04 Jan Create a performance improvement plan for your business!

Now that 2018 has rolled in, it’s time to start thinking differently! A plan is always a good idea when it comes to maintaining or improving your business and team of employees. It’s not always easy to see why your employees have performed the way they did! You may be asking, “Did I provide enough training?” Or, “Did I give enough clear communication and feedback?” Here are some ideal ways to start your year off right by creating a performance improvement plan. It will help you see more clearly and give you the tools you need to boost your employees’ performances quickly.

Number one: Create your performance improvement plan issue documents!

For those employees that you may have consistent concerns about, have your supervisors create performance issue documents for each of them! This is a useful way to track their job performances and gives the employees all the details and remind them of their responsibilities for their specific roles. Make sure when creating your performance improvement plan to use an established format for every employee, for consistency in your information.

Number two: Get your action plan!

Now that you know where your employees are at, create your plan of action for improvement. Talk to your employees and discuss what the concerns are and get feedback from them as well. From there, you can work through questions and concerns. To end it, revisit your employees’ job descriptions to keep them accountable and remind them of what is expected of them with this performance improvement plan. Create a monthly performance improvement plan to give to them and provide good feedback afterwards. If termination is possible because of certain complications, be sure to write that into your performance issue document!

Number three: Follow up with your employees!

This is the most important step to your performance improvement plan! Follow up with your employees after a little while to see how they have acted on the plan. Discuss setbacks and improvements, if needed. Make sure to keep this meeting motivational and encouraging. Many times, just giving an employee more time will make their work skyrocket.

Here is a great sample of what a performance improvement plan looks like and one you could tweak to use for your own business!

Number four: Get an EAP!

An employee assistance program is designed to help your employees walk through life challenges while greatly affecting their job performances. We at Thrive EAP have one of the most useful employee health improvement tools! Our team at Thrive comes alongside small businesses to help employers with employees’ personal issues. This way, you as an employer have somewhere to direct your employees if these issues may arise. Oftentimes, job performance issues are due to many different health issues, financial issues, or even family situations at home. It’s important to provide your team with a set of tools to help them resolve these things and create a healthy workplace.

Learn more about our services by clicking the ‘Product’ tab above! We would love to chat with you, while also having the chance to give you more resources to help your small business thrive!