learning culture and encourage them to adopt the values and principles of ongoing education.
Turn your managers into coaches and teach them how to help your employees solve problems, motivate themselves, and stay focused.
Align each employee’s goals with the goals of your organization to stay on track and work together for a common purpose.

Find a Platform that Delivers Everything Your Employees Need

If you don’t want to commit to the hassle of designing your own courses, the best thing you can do is find an eLearning platform that delivers the information you need.

There are plenty of eLearning platforms available, but very few that cater specifically to Government agencies.

Even fewer that provide a wide enough breadth of courses for every one of your employees to choose from.

If you want a platform that puts their Government customers first and will tailor an eLearning program to your organizational requirements…

We can help.

Maximize the Effectiveness of Your ELearning Program

With courses for every level of employee, from leadership training to technical IT exam preparation, Our eLearning platform will allow each of your employees to advance their skills and upgrade their knowledge at their own pace and in their own time.

Experience the proven, easy-to-use, and cost-effective benefits of online training by scheduling your free online training consultation today!

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How to Create a Culture of Continuous Learning in Your Agency

A culture of continuous learning will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your agency

How do you get the best out of your employees?

By creating a culture of continuous learning.

Your employees are the most valuable asset in your organization, and by giving them the tools and opportunity to sharpen their skills and knowledge, you’ll help your agency perform at its peak potential.

The private sector is already using this strategy to empower their companies.

Corporate spending on learning rose to 10% in 2015 according to Global Human Capital Trends 2016. These companies realized that they could maximize the efficiency of their businesses by giving their employees the ability to learn what they needed when they needed.

The same can happen in your agency.

We’ll show you what a culture of continuous learning is and how to cultivate one in your organization for smarter, better, and more dedicated employees.

What is a Continuous Learning Culture?

For individuals, continuous learning is the process of keeping up with ever-changing trends, insights, and tools for better performance and higher achievements in your job.

For organizations or agencies, continuous learning is the process of empowering and encouraging your employees to upgrade their skills and knowledge at their own pace while helping their fellow employees do the same.

A culture of continuous learning means that all of your team members are teaching themselves and helping each other be better, achieve more, and advance their careers.

The benefits of a continuous learning culture are that your employees may offer ideas that you never considered before, or implement strategies and tactics that you didn’t know existed.

Your agency will gain a considerable advantage over other departments because your employees will become more mature, confident, and intelligent as a result of continuous learning.

So, how do you create a continuous learning culture?

5 Ways to Create a Culture of Continuous Learning

There are plenty of things you can do to make learning a large part of your agency. We’ll give you 5 ways to create a continuous learning environment in your organization today.

Define Your Goals

Before you implement a training program for your employees, you need to know why you’re implementing a program in the first place.

What’s your goal for your agency?
What do you hope to achieve?
How do you hope to improve?
How much money are you willing to spend?

Create a broad vision for your organization that keeps you and your employees on track, while at the same time allowing your employees to follow their own path to personal and professional development.

Provide training for new tools, software, and work methods, along with training that matches your employees’ individual goals.

Which brings us to the next tip for creating a culture of continuous learning…

Define Your Employees’ Individual Goals

Individual development plan goals are especially important for continuous learning.

Without them, it’s difficult for individuals to stay on track, and it’s hard for you to hold your employees accountable.

When your employees know what they’re learning and why they’re learning it, they’re more likely to finish their education and apply what they’ve learned.

But beyond the “why” of their learning plan, you should help them create an action list so that they implement the things they’re learning effectively.

Get Your Employees Onboard

A shift in your agency culture is only possible if everyone is onboard. The first thing you have to do to implement a culture of continuous learning is to tell your employees what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

You need to get all your employees to adopt similar values and principles, the same as you would when trying to increase employee engagement, for example.

Make learning a top priority, and consider revising your mission statement or internal agency slogan or “Values” to include continuous learning as a core tenet of how you run your organization.

You and the rest of your managers should lead by example and demonstrate your own commitment to continuous learning while helping your employees improve their continuous learning plans.

