The task of performance management can be streamlined to a large extent with online and offline software. Recently four software programs have been introduced that can serve as excellent performance management tools.

Employers or managers can keep track of the employee performance with Lifetick Coach. It is intended for the coaches or managers to keep an eye on their improvement and daily work. The software is built with a feature of messaging between the mentor and mentee and has also group messaging option. Aside from other programs, Lifetick Coach offers the employees with the option of setting up goals and assigning works to reach their desired goals quickly. The mentors have complete visibility of the progress of the employees working under them.

Another program for performance management is CreateSmartGoals, which has been integrated with advanced goal setting options. Managers have the option of setting up goals either for the entire organization or for a specific department. The progresses of employees are observed through periodic journals. The goal status can also be designated and percentage of goal completed can be noted.

Goalscape is yet another software for performance management. As of now, this has been tagged as the ultimate tool for managing performance. The visual display of the program involves concentric circles with the middle most or the smallest inner circle as the main goal of the organization. All the sub- goals are situated around the main goal of the company. The space of each sub-goal can be adjusted according to the importance given to each of them. You have the option of sharing the infographic of Goalscape with as many collaborators you want. You can also share to with your employees. You have the option of attaching noted ad necessary documents with every sub-goal.

Finally the program WorkSimple gives the employees the option of checking their own progress. The progress reports are visible to the managers or to the entire company. The program has the feature of compiling the data to from the reports and also offers notices to employees for self-evaluation.

With so many options to choose from, my readers will surely go to the respective link for further details.

Consider a few thoughts to get you started with sales compensation plans in the right direction.

Reward your stars and they’ll reward you

Don’t be stingy with the rewards you give out. Create a plan that recognizes the best performers in your group and reward them for being outstanding in their work. Let’s say your staff has a quota of $100,000 per month to fulfill and most of your staff should be outperforming that figure by 5 to 10% if they are good sellers. But there will be those that rake in $175,000 in sales each month while others will get in $150,000 each month. Incentivize performance in tiers then, with a slight reward available for outperforming the standard sales quota by up to 10% with greater rewards for greater performance. Obviously, those getting $150,000 will not get as much by way of reward as the person selling $175,000 each month. Creating these reward tiers will entice those top performers to at least maintain if not improve on their performance.

Hold a sales contest

Keeping aside a portion of sales aside each month for a sales contest is a great idea. You could either offer cash bonuses and gifts or you could give something in kind. A rep winning tickets to a movie or a concert or even a gift certificate to a popular store makes a big difference to morale among the sales force. They end up feeling good about the business that they are working for and they feel good about the job that they are doing. And this reflects in their performance. I have often observed that sales representatives stick longer with companies that hold sales contests and incentivize sales a lot.

It just takes a while to change the whole scenario only if we could get to the core where the problem actually lies, people commit to themselves to attain a particular target and when it all fails – uncertainty creeps in boosting lower self-confidence. The low self-confidence gives inferiority complex that in turn leads to degradation in the work quality, disability to take the right and logical decisions and low motivation. Here are some of the things or methods that you can apply in your organization to re-build the morale of your employees or even top management people:

• Start with holding company meetings where you separate the company employees that have been successful in their work. Single them out so the other employees know that successful people are surround them. This helps to build their own confidence and move towards achieving their goals of life.
• Always be willing to accept the management’s mistake and talk to upper management and employees to get together and fix the problem. Most of the times we see that people are willing to join smaller companies to show the impact of their joining these small companies. When the contribution of an individual really matters to the employees, leaders should acknowledge their efforts and reward them in terms of monetary benefits or other similar benefits.
• Talk to each of your employees working in the company whether what they feel needs to be changed, ask them steps to get the company back on track.
• Let your employees know about new sales policy or compliments given by the client, this helps them to become more confident and proud of their accomplishments even without someone telling other company officials about their achievements.
• Know the strengths and weaknesses of your employees and get them on to success tracks. Before giving any task to any employees it is important to know whether if they would really be able to achieve those tasks.
• Give compliments to your employees in front of their clients, give them confidence to achieve even more by making them feel better about the work they are doing.
• Promote the talent that is already there in the company, let the company clients know that company promotes the employees that are excellent in their work.
• Let your company people know when the management has implementation a suggestion sent in by one of its employees, this helps them to build confidence and also help value the company.
• Encourage the company people to take risks and reward the people who innovate different ideas and strategies for the betterment of the organization.

