Sometimes this
practice—also known as flying by the seat of your
pants—works. For a brief period, the organization might
soar with the eagles. More often, it never gets high
enough to see anything but tail feathers before coming to
a humiliating halt.
With so much knowledge in
the workplace about the best way to get somewhere, why
does anyone want to fly by the seat of his pants? Yes,
sustained success takes hard work and is not for sissies,
but it provides long-term gratification. Unlike getting
nowhere fast, which provides short-term excitement but
little else.
Aberdeen Group, which
provides organizations with facts that make a difference,
has studied top organizations and their practices. Its
researchers have discovered that, no matter the type of
organization, the best ones have these things in common:
•
They use assessments with more employees than do other
organizations.
• They use assessments more frequently than do other
organizations.
• They use assessments more consistently than do other
organizations.
Aberdeen calls these
organizations Best in Class, and discovered that they are
more than three times likely to have a clear process of
assessing new employees during their first year than do
"Laggards"—Aberdeen's name for organizations that trail
behind the best in important measures of how the
organization is doing. Also, Best in Class companies are
twice as likely to assess workers who have stayed with a
company longer than a year.
The numbers show that
assessments succeed because workers who have bought into
performance expectations, as well as their company's plans
for development, have a strong connection to their
companies. Simply put, they are engaged.
Let's look at each of the
three uses of assessments listed above to determine what
each means.
• Using assessments
with more employees. Some organizations
start out slowly with assessments. They might use them
only with executives, for example. Perhaps they are trying
to develop a succession plan, or build a team for a
project. They may use them only when recruiting and hiring
new workers. They may use them only when they have a
problem they want to solve. Research shows that
best-in-class companies use assessments with all
employees.
The march toward progress and growth begins with a single
step, but this broad use of assessments gives every worker
the message that all roles are important and every worker
must meet a standard. This is an important message in an
economy when more productivity is required from each
person.
• Using assessments
more frequently. Every worker everywhere
likely recognizes the performance evaluation model. These
glancing blows at how an employee is performing occur
maybe once a year—if a worker is lucky—and often make both
the manager and the employee uncomfortable. Better than
nothing, yes. But they could be so much better! Instead of
annual performance reviews, think of coaching sessions
that occur daily, weekly or monthly, depending on the team
member's needs.
Why not use an assessment to help determine which workers
are the right ones for a team, depending on their needs
and competencies? That is a way of using reviews in a
positive way, to choose the right employee for the role,
instead of a negative way. Or how about using assessments
for retraining workers when changes in the organizations
occur? Best-in-class organizations fill in the blanks,
using assessments when they need them. This is a key
element of training a workforce to be first-class.
• Using assessments
consistently. When people say they don't
like surprises, they generally mean that they don't like
unpleasant surprises—like those that inconsistency brings.
Such surprises include not telling workers how they are
evaluated and chosen for leadership roles, what has to
happen before their salaries increase, or not informing
employees how they can be players on an important team.
Employees need to know how things are done at their
workplaces so they can play a part in exciting company
changes, perhaps even volunteering for positions that no
one else wants, or seeking retraining if necessary.
Workers will buy into the way their employer does things
if they get the chance to grow at their jobs and become
the leaders. Responsible executives can avoid springing
unpleasant surprises by being even-handed, and assessments
help by providing objective guidance throughout the
employee life cycle.
Organizations often need to
move fast, but just as important is knowing the goal and
having a clear idea of how to achieve it. Best in class
operators are unfazed when they have to stop along the way
to make adjustments in the pace. They know exactly what is
working right and what requires repair and maintenance.
Best in class organizations
have a schedule for getting to their destination, and
usually arrive right on time.