But you should be much more than just a manager…

Turn Your Managers into Coaches

A culture of continuous learning is dependent on managers and employees being open and honest with one another about learning goals, challenges, and achievements.

You should discuss those 3 things with your employees on a regular basis.

Like a coach, you need to be in their corner, ready and willing to help them solve problems and overcome obstacles when necessary.

Regular check-ins can provide the “push” that employees need to succeed. It also lets them know that you genuinely care about them and what they’re doing to better themselves.

Plus, by regularly checking in, you can course correct employees who may be studying or focusing on the wrong things, or help employees shift their priorities to be more productive.

The most important thing you can do as a manager/coach is to give them ample resources for continuous learning.

Give Your Employees Learning Resources

A continuous learning culture relies on constant access to learning resources.

Some of your employees will prefer long-form, formal training, while others will prefer microlearning that’s self-directed.

Sometimes, instructor-led training (ILT) is unavoidable and necessary.

But most of the time, all your employees need is access to relevant information for their specific job roles and goals.

The ease of access and cost of ELearning makes online education the most budget-friendly and employee-friendly option for all types of learners.

With the right ELearning platform, you employees can watch videos, read books, and listen to audio recordings on-demand.

It allows them to learn at their own pace, on their own time, when they’re ready to learn – as opposed to being forced to learn alongside everyone else in a group training session.

But where will you find a central database of resources that cover everything from IT exam preparation to project management and conflict resolution?

Right here at Enterprise Training Solutions.

Experience the proven, easy-to-use, and cost-effective benefits of online training by scheduling your free online training consultation today!

Schedule Free Consultation

How to Increase Employee Engagement: 7 Successful Strategies

You can increase employee engagement with the right ideas and strategies

Do you want a happier, more committed and hardworking staff?

Then you need to increase employee engagement.

Unfortunately, employee engagement is scarce, both in the U.S. and around the world.

Gallup has been tracking employee engagement in the U.S. since 2000, and today, only 32% of employees are “engaged” in their workplace.

The number of engaged employees is even worse globally. Only 13% of employees around the world are considered “engaged,” according to another report from Gallup.

This means that most of the people in your agency aren’t committed to your mission, aren’t enthusiastic about the work they do, and aren’t motivated to participate in improving your workplace beyond the bare minimum work requirements.

But what is “employee engagement?” What motivates employees to become engaged? How can you increase employee engagement?

We’ll answer all these questions by giving you practical tips on creating an environment, setting policies, and working with your team for optimal employee engagement.

What is Employee Engagement?

Before you can increase employee engagement, you have to know what engagement means.

The Wikipedia definition of an engaged employee is:

A person who is fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work and who takes positive action to further the organization’s reputation and interests.

An employee who is emotionally invested in your agency and its goals can be considered “engaged.”

The most important part of Wikipedia’s definition of employee engagement is “action to further the organization’s reputation and interests.”

Engaged employees are the best employees. But what drives employees to become engaged and invested in their organization?

What Motivates Engaged Employees?

Money engages employees to show up for work and do their jobs…

But money doesn’t help employees live up to the definition of “employee engagement.”

Instead of speculating on what does create employee engagement, we can go straight to the inventor of the term employee engagement, William A. Kahn.

In his seminal paper, “Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work,” Kahn recognized 3 major factors that influence how much of themselves an employee is willing to give to their workplace.

Here are the 3 factors:

Psychological meaningfulness
Psychological safety
Availability

Psychological meaningfulness refers to employees feeling like what they do at work has purpose – that through their efforts they made a meaningful difference.

Psychological safety refers to employees feeling valued, trusted, accepted, respected, and safe within their work environment.

Availability refers to employees feeling secure and self-confident in their workplace relationships and in their ability and competency in performing their jobs.

This is all heavy-duty psychological stuff.

But it’s not all that difficult to foster these mental and emotional states in your employees.

You just need to know what to do.