Rebuilding the morale of the company would surely take some time to show the actual improvements but it will surely be a successful step in bringing back their confidence levels.

• The Grading system

  The grading system ensures that each job is graded properly from the simple rank order starting from the highest to the lowest one. The committee that comprises of management and also the employee representatives decides this. The committee first compares the 2 jobs to grade the important one and then compare other job with the first two jobs. This continues till the time all the jobs have been done assessing and ranking.

• The factor comparison method

  In these methods the evaluators select the key position jobs as the standard jobs for evaluation. These jobs are well known and established in the community. These jobs represents the cross section of all the evaluated jobs that starts from lowest to highest level in the company, the selection would consist of 25 odd jobs. The key factors required in these key jobs are the skill and physical requirements, mental requirements, responsiveness and a good amount of working conditions. After deciding on the key jobs and the policies, the committee starts ranking the key jobs. They decide on the base rate of the job and then rate it among the five criteria we discussed.

• The classification method

  The evaluators identify the common elements like the skills in processes, the knowledge, the responsibility, etc. that goes well with the desired goal and the type of jobs for example clerical jobs, sales job and more. These are then ranked according to the organization’s important priorities.

• The point method

  The important areas are identified and the job break down is done and the points are given according to the criteria. Based on the importance of each of the criteria, the points are summed and the jobs identified with same points totaled and put in pay grades.

Any of the above human resource pay structure can be used for the job assessment of the organization. Once the job evaluation is done in an organization, it becomes the center point for improving the pay structure of the organization.

• Make your work environment a more pleasurable experience to work in, offer free snacks and coffee with a good relaxing and entertaining area with Television and games on the computer. Your working facility should not bore your employees of anything. Provide a clean and neat environment to your employees by providing them with good hygiene facilities.
• Explain your employees the importance of the work they are doing, help them realize the value of the work they are doing. Always thank your employees for the good work they are doing. Tell them the ways they can improve on their work, help them understand the processes more clearly. Develop a desire in them to learn new things and how to face the challenges at work.
• Appreciate your employees in front of everyone for the good work done. A pat on back is always welcome from employees who are hard working. Take opportunity to always spell out good work in front of other employees or during meetings or announcements.
• It’s obvious, that employees are working to earn a living and pay their bills. There are just a few of them who are working for emotional benefit at work. Reward your hard working employees with monetary gains and benefits. Make monetary benefits, rewards and perks as a part of the monthly routine. You will see in no time, your employees are more than motivated to work harder.
• Take notice of the difficulties your workers are facing at work. It is very important that your employees communicate their frustrations or work assignments with colleagues in the office. Try to make time to meet all the employees individually at least once in a month and help them speak out their emotional quotients. Let your employees express honest answers and be responsive in helping them.

Its highly important that your employees feel happy about the work they are doing and are highly encouraged to achieve the objectives at work. The motivation in the workplace helps employees give their best productivity power.

The best things you can do in such kind of situations is to step one foot at a time and be mindful about each of our steps but one may argue what if the step itself doesn’t seem to move, these are basically our mental blocks which we form in our developing years that stops us from doing any particular activity. Our mind acts like a block of ice, very adamant to move or even melt a little for the good cause. Here are some few points, which will help you take easy steps towards achieving your targets:

• Take Small steps

  The smaller the step you take, more mindful you become and hence you are better at managing your steps which will lead you to the successful road ahead. You don’t need to take some major steps to win success over your failures, the important criteria here is to keep moving forward even if it means moving at a snail’s pace. But some might have bigger doubts, what if they are unsure of taking the small step (the answer to this lies in the next point).

