Friday, January 8. 2010Managing People Part IIJohn Linton
1) Overall Requirements Of Setting Job Goals While it’s self evident, it sometimes appears that the base building block of setting job goals is either missed or forgotten. The main/only purpose of setting job goals from Exetel’s point of view is Exetel’s purposes at any given time are determined by its formal business plan which, among many other things, defines the number of personnel who will be employed by the company at any point in time and what those people will be paid. Any manager within Exetel must therefore know and understand what the company’s objectives are for each quarter of the ensuing 12 months and therefore what they are expected to do to meet their part(s) of the overall company business plan. Without that understanding job goals cannot be set effectively. Without knowing the specifics of Exetel’s, or any other company’s, objectives it should be obvious that any commercial organisation will have objectives that fall in to the general categories of: Increase revenue Every activity carried out by a commercial organisation falls in to those two major categories and one of the 6 sub-categories and any job goal must be related to one of those sub-categories. So, Exetel requires that any set of employee job goals are based on only defining individual tasks that meet the above criteria. 2) An Exetel Manager’s Requirement’s Of Setting Job Goals The first requirement for any Exetel manager is to have completely up to date job goals that have been agreed by both the individual manager and his/her manager. Without that starting point the Exetel will provide the overall business plan to each manager (minus some specific personnel and operational details) on a regular basis and any questions about the company’s short and medium term plans can be answered at any time simply by asking for additional clarification or information. Each Exetel manager’s job goals reflect a sub-set of the objectives set out in the business plan. While no single manager within Exetel has total responsibility for achieving the revenue and profit If you think about it for even a few moments you would see that the six sub-categories set out in the first section of this chapter can be directly related to every task that an Exetel manager or an Exetel Take the sub-category of “keeping all current customers” as an example. While a current customer may decide to leave Exetel because they can obtain a service from another provider at a lower cost or that includes more features or benefits a wide range of other aspects may cause a customer to leave Exetel that can be avoided by every person Network reliability It should be relatively simple to take any manager’s job goals and assign the responsibilities to those personnel for whom you are responsible ensuring that all tasks directly relate to achieving Exetel’s short and medium term objectives. If it isn’t, then the job goals the manager has accepted almost certainly need amending. 3) An Exetel Employee’s Requirement’s Of Job Goal Setting All employees, irrespective of whether it’s their first job or a job along their career path need to have their duties spelled out in terms that both the individual and their manager can easily understand Any ‘professional’ employee (which in Exetel’s case is every employee) needs to be given the opportunity of defining their own job If the manager concerned is lax or careless in agreeing and setting the job goals for each person for whom he/she is responsible then the process is not only pointless it is counter productive and a Of particular importance to each employee (and this of course includes all managers within Exetel) is the full agreement on how each Of equal importance, to both Exetel and the employee, is the agreement of the personal development the employee will need to progress their career within Exetel. Again, the developmental requirements must be related to the stated career development and must be achievable within the agreed time frame(s). While it’s obviously difficult for any person, no matter how intellectually gifted, to fully understand the in depth complexity of a process like job goal setting it should be obvious to every Exetel employee that it’s in their own very best interests to ensure that the job goals they agree to are capable on not only being met but are If either the manager or the employee believes that it isn’t possible, with the required effort, for the employee to achieve 100/100 on the finally agreed job goals then the process has not been done in the way that is required.
