Performance Reviews
Performance Reviews
I believe that performance reviews are a terrific opportunity to discuss, with the employee, what is necessary for the employee to do to become better at what they do and open up more opportunities for them in the Company. Further I believe, that for most dealerships this a missed opportunity. Most dealerships don’t do annual performance reviews. In my thirteen years working at two dealerships I never had a performance review. One of my bosses, when I asked him for a review, told me he didn’t believe in them. He asked me “did you get a raise, did you get more money,” I said yes, and he said “well that is your performance review.” Now think about that. This was a man in his sixties, and experienced business executive, who didn’t believe in evaluating an employee’s performance. You have to ask yourself what is going on don’t you?
Perhaps we should consider Patrick Lencioni and his book “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job.” (if you haven’t read it, you should) The three signs are Anonymity, Irrelevance, and “Immeasureability” – (there is no such word). The key sign in this discussion is immeasureability. The individual employee does not know how to measure their performance. Many of you will conclude, like my boss, that it is not that important. I believe it is crucial. People want to please other people. It is human nature. People want to do a good job. BUT someone has to tell that what doing a good job looks like. And MOST do not tell them.
The Performance Review is a perfect opportunity to deal with everything and anything that the employee and the Company wants to talk about. The LWS job function skills assessment provides an objective review of the employee skills and knowledge. What better platform than to have a discussion about how the employee can improve themselves and make them more valuable as a person and as an employee. In my consulting life, and also in some classrooms, I used to use a device I called “Five Things.” Five things that are the most significant in the following categories; to improve operations, that are a pain to do, to make your job better. I start most of the performance reviews I am involved with those five things subjects. Then we talk about them. Think about that list. It turns out that there were a lot of “things” that were on all three lists. The employee and I agreed with what needed to be done to fix those that were on all three lists. That is really positive. It helps the employee and it helps the company. That is the goal of a performance review.
Start with the employee completing the assessment that matches their job. Sit down and talk about it. How did they do? Was that what they expected? Review the classes that we recommend for that skill level. Then conduct a Five Things review. Both you and the employee will feel a lot better about each other, about the performance of the employee and your caring as the leader in the department for that employee. Is there anything wrong with any of that? I didn’t think so.
The choice is yours.
The time is now.