• Consider your step

  There may be tasks or situations in which you don’t want to step forward, there might be varied reasons for which you don’t have courage to take up those steps or you just mentally anticipate that you would face failure or would be uncomfortable doing it.

Generally, becoming self aware about our goals, our functions, our responsibilities, our endeavors are the basic requirements that fulfills our mind goals. It’s our ability to take up new things that helps you become self awareness about yourself and your professional needs. Self awareness is one of the important factors that should be prevalent in the employees working in any organization.

Team cohesiveness promotes stronger communication amongst the team players and brings all the common characteristics of team together. The team cohesiveness is based on mutual reliance which helps the group players stay informed about the developments happening in the team and gets them the clear understanding of the group’s goals. Team cohesiveness brings around developmental changes in raw teams and let the teams use the word “WE” instead of “I”, which brings the teams together. There are 2 forces, which bind the members of the team together; they are positive and negative forces. Here are some of the factors that influences team cohesiveness, which helps individuals gel well with each other:

• The members of the team are of same age, gender and share equal values, etc.
• The success factor that each individual in the team shares and the tasks accomplished for the betterment of the team.
• The external threats faced from other competitive companies or individuals, they are bound together with the common objectives and fight against the danger being caused to their processes.

A team is said to be highly cohesive when there are increased levels of motivation amongst the team players to participate together in the team activities in accordance with the social norms that are agreed upon by the team.

Organizations held the workshops with the only aim of developing teams, learning to work together, share their tips and tricks and also exchange the process ideas. Getting team work done from their employees are one of the biggest challenges for managers in any organization as each individual’s thinking capabilities are different and their working processes are different. Every employee working in an organization urges to get a bigger and better position in the organization but its only when their efforts are not recognized do they feel the urge to social loaf, these are a particular group of employees named as social loafers, they believe in giving less effort to the organizational functions or needs. Even when social loafers are working in team, they might not feel any urge to work as team and give their efforts in achieving organizational goals. Social loafing normally occurs in teams where there are more members, each of them give lesser efforts than what they usually might have done as an individual. Each employee feels no need to work at their optimum best, as others are there to take care of their work and also some may social loaf due to lack of confidence to tackle the problems, fear of being recognized if the task is not done properly, some people are just introvert they don’t like to take up challenges or face anyone, they are grooved to their work always and don’t like to either give any positive support or response to other people in the team.

A team is said to be successful only if it is able to complete their objectives and fulfill the obligations as a team, the teams justifies their existence only when it is capable of adding value to its numbers in the sense it should be giving more output than what is actually expected of them. All the employees expect to cut short their work and live a high life like their bosses, taking up the responsibility and determined attitude to complete a particular task are what the real teams are made of, anyone would like to sit back and relax and expect things to happen – its only human nature.

Sometimes employees feel ignored when their efforts and hard work are not recognized, they feel that their contribution is not properly evaluated and thus they don’t feel an urge to give their continuous efforts to the team. Companies cannot keep an eye on each and every individual and whoever comes out as a winner or an achiever, they reward them. Employees should be made more aware of their responsibilities and define individual tasks in processes or as a team then it would be better to evaluate their performance looking at their individual outputs. Team is definitely a one-man-ship but not all the employees take it otherwise, so its company’s responsibilities to bifurcate the work for each employee and select a common leader who will guide the team.

