Its Amazing What Toucan Do...

Did you know that in the natural world, the toucan is regarded as one of the most sociable of all birds, the ones which most naturally gravitate towards others of their kind? According to Native American tribes, the toucan is often etched onto totem poles to underline the importance of great communication.

Back in the workplace, one process which is rarely held up as an example of great communication is the dreaded annual staff appraisal. In fact, it’s a sad state of affairs, but if you ask a large room of people if they believe that they are the person they are today because of their recent 1-1 or staff appraisal, you’ll get very few takers. Maybe it’s a big ask to expect these familiar work processes to yield such lofty results – but then again why shouldn’t we have high expectations. After all, these are such important opportunities – ones which bring manager and staff together to review performance, build engagement, and deliver results. Research into performance reviews also questions the effectiveness of conventional approaches. For example, while 74% of UK firms continue to use annual appraisals as their principal means of improving performance levels, over half of managers don’t believe they are effective (CIPD). Similarly, two-thirds of employees also find them to be ineffective.

Mindful of these sobering statistics, and listening to the frustrations of many of our clients, we’ve spent two years talking to businesses – from emerging SME’s to complex manufacturing companies. We quickly discovered that while most organisations agreed that lengthy, time-consuming, and infrequent performance reviews just aren’t working, they don’t know how else to go about it. It appears their existing systems were like the old Jerry Seinfeld joke about truckers honking their horns at attractive women who are walking by. They know it won’t make much of a difference (no one is ever going to jump in their truck as a result of the honking, and then run off into the sunset with them), but the truckers don’t really know what else they can do.

So, to help us develop a viable alternative, we liaised with the CIPD, HR professionals, business leaders, managers, and employees to explore innovative ideas to transform existing practices. We soon discovered there was a growing appetite for the introduction of ongoing feedback methods across our region, which closely followed the natural cycle of work by switching the focus of the staff reviews from past to present performance. To achieve this aim, it would require us to create a more inventive online method to capture feedback on employee performance on an ongoing basis and apply timely ways to develop their performance as and when it was required.

Because of the demonstrable interest in this pivotal activity, we were keen not to keep re-inventing the wheel, so wanted to provide a service that other businesses could easily tailor to their own requirements. Using three critical questions, we developed a simple structure to help managers navigate their meetings and get people talking. By moving the focus from measurement and metrics to conversation and communication, we’ve helped clients to abandon their old formal bureaucratic, time-consuming annual systems in favour of frequent, flexible and future-facing feedback.



Video Tutorials

As a team, we’ve also upskilled ourselves and developed an on-line version of this structure, launched a comprehensive training workshop, commissioned video tutorials, constructed an on-line micro-site to support managers and employees, plus provide them with handy skill-guides to help improve employee capability.

Fully Customisable Forms

 Dedicated Support Site with tutorials and resources

Following a comprehensive pilot of the system where we partnered up with local Clients, it is clear that the previous reliance on retrospective quantitative data, is now being abandoned in favour of a more balanced, strengths and contributions-based assessment of overall performance. There is also a much greater awareness of the need to face forwards – investing more time in appropriate goals which can be linked to the aspirations of the employee. Most importantly, the results achieved so far, suggest that this type of system which places the employee at the centre of the process, is working. Evidence from customers, suggests that the new system delivers tangible improvements in long-term business performance in productivity, staff development and retention levels. Finalist for this year's FSB Business Innovation of the Year Award.

If you’re considering invigorating your own performance review process and would like to introduce frequent, flexible and future-facing feedback, we can supply all the customisable resources you need including a simple one-page review form, 1-1 support resources, video tutorials and planning tools – give us a call for an informal chat, to find out more or email us at info@endorlearning.com. 

For managers and business leaders – ask about the online Engage & Enable 360 Feedback process.

 Chris Watson