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360 DEGREE FEEDBACK

Case Study: Measuring Leadership Effectiveness and Service Excellence Using 360 Degree Feedback at Ratner Companies

The largest privately-held chain of salons in the country, Ratner Companies operates Hair Cuttery (company-owned and franchised), BUBBLES, Salon Cielo and Spa, ColorWorks, and Salon Plaza. With nearly 1,000 salons, Ratner Companies supports more than 12,000 Stylists across 19 states. Visit Ratner companies at http://www.ratnerco.com.
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SUCCESSION PLANNING

Case Study: Developing a Talent Assessment Program to Groom Future Leaders in a Large Retail Organization

BUSINESS CHALLENGE The client is a large retail organization with a strong desire to promote potential leaders in the company. The biggest challenge was to first gain a thorough understanding of the talent makeup throughout the company and determine which employees could potentially be promoted into leadership positions in the near future. Given the unique culture within this organization, a second challenge was to ensure that the employees identified as future leaders exhibited the core values and demonstrated behaviors consistent with the company culture.
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SUCCESSION PLANNING

Case Study: Merging Succession Planning and Career Development to Increase Retention and Development at a Large Pharmaceutical Company

BUSINESS CHALLENGE Rapid growth and sales force expansion in recent years had provided sales professionals at all levels with opportunities for promotion and increased responsibility. During this expansion, the organization struggled to identify internal candidates to assume management positions and had to quickly prepare newly promoted managers to move the organization forward.
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PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Great Employee Performance Management Means Back to Basics

Ensuring the achievement of organizational goals is dependent upon effective employee performance management. In our recently published Whitepaper entitled, Goal Alignment: How Successful Organizations Social-Network Performance Management, my colleague, Dr. Amanda Seidler, and I discuss the challenges organizations face in using goal setting and goal alignment to reap the benefits of effective employee performance management. Bottom line: Technology that is easy-to-use and seamlessly fits into your business processes will bring about success.
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360 DEGREE FEEDBACK

viaPeople Insight - July, 2011

The July, 2011 edition of viaPeople Insight brings together a collection of thought provoking and informative blog articles on 360 degree feedback and evaluation. 360 Degree Feedback - Worth the Hard Work: Learn to help your leaders clearly identify strengths and development needs from their feedback. Read the article.
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PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Pulling Your Hair Out from the Performance Management Process?

3 Ways to Improve the Performance Management Process by Getting to the Heart of Performance Issues. As HR leaders and coaches, we all spend time supporting managers in the performance management process. We patiently listen to managers as they describe the problems that they are experiencing with an employee, the impact of these issues on performance, and coach them to discover ways for improving performance. Nonetheless, when all efforts fail managers end up at their boiling point. Sometimes we need to take a step back and help managers look more closely at why their efforts are falling short. We cannot effectively improve performance without first determining the true cause of the issue or problem….or we may be fixing the wrong problem.
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PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

The Many Faces of Performance Appraisal Discussions

Part of coaching for ongoing performance improvement is being able to effectively provide performance feedback. Managers must be able to communicate feedback, during ongoing coaching and in performance review discussions, in a way that facilitates awareness and acceptance in order to encourage behavioral change. In his whitepaper, The Five Faces Managers See During Performance Reviews, Kris Dunn (www.hrcapitalist.com) writes about various “faces” or personas of employees that managers may encounter during performance review and/or coaching discussions. The Diva thinks that he is an exceptional performer. He is likely a high performer in one or two areas but also has some significant development needs. He really does not think that he has much to learn from his manager and can negatively impact team performance due to his poor self awareness. The Deflector thinks that she has been dealt a bad hand. She has an external locus of control. As such, there is no point in trying harder because too many things are in the way of her success. The 9 to 5’er is looking to work 40 hours a week and can be easily annoyed when asked to do more. He is looking to meet expectations within the hours available and does not have interest in putting forth any extra effort. The Upwardly Mobile/Unsure seeks to excel but is unsure of what she wants in her career. She puts forth extra effort and seeks feedback, but may get bored if not provided with career direction. The Star is one of the best performers in the company. She regularly exceeds expectations and chooses when to influence others. She is not sure that she has anything to learn from her manager. I am sure that we could all add a few more characters to this list! Nonetheless, the personas embodied by these five represent some of the challenges managers face in their role as coaches. No wonder performance appraisal gets such a bad rap. Reinforce Ongoing Performance Management
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SUCCESSION PLANNING

Increase Innovation and Growth through Succession Planning

At a time when most organizations are straddling the line between recession and recovery, talent strategy is as important as ever. Much has been written in the last two years about how organizations should leverage succession planning to ensure successful emergence from these challenging economic times.
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PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Performance Appraisals Made Easier with Accurate Performance Notes

Many talent management experts have been critical of the value of performance appraisals. One of the main criticisms is related to the perception that performance appraisal is an isolated activity – a once-per-year event that is not related to achievement of goals or performance improvement.
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