How to Start New Hires on the Right Track

Assessing employees starts on Day One. Your hiring process shouldn't be complete until you have a fully-oriented employee with their own development plan -- a clear plan of action that will engage and hold your new hire accountable.

Because the sooner you set expectations for your employees, the more likely you are to have a productive team that supports and grows your business. And that isn't the only benefit. There are three primary reasons to create individual development plans for managing performance. A development plan will:

1. Set expectations for performance. It gives employees clear expectations for their results. Statements in writing mean there is a greater likelihood of meeting or exceeding expectations. Having clear goals makes them more achievable.

2. Create a coaching document and put a process in place with a road map for advancement and a schedule to review progress, which holds managers accountable for providing feedback.

3. Create a benchmark that shows growth and improvement or the lack of progress against goals. This benchmark will assist you in developing your team members at all levels. Creating a record of improvement will make it easier to adjust the job fit for the employees and to make decisions in a more timely way about where you want to invest in developing employees.

Development plans show what employees can do to grow and develop, to advance, to become more valued, and to be more satisfied in their work. They also point out what kind of support and assistance they will need to get where they are going faster.

Components of the Plan
One mistake many managers make, often because they use poorly designed development plan templates, is to take on too many challenges at once. Keep the plan as simple as possible. Identify a combined total of two or three measurable objectives within the following three job-related categories:

• Focus on the employee's career growth. Examples include attending classes, seminars or workshops, or participating in on-the-job training or self-study programs (e.g., books, DVDs or web-based training).
  
• Help the employee improve personal aspects of his or her performance, behavior or conduct. Examples of task-oriented performance goals are improving computer proficiency, time management or presentation skills. Or the employee can focus on correcting behavioral problems that negatively impact group morale, job performance or job satisfaction. Examples of such goals are developing conflict resolution or stress reduction techniques and building collaborative coworker relationships. As with professional development goals, effective performance objectives are well defined, are measurable, and are clearly linked to specific job-related outcomes.
  
• Provide specific assignments to participate in or manage ongoing or future projects. When setting project-oriented goals, outline the scope of the role the employee is to play, list resources and completion time frame, and define the desired result.

Components of an Effective Objective
Objectives must be ones the employee has agreed to accomplish within a specified time. The goals should be specific and challenging but attainable. Identify everything that both the employee and manager need to provide to accomplish the goals as an objective. Each objective should have four parts:

1. State the desired achievement for task mastery or improved behavior.
2. Define the applicability of each goal to the function.
3. Specify the method of learning.
4. State the time frame for achievement.

When to Assess
Many companies tie development to performance appraisal. While it's true you need to set expectations before you can identify areas for growth, employee development is an ongoing process. Reviews should be scheduled as often as needed according to the support, advancement, and abilities of each employee.

Each job and organization will evaluate and measure its employees using a variety of tools. Some of the most common include:

• Biannual or annual performance standards/reviews/appraisals: These usually include quantitative and qualitative sections where both the employee and manager have opportunities to make remarks. They state expectations and goals. The employee's performance is measured against these goals at the end of the time period. Traditionally, these appraisals are directly tied to annual bonuses or pay increases.
  
• Budget and quota measurements: These include measuring a person's performance against budget expectations and quotas. Employees are evaluated based on how well they perform, and rewards are directly tied to performance.

Regardless of how you choose to evaluate employees, using a development plan customized for each individual will make the performance evaluation process easier and fairer and offer ongoing opportunities to provide coaching and feedback throughout the year, not just at performance review time. It also reduces the risk of surprise in the results for the employees.

The manager and employee will work on the development plan together, but the more involved the employee is in determining the areas to work on, the more committed that individual will be to accomplishing the goals. The objective is to create an environment that encourages continuous feedback from managers, which will help employees advance more quickly, achieve more, and avoid unnecessary problems and setbacks.

How Steve Jobs Saved Apple

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the tech company he co-founded more than two decades earlier was on the brink of failure. During the final quarter of 1996, Apple's sales plummeted by 30 percent. Microsoft was the dominant computer company in the market.

As Isaacson recalls in his biography on Jobs, a Fortune magazine story from that time said this of the company: "Apple Computer, Silicon Valley's paragon of dysfunctional management and fumbled techno-dreams, is back in crisis mode, scrambling lugubriously in slow motion to deal with imploding sales, a floundering technology strategy, and a hemorrhaging brand name."

Fresh off a partnership deal with Microsoft that injected Apple with $150 million, one of Jobs' first goals as CEO was to review the company's sprawling product line. What he found out was that Apple had been producing multiple versions of the same product to satisfy requests from retailers. For instance, the company was selling a dozen varied versions of the Macintosh computer.

Unable to explain why so many products were necessary, Jobs asked his team of top managers, "Which ones do I tell my friends to buy?" When he didn't get a simple answer, Jobs got to work reducing the number of Apple products by 70 percent. Among the casualties was the Newton digital personal assistant. Unfortunately, the cut-backs also resulted, in part, in a workforce reduction of about 3,000 employees.

"Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do," Jobs says in the book. "It's true for companies, and it's true for products."

Moving forward, Jobs' strategy was to produce only four products: one desktop and one portable device aimed at both consumers and professionals. For professionals, Apple created the Power Macintosh G3 desktop and the PowerBook G3 portable computer. For consumers, there was the iMac desktop and iBook portable computer. (According to Jobs, the "i" emphasized that the devices were directly integrated with the internet.)

The move to a smaller product line and a greater focus on quality and innovation paid off. During Jobs' first fiscal year after his return, ending in September 1997, Apple lost $1.04 billion and was "90 days from being insolvent," Jobs says in the book. One year later, the company turned a $309 million profit.

Jobs' plan also laid the groundwork for Apple's continued innovation. The company introduced revolutionary products including the iPod portable digital audio player in 2001, an online marketplace called the Apple iTunes Store in 2003, the iPhone handset in 2007 and the iPad tablet computer in 2010.