Effective performance management involves setting specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely (SMART) goals. This approach replaces subjective evaluation with objective observation, allowing managers to easily evaluate employee performance and avoid legal repercussions. SMART goals are critical to an effective manager’s job.
Choosing the most effective performance management can be daunting but rewarding. A manager’s job is not only to administer disciplinary action to an underperforming employee, but also to devise ways to recognize an employee who has achieved significant accomplishments and contributions to the team. When selecting an effective performance management system, the prudent manager will want to ensure that the system adheres to the idea of setting specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely (SMART) goals.
When goals incorporate these five tangible elements, they become concrete and objective. They let the employee know what he needs to do to meet or exceed the standards. This is a critical and sometimes overlooked aspect of an effective manager’s job. To be effective, managers must try to avoid any slow reliance on subjective evaluation from their managerial arsenal and replace it by establishing objective and easily understood criteria. When year-end reviews roll in, it’s easy to indicate whether an employee has met, missed, or exceeded their goals.
It may be helpful to look at SMART goals in an example of effective performance management. Let’s say you’re running a call center and want to measure the call quality of your employees. You could devise a system where you note, among other things, that you will listen to a certain number of calls per week, that every call taken by the employee must conform to a certain flow and structure, that tone of voice will be monitored as well as the accuracy of answers and research. By evaluating each of these components or simply by checking whether or not they have been performed, the manager has used an intelligent and SMART management system because it has replaced subjective consideration with objective observation.
Additionally, there are more obvious standards to apply, such as the amount of employee phone time and whether they were logged into the system during their allotted time. In this way, a manager can easily and systematically evaluate the performance of his employees. When the time comes to identify poor performers and reward the best performers, the manager is able to produce evidence to support his assessment.
Conversely, a performance management system lacking SMART goals can endanger the manager’s credibility, question his ability to make honest and objective assessments, and perhaps result in serious human resources or legal repercussions. If a manager allows his or her employees’ goals and expectations to fluctuate or vary, the employee has the right to challenge any negative assessment made of them. Consequently, any effective performance management will invariably include SMART goals
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