Organizational bigger management system has the power to make smart people do dumb and stupid things for which they feel really proud of. The people working in organizations become way too moralistic of their values in the sense, that they follow their superior’s misguided orders for the benefit of some reward in return. The work culture and system of an organization determines how an individual behaves and works for achieving his common goals and so they blindly follow the guidelines given without having any urge to argue if they feel something is going wrong and as a result the whole organization suffers. Some of the decisions taken are wisely supervised but play havoc when executed. There is one particular episode I am particularly reminded of, I read somewhere some months back: it was the research done by Sally Baron, as to why U.S. defense department is spending billions of dollars in creating custom technologies when other similar types of products works the same and that too for a lesser money. The demand for, off the shelf products is not less nor the products are new to the markets, it was in the year 1949, when the president Truman’s Advisory board urged the air force authorities to make use of commercial products, the U.S secretary of defense – William Perry was an adamant supporter of innovative new technologies available and so urged that custom hardware and software systems made sense especially because of the computer revolution happening all over the world and so they still went on to spend billions of dollars where the off the shelf solutions were regarded as inferior.

Since that time, there has been lots of wastage of money on custom technologies; Baron uncovered the cases in which off the shelf products were really beneficial and economically viable. This is a case of real stupidity, how can the officials waste so much of tax payer’s money, is there some fault in the system? Often we see organizations doing utterly stupid things, which wastes lots of their own money and fail to use money in the processes where it’s really necessary. Some people with authority are just habituated to spend money and get expensive items which could have been well balanced with the products costing even less amount. I get so aggressive and angry when I read about such disastrous, unauthorized, unregulated usage of public money but after all Pentagon is much like any other organizations and it is working for the benefit of its citizens in the country, so somewhere it goes on to satisfy our hearts that the use of money was for own benefit, but there could have been a better usage of money.

The people working in the organizations at higher managerial levels needs to understand the actual needs of the people working in an organization and not just spend money, only because the organization is capable of spending that amount of money. It’s only when these people understand how to spend money that the reward systems change, that the dysfunctions happening over the place will vanish.

An organization processes and the work culture differ depending on their business frameworks, some of the organizational models on which organizations operate on are:

• Autocratic model
  The organization is run by a managerial authority, all the employees working in an organization are obedient of their duties and depend on their bosses before taking any major decisions.
• Custodial Model
  The base for this model are the economic resources, there is managerial orientation of money involved. The employees of the company are oriented towards the benefits and security of the organization, there is a passive cooperation within the company.
• Supportive
  This type of model brings in leadership and a managerial orientation of support from the employees and they support and participate equally for achieving the organization’s goals that reflects back on their performances.
• Collegial model
  There is managerial orientation of teamwork which is the base of partnership. The employees of the company are aware of their responsibilities.

Although these models seem like separate entities, each of these models are interconnected and one can operate without the help of another, in a way that each of these organizational models over laps some or the other model some point of time leading to a mix of different systems that are used in running an organization. There are 3 separate systems in an organization that includes the social, cultural and individualization systems, these are prevalent amongst the work culture of the companies:

• The social system helps individuals interact amongst themselves and increase in a work relationship. The behavior of one member effects the behavior of many others in an organization so social grouping have no boundaries, the positive aspect is that it spreads good thoughts, culture, different ideas amongst the people working in it.
• The Cultural system in an organization encompasses varied other aspects like knowledge, customers, beliefs and practices of an organization. They are said to influence human behavior even without those things getting in to your conscious thoughts. The work culture is the prime most important elements of an organizational structure; it gives people stability, understanding, security and responsiveness to a particular situation.
• The individualization system in organizations exerts influence the social system of a company by challenging the work culture of the company. For a creative environment to exist in an organization, a company should have high socialization and high individualization, when both of these survives, they can have good competitive environment.

The organizational management looks for job enrichment of its employees in whatever aspects possible and in return they work hard in achieving the organizational goals of a company or perhaps their individual goals. The benefits that job enrichment’s offers are tremendous from an individual’s perspective, they are:

• It enhances the growth of an individual
• The employees get better satisfaction at work
• Better performance in processes
• Employees get motivated
• It helps in upbringing of an organizational change.

The job enrichment can be done in different ways, depending on their processes and work culture. The organizations determine different methods, which include task identity, skill variety, autonomy, feedback and task significance; these are widely popular in bigger organizations.