The reasons for assigning values to the different tasks in each person’s job goals is to allow both the employee and the manager to objectively determine how well the employee is performing in their The reason for assigning a total of 100 ‘points’ to each person’s job goals and breaking up the distribution of those ‘points’ in the way that places more emphasis on the first two sections of job By distributing the 100 points: Section 1 50 it allows the correct emphasis to be put on the major requirements of the company while ensuring that each employee continues to develop their abilities and skills so that they continue to develop The standard job goal layout used by Exetel has a column for “Value” for each task and next to that there are columns for “Achieved/Emp” and “Achieved/Mgr”. At the end of each quarter both the Having agreed the scores both parties assign to the tasks then the scores will be totaled, added together and divided by two to achieve a performance score for that quarter. This performance score determines the employee’s job performance rating which is determined as follows: 91 – 100 1 Far Exceeds all requirements of the position The date of the review and the rating are entered on to the job goal form, printed, signed by both the employee and the manager and sent to "personnel" for inclusion in the employee's file.. 5) Re-Setting Job Goals Job goals need to be reviewed at the end of each calendar quarter. Following the straightforward process described above will provide the basis for re-looking at and re-setting each employees job The first obvious thing that will come out of early use of the job goal system (by both the manager and each employee) is that there may be significant discrepancies between the ‘score’ assigned to As a manager gains more experience with setting job goals that are truly specifically applicable to each individuals duties the more tightly they will be able to define both the tasks and the methods of The second most common occurrence in setting job goals is that the manager doesn’t have the necessary systems/processes/tools in place to be able to measure what is required. This will continue to be a problem for as long as tasks are required to be done that can’t be objectively measured and should lead any manager towards the understanding that he/she is really asking people to do things which Having acknowledged that all human relationships with other humans defy the ability to ‘measure’ discretely the fact remains that the manager/employee relationship is predicated on one person telling In re-setting job goals, in consultation with each employee, a much better understanding is achieved on how much better all tasks can A major encouragement for the employee to ensure that their individual job goals are set as effectively as possible is the rating system and the consequential benefits in both remuneration and promotion terms that consistently high job goal performance ratings deliver. These are explained in the next section. The actual performance measurement achieved by any employee is used to determine the amount and frequency of remuneration increases as well as the suitability for promotion. 6) Job Goal Performance Rating Impacts The ability to determine, very accurately, the performance of each person employed by an organisation is an essential element in operating a business that will continue to meet its objectives with the Ideally Exetel’s aim is to have every employee rated as a “1” at each job goal review. If this were to be the case then Exetel would have a zero personnel loss rate and each employee would be getting the maximum job satisfaction and career development possible from each day of their working life. An Exetel’s manager’s job is to make this happen. The quarterly ratings are used in two ways that should ensure that each employee is highly motivated to both ensure that their job goals are set exactly correctly and then to achieve the highest The first reason is that the job goal rating determines the 1 8 months The second reason is that the job goal rating determines the amount of remuneration increase (in the same position) based on: 1 10% to a maximum of $9,000 pa The above time frames and percentages are guidelines and any actual remuneration change can only be approved by an Exetel director. These are compelling reasons for each Exetel employee, and their manager, to take a very real and thoughtful interest in the setting and agreeing of their job goals. For any employee of any 7) Summary I have been associated with the processes described in this chapter for over 40 years and have played a not insignificant part in developing this methodology to the current levels of implementation described here. I can state, categorically, that operating a company using these principles and procedures provides a better result for the company itself and each person who spends time working with a company In terms of assisting an individual become a better and more effective manager, nothing I have ever personally seen or been made aware of comes close to the power of correct job goal setting and reviewing in producing the best short, medium and long term results for developing any person’s management skills and abilities. Trackbacks
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Wow. If I wasn't motivated 100% my job in Exetel, I'd be totally stressing out all the time with my performance reviews quarterly
You've now given me a good framework to better myself in my job. Is there any goal 'just cruise for the next 12 months while I'm more focused on other things' option? Though they probably wouldn't last too long at Exetel. Comments (2)
The prospect of a 10% performance bonus / pay increase would be a powerful motivator, I imagine.
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There is a 12 months goal as you describe - it's called retirement. Interested, John?
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I planned to retire a long time ago - I never got the opportunity....as good as much of my planning
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John,
I learnt something today, that giant companies like Foxtel will offer anything to keep their customers. I decided to close my Foxtel account and move to the smaller paytv provider Selectv. After ringing them to cancel my Foxtel account they just kept offering higher and higher incentives to stay each time I said I just wanted to leave and join Selectv. 1year free, for all the movie channels plus all the documentary channels as well. How can any company compete against the big boys if they dont want you to survive -- Can Exetel really survive if Telstra decides they dont want you their. cheers bill. Comment (1)
Telstra or someone like that can put anyone put of business if it was ever worth their while - but I can't imagine why it would be remotely worth their while.
Exetel has two protections against any such predatory tactices which are that we are exceptionally efficient (therefore we have extremely low operating costs and we don't have a profit objective (which allows us another margin advantage). These in turn allow us to match the better buy prices advantage of the much bigger companies (why else do you think we can offer prices that are so much lower?) and they can never bring their prices down below our levels because of the havoc that would wreak on their margins for their customer base. At least - that's the theory. Comments (3)
I was waiting for the 'anti-competitive laws' protection. No trust in the ACCC then.. just another useless government agency?
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If I understand you correctly, and I probably don't, small companies like Exetel have no protection other than understanding and dealing with problems as they occur.
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