It’s no secret that when your employees perform well, your business reaps the benefits. This is the reason why it’s imperative for managers to monitor and evaluate employee performance at work. Project monitoring helps to control activities and keep projects on track. It ensures employees are working diligently to meet the expected results of the project. Successful monitoring can boost productivity and increase a company’s bottom line, so here are a few tips to help managers monitor the actions of their employees.
Watch and Observe Employees at Work
Managers can learn a great deal about their employees’ performance by watching them on the job. Spend some time each day observing employees’ interactions with one another as well as with clients or customers. This will tell you more about the employee’s performance than a couple or surveys. Consider shadowing your employees or conducting a desk ride to see exactly what your employee is doing well and where they could use improvement.
Schedule One-On-One Meetings
Conduct structured one-on-one meetings with your team members each week to discuss their progress on the project. To get the most out of the meeting, have a few questions prepared in advance. Be sure and ask for specific examples of what the employee has done to accomplish the goal. Follow the same format for each team member working on the project and make these meetings routine until the completion of the project.
Set Goals Together
Management by objectives, also known as MBO, is one of the most effective ways to evaluate the performance of employees. With MBO, the manager and the employee meet together to come up with a set of attainable goals for the project. Together, they set a deadline for when each goal should be completed. This gives the employee a clear idea of what is expected of them and their progress can easily be measured and reviewed by the manager.
Encourage Self-Monitoring Tools
Another great way to monitor employee progress is by empowering the employees to keep track of their own progress. They can measure progress through self-monitoring tools like checklists, activity logs, or project plans and keep track of whether or not they are meeting their goals and deadlines. The employee can then share that information with the manager for review.
Peer Appraisals
It can sometimes be difficult for managers to tell how productive an employee is when they are working on a team project. If the project as a whole looks great, they might not realize that one employee did all the work while the other did not contribute. Since an employee’s fellow workers tend to be more familiar with their co worker’s performance than anyone else, it can be helpful to utilize peer reviews or appraisals. With this technique, manager’s can evaluate an employee’s performance by asking for feedback from fellow employees.