Are your management skills up to the task of building a top-notch, competitive portable sanitation company? Do you rate employee performance fairly and objectively? Are the lines of communication open between employees and their boss?
When employees fail to accomplish objectives, it is easy to look at them as the problem; however, there is often enough blame to go around. Let’s take a closer look at what owners or managers can do to create positive change, and make their employees and their businesses more successful.
Performance Appraisal Done Right
One of the most important roles of a manager is to evaluate employee performance. This is easy to confuse with criticizing employee performance. However, there is a distinct difference. Criticism tends to be based on subjective measures. It looks at values such as hustle, determination, and friendliness … things that can be perceived, but not measured.
Evaluation, on the other hand, looks at measurable outcomes such as how many days per month an employee comes to work on time, how many customers are served in a day, how many miles are driven, how daily performance is rated based on specific criteria and how performance changes over time.
The simplest way to evaluate employee performance is to create a list of measurable outcomes for employees and to set long-term goals. A list of objectives can be refined into a system for fairly evaluating and rewarding employees. This requires the manager to keep careful records by tracking objective data over time to determine the actual performance.
To measure a job in real terms, look at what standards need to be measured. For service drivers, you might collect data on such things as the number of miles driven (compared to actual route miles), gallons of waste pumped and dumped, time taken to prepare each morning, number of units serviced per day and average time taken to complete a route.
To track performance issues that can’t be easily measured, such as cleanliness or quality of work, it is best to create a rating scale. Rating scales help make your evaluations more consistent and help employees develop a better understanding of what are considered adequate or excellent standards.
Take, for example, a well-cleaned restroom. Use a scale from 1 to 5, with one being a perfectly cleaned unit and five being a restroom that wasn’t pumped or cleaned at all. It’s pretty easy for most people to rate the work and understand the score.
Typically, a review will also cover basic work habits, such as care for equipment, appearance, attendance and tardiness.
Conduct Random Spot Checks
While managers can’t follow employees throughout the day, random spot checks can accomplish the same thing by averaging scores over time. Averaging multiple scores is important. Since everyone can have a bad day or make a mistake, a single spot check should not be grounds for disciplinary action.
Once you’ve collected performance information for several months, determine a positive approach for using it to improve work habits and customer service in a fair performance appraisal.
Every portable sanitation business will have star employees. They are valuable to your business and should be paid accordingly. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that all your employees should be working at the same pace set by your stars. Goals that are realistic for some are unreachable by others. Try to encourage all your employees, including your stars, to set goals for improvement.
With fair and objective performance standards, you’ll be able to get to the heart of problems much quicker and address them in a productive manner.
Managers need to remember that employees decide how much of themselves to invest in the success of the business. The more employees invest, the faster your business will grow.
Mike Cooper is chief operating officer for PolyJohn Enterprises Corp., Whiting, Ind.