Employee Engagement Ideas

We’ll show you how to effectively increase employee engagement and make your staff feel safe, confident, and important by offering a few ideas for you to test in your workplace.

Distribute Surveys and Apply the Answers

If you want to know how to increase employee engagement, you need to know what your employees currently think about you and your organization.

If you want to know what they think about your organization, ask them.

A good way to ask them (and get honest answers) is to distribute surveys and questionnaires.

But the survey shouldn’t include multiple choice or yes/no questions.

You should ask open-ended questions that allow your employees to fully express themselves, comment on real issues, and suggest original ideas for improvement and innovation.

Then, hold a meeting, formal or informal, and discuss the answers to the questions.

Afterward, implement any workplace changes you decided were necessary. Implementing ideas your employees suggested is one major way you can foster “psychological meaningfulness.”

Give Constant Feedback

Employee surveys are a good way to understand how your employees think and feel.

When it comes to their work performance, however, you’ll probably know more than they do about how well they’re doing at their jobs.

And you need to tell them if they’re doing a good or bad job right when you spot good or bad behavior. Don’t wait for annual reviews if you want real-time improvement.

The funny thing about giving feedback is that employees desperately want it and managers absolutely hate it, according to research conducted by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman.

All the more reason to “eat that frog” right away, instead of allowing employees to continue developing bad habits or toiling diligently without being given the pat on the back they deserve.

Let your employees know that you’ll be giving regular, daily feedback, and that you’re doing it because you genuinely want everyone, including yourself, to improve within the agency.

Allow Your Employees to Offer Their Opinions and Ideas

While surveys are great for allowing employees to express themselves formally, you should also encourage them to offer their opinions and ideas to you regularly.

One, because this fosters their “psychological safety” and “availability.”

Two, because they may have great ideas you would’ve missed if you hadn’t encouraged them to speak up.

Develop an open-door policy to foster a safe, inclusive environment for open communication.

Throw Employee Parties

What’s better than giving your employees a pat on the back?

Throwing them a party.

Picnics, catered lunches, and team building afternoons can infuse your workplace with life, laughter, and loyalty.

Encourage fun at your workplace in general, and keep the mood light and friendly. Your employees will be happier, more productive, and of course, more engaged.

Encourage Health and Wellness

Researchers from the Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO), Brigham Young University, and the Center for Health Research at Healthways found that healthy eating habits result in more productive employees.

The study was published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Here are the results for the organizations who implemented wellness programs:

Absenteeism was 27% less in healthy-eating employees as compared to those who didn’t eat healthy and exercise.
Employees who ate healthy throughout the day were 25% more likely to have higher job performance.
Employees who ate 5 or more servings of fruit and vegetables on four or more days in the past week were 20% more likely to have higher job performance.
And employees who exercised for 30 or more minutes on 3 or more days a week were 15% more likely to have higher job performance.

If you want to reap the productivity benefits of healthy living in your agency, then offer healthy snack foods in the office, promote exercise, and/or implement a wellness program.

Rally Your Employees Around Your Agency’s Mission

Your employees want to feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves (psychological meaningfulness).

How do you inspire such a feeling?

Well, as Simon Sinek would say, by rallying your organization around your big “why.”

Your mission statement, your agency’s culture, your belief in what you’re accomplishing in the world should be understood and loved by everyone in your organization.

Find that, and your employees will find meaning.

Teach the Way Your Employees Like to Learn

Your employees don’t all learn in the same way.

You shouldn’t treat them as if they do.

Creating learning alternatives, finding a happy medium between microlearning vs. long-form learning, and considering the cost of eLearning can help you create individual development plan goals that cultivate the skills, knowledge, and attributes your employees need to succeed and grow within your agency.

Encouraging them to upgrade their skills and providing the resources they need to improve in their work will tell them you’re working for their best interests – which will certainly increase employee engagement.

If you want to give your employees the freedom to learn at their own pace without breaking your budget, we can help.

Experience the proven, easy-to-use, and cost-effective benefits of online training by scheduling your free online training consultation today!

Schedule Free Consultation