WHEN I became a director a year or so ago,no sooner had the ink dried on various incomprehensible bits of paper than my new business partner said, “Right, you can do all the staff stuff.”
The current task I have set myself is staff appraisals. We had a staff meeting to discuss them: whether they wanted them and whether people had any previous experiences.
My own sole experience of appraisals was as an employee where I am now working. I sat in a consulting room at my designated time with the then boss and had a fairly brief man to man chat that went something like this:
Me: “Yes.”
Boss: “Good.
We’re pretty happy with you, I think.”
Me: “Oh, good.”
Boss: “You know we can’t pay you any more really.”
Brief silence
Me: “Oh…”
Small talk for a few seconds and exit.
In a nutshell,that was a pretty fair and reasonable appraisal session, and very honest and accurate, but I think today’s employees want a bit more detail and I would hope we can manage something a bit more interesting.
Open discussion
I have consulted a few books on the subject and have also come up with some ideas of my own. One common point is to keep it separate from issues of pay. I would hope this would make it a more open discussion and more likely for employees to pass on concerns they have in general about their job and to air any criticisms of the management/owners.
Ideally, practice owners should also be appraised and some people advocate appraisals for employers, but in a small business this could be a bit difficult. One way round this is to use another widely recommended tool: the pre-appraisal self-appraisal form completed by the employees.
We have done this and I have found reading them fascinating. I included some questions designed to elicit criticism of the owners from the staff, but so far they have been quite positive.
A note of caution though: lack of criticism of the regime is either a sign of a very happy populace or a very unhappy but scared one. Compare, for example, levels of overt public political protest in France,Denmark and China. The French public are constantly protesting, but the Chinese and Danes hardly ever. Why is this? Why the lack of protest in two countries as different as Denmark and China?
Several surveys, including a large one conducted recently by the University of Leicester, has found Denmark to be the happiest and most contented nation in the world. So the Danes don’t protest much because they are happy and have not got much to protest about.
The French are not quite as happy as the Danes, but live in a reasonably happy and prosperous nation but are free to (and habitually do) protest, strike, riot, blockade, etc. The Chinese hardly ever protest, not because they are happy like the Danes, but because they are too scared of the state they wish to protest about to do so, unlike the French.
If your staff appear contented and don’t complain too much,are they like the Danes or the Chinese? To try and work it out is a tricky task. The French,however, are obvious.
A practice owner may think he or she is the prime minister of Denmark, but really is the leader of China! And any practice owner who identifies with the French PM and finds the populace of the practice continually revolting, so to speak, the best of luck to you!
But I digress. I have had little criticism yet from the pre-appraisal forms but some very useful feedback. I made the first question, “Do you want more/less pay and more/less holiday? Please delete as appropriate.” I thought best to just get it out of the way.
The last question was, “If you had to spend £10,000 on the practice, what would you do? If you had to save the practice £10,000 this year, what would you do?” This has generated some interesting ideas and also, I hope, made them think about the possibility of cutbacks during the recession, or are they post-recession cutbacks.
(Is anyone else confused because the economists tell us the recession is over but then the politicians tell us that the cutbacks to pay the debts back are going to be worse than the recession. Anyway, our wholesaler told me today over lunch that his company had seen a marked dip in trade and individual practice trading from the end of 2009 to March 2010, but things are definitely on the up now.)
Other appraisal questions suggested to me by other business owners have been: “If you had to sack one member of staff, who would it be?” and “How much do you think the business spends a month?”
I would have put the latter one in if I had: (a) thought of it, and (b) could calculate the answer without guaranteeing myself cold sweats and sleepless nights with that figure flashing up in front of my closed eyelids every time I nodded off.
Rewarding
Other questions I put on the form included ones about the best/worst aspects of the job, what you do best/less well, any further training, etc.
These have been rewarding to read the answers to and I have been pleasantly surprised by what people enjoy doing, and the potential we have for their and the practice’s development with the people we already have.
I have yet to actually do the appraisals and one topic of discussion has been who should do them or be in the room. Everyone rejected the idea of two “managers” to one employee, as they would feel intimidated. Another idea was to have one employer and an independent third party, but that seemed to be becoming too legalistic and formal.
So we have decided to have a one-one with just the employee and me, but with the option that each person can bring someone in with them if they want to. I am tempted to have some sort of black-box recorder in with me as well though!
Any tips or points of discussion on this slightly thorny topic gratefully received from appraisers and appraisees on garethcross@hotmail.com.I would like to hear from both sides and then could put together some ideas in a future column.
After I have done the appraisals I wonder if I’ll be humming La Marseillaise, Derer et yndigt land or The March of the Volunteers?
