Factors that Affect Performance and Ways to Address Them
By Edwin C. Ebreo
Employee performance makes the greatest impact in any business. Failure to deliver expected results can greatly affect productivity, quality and profitability. Most managers attribute employee performance to knowledge, skills and attitude or KSA. There are however, more factors that affect performance than KSA that if not met may compromise effective performance.
The list of questions below can be used as a checklist of the conditions in your company that serves as helping or hindering factors to performance. I also added my personal views on how companies should address these factors. Again, please be reminded that these are just my personal views. I give no guarantee that these views are going to effectively address the performance concerns.
The two aforementioned questions point out to task clarity. Task clarity exists when the person expected to perform the task can correctly define three factors: the task itself, the person accountable for performing it, and the limits of authority and initiative that can be exercised in carrying it out.
One of the reasons why people don’t do what they are supposed to do is that they don’t know they are accountable for doing it. Statements like "Am I supposed to do that?" or "it’s not my job," are indicative of unclear tasks and performance goals.
My view is that performance owes a lot to clarity of responsibility, accountability and authority. I suggest that a clear Job Description or Position Charter be created for each position with defined key roles, key result areas (KRA) key performance indicators/metrics, (KPI/M) and performance standards. In this way, people become more aware of what they are responsible for, what they are authorized to do and what kind of result they are accountable for. It also helps to have extensive discussions with the people involved regarding their roles and tasks to make sure that there is common understanding about the job. Remember that telling does not translate to understanding. Procedure Manuals, Work Instructions and other form of job aids can also help eliminate a lot of gray areas in the employees’ tasks.
Task competence is the main issue in these two questions. Competence entails mastery of the skills and knowledge required by the task, and being able to configure these skills and knowledge into an integrated performance with an acceptable degree of proficiency. There are number of interventions a manager can use to help the employee develop or improve job competence. At the onset, it is important to conduct training or task walk-through in order to introduce the jobs and tasks to the employees. As the employees gets accustomed to their work, the managers or supervisors should be there to coach and guide. It also helps to send employees to training courses aimed at enhancing certain knowledge skills and attitude. Other questions that you should be able to answer are:
The consequences of task activity may be thought of as natural or contrived, and direct or indirect. Moreover, they may be seen as positive or negative by the performer.
Some of examples of task consequences are rewards or incentives, hazards which can be quite discouraging for some, punishment for failure to comply with the requirements, recognition from a direct superior among others. It’s really difficult to qualify which consequence is encouraging or not. It depends a lot on how the person see these consequences.
What is safe to say however is that the employees should be able to see a good mix of consequences to be encouraged to do the task. They should also be able to see that positive results are properly rewarded and that there is appropriate action for failure to meet standards.
I remember a former boss who seem to project her self as go-getter and aggressive. She require people to do multitude of tasks and set impossible deadlines only to reset them again because no one can comply with the original deadline. If one would look at the whole scenario, one would find that it takes people longer to do the job and some jobs are not done at all because people can easily get confused when all tasks are deemed as urgent and rush.
Multi-tasking is perhaps one of the most abused terms in the business. Often, managers use this as an excuse for assigning multiple tasks and setting deadlines without recognizing the fact that these tasks compete for time and that it is seldom possible for an employee to do two or more tasks at the same time. I remember the saying that goes "If you try to catch two rabbits at the same time, you’ll end up not catching any at all".
My suggestion is to involve the employees in setting deadlines instead of imposing without considering they have other tasks to accomplish. It also helps to enforce deadlines once commitment is made or else the deadlines will be meaningless. Helping people manage priorities and time can also help them deliver as expected.
Employees interface with various elements of work in order to accomplish their tasks. These are the machine, the other people at work and perhaps even the customers. Each of these elements can contribute to help or hinder the delivery of results. It is needless to say that managers should not judge individual performance without considering how the other elements cooperated in bringing in results.
Cooperation and teamwork is necessary considering how an individual’s work can affect others in the organization. This is one reason why companies hold teambuilding activities, they want employees to understand the values of individuals in the organization, the value of cooperation and the importance of negotiating and handling conflicts.
Tasks must be controlled, meaning there is a well-defined beginning and end. This process must be planned, executed and finished. Control is achieved by comparing actual conditions against a set of required or reference conditions and adjusting future actions to eliminate any differences between required and actual conditions.
The persons to do the tasks should be able to understand and accept which and what kind of controls are in place. Lack of control can lead to inadequate performance; lack of understanding can also lead to inadequate performance. At the onset it should be agreed by both the manager and the employee, what timeline to follow, how productivity and quality is going to be measured and how this will impact the person’s performance. It should also be made clear how progress is going to be monitored and what to do if performance does not meet expectations.
Managers usually attribute lack of commitment to bad attitude. This is not always true. Employee commitment is hinged on a lot of things other than attitude. Other things that a manager can change rather easily compared to attitude.
I remember a friend of mine who was asked by his manager to do pre-sales presentation. He was quite hesitant because although he is quite competent in making the product work, presenting how it works to the clients requires a completely different set of skills. The reason for his hesitance therefore is his lack of competence in that particular task and that he doesn’t want to appear incompetent in front of everyone. If his boss will be able to provide him ample time and training, the level of commitment may greatly improve.
Another reason for lack of commitment is the employees’ perception of work standards. If they see it as impossibly high, their motivation to achieve it will wane considerably even if there is a huge reward for meeting it. In one of business unit of another company I worked for, the employees compare the incentives to the moon, the more they try to reach it, the more it gets farther. When I talked to the supervisors about how the employees see the standards, they said it’s not true, they said that they have basis for setting the standards and are sure that these can be achieved. I asked them if they were able to show and convince employees that these can be achieved, they gave me a blank stare. The lesson here is that you should have a basis for setting your standards and should be able to show employees that it can be achieved especially if you are dealing with an exceptionally high standards. You might ask, what will I do, these standards are required by clients, even so if you have no way of knowing that it can be met, you should not accept it then leave the figuring out to your employees.
Lastly, do not assume, find out if every aspect of the task is well understood, from its importance, level of priority down to its proper execution. Employees commit them selves when they know, understand the work, know and accept that it’s worthwhile to do. You can lead the horse to the water, but you cannot make the horse drink the water.