A1. Importance of Employee Expectations
Setting employee expectations is essential for both managers and employees. For managers, expectations for employees is essential in that they make running of the organization smooth. When each of the employees is doing what they are meant to do, the organization will run smoothly. Another benefit to the managers is that expectations establish a baseline of measurement for future performance. Managers can gauge an employee’s fitness at the organization if the expectations set are in alignment with the goals, objectives, and culture of the firm (Redlein, Hohenbereger, & Turnbull, 2020). On the other hand, job expectations and defining roles for will keep the employees focused. Consequently, this will keep employees on track and prevent them from wandering off task. Eventually, employees will be successful at achieving the goals set for them. Achievement of goals enhances the firm’s success. Expectations also ensure employees do not stagnate or experience frantic productivity but instead maintain the focus until the tasks are completed.
A2. Process of Setting Employee Expectations
The process of setting employees’ expectations requires concise goals that are crystal clear, a time frame for completion of the assigned task, and the necessary employee competence to complete them. Through concise goals, employees understand their daily tasks and activities required of them and their alignment to higher levels of management as well as time frames. Competencies equip employees with the necessary skills to complete their tasks by the end of the year. Inclusion of competencies in the process allows the organization to evaluate how tasks get done. The process also involves communicating these expectations to employees. This can be done through writing or holding a meeting between the manager and employees. Clear communication sets a stage for agreement between a manager and employees regarding the expectations, rewards, and what should be done in case expectations are not met.
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B1. Areas of Improvement
John needs improvement on organizational skills, intrinsic motivation and orientation to small details in tasks assigned.
John does not demonstrate the direct reports and motivation among his employees.
B2. Steps for Areas of Improvement
John should be more organized by writing down a to-do list. This will ensure that he has details for each task. For instance, John should ensure small details such as accounting codes are being used in the accounting invoices. Self-motivation can be improved by working on his organizational skills such as prioritizing tasks. This will ensure he reconciles the leger by the end of the monthly deadline.
His employees need to be motivated to ensure all invoices are entered into the system. This will help avoid penalties incurred due to lateness. The motivation for his employees can be done by communicating to hie employees on the importance of keeping time in accounting as it saves the accounting department money and time. Also, John should eek to encourage better attendance among his employees. Furthermore, the expected attendance department rate is 85% yet his employees are currently at 68%. The goal has a deficit of 17% to meet this expectation. John can improve this by leading by example and avoiding giving time off to employees unless under genuine circumstances. Also, he can create an outline that covers the attendance of meetings to be held with all the direct reports. These meetings will highlight the problems with the current attendance and discuss plans for improving attendance among his team of employees.
B3. Evaluation of Progress
To ensure that John is making progress in the areas that need improvement, an evaluation has to be carried out. Every month, an audit will be conducted on John’s personal and his direct report attendance to gauge whether there is an improvement. The time frame for the audit is three months consecutively. During these three months, an improvement of 17% should have been achieved by the end of the last month. Therefore, Joh needs to ensure that attendance improved by approximately 6% every month. Another area whose progress will be evaluated is the timely entering of invoice on the system. Similarly, the audit will be conducted monthly for three months. For improvement to be noted, there should be no more than a single invoice out of fifty that has not been entered into the system on time.
Accounting codes will also be analyzed to ensure that the correct ones were applied while entering the invoices in the system. At the moment, 13% have to be corrected during journal entries doe monthly. The goal is for John to increase the accuracy of accounting codes. By the end of the third month, it is anticipated to reduce to less than 4%. Concerning ledger reconciliation, John should also have improved. For a span of three months, Joh should ensure that an extra ledger has been completed on time. Also, within the three months of audit, John should have completed all the 12 ledger reconciliations.
For the process of evaluation, monthly progress and results will be shared with John. His manager Mary, will mentor John during these three months. There will be weekly meetings between John and her manager Mary to ensure that John is still on track.
B4. Behaviours that Demonstrate Success
In a month, John’s progress and ability to maintain the steps he took on the areas of improvement will reveal whether he is becoming successful at it or not. In regards to attendance, John indicates that he comprehends the attendance policy of the department. Also, the successful completion of performance training and a high score of over 85% is an indicator of success. John’s attendance meeting is above 95% and he is encouraging and motivating his employees to meet their attendance expectation rates as well. John’s referral of his employees to any services within the firm that would help them improve their attendance. A constant reminder to his employees of the attendance policy of the organization and the consequences for non-compliance.
Frequent brief meetings with his staff to evaluate the progress they are making with invoice entry. The success is based on whether employees are meeting deadlines for invoice entry. During the meeting, John inquires from his employees whether they are experiencing any challenges that he would address. Also, John gives room for his employees to ask questions and make suggestions on how they can improve their overall teamwork. Osborne & Hammoud (2017) reveal that employees’ participation in making decisions for the company makes them feel valued by the organization which boosts their productivity and increases their motivation.
The ability of John to be keen with details and apply the correct codes during data input. Overall, the ability of John to improve his attendance and have a greater focus on organizational skills which will motivate him to reconcile the general ledgers within the time framework set for him
B5. Consequences for Noncompliance
If John does not demonstrate an understanding of the attendance policy, he will be required to go on unpaid leave. During the first week, John will be required to reflect on the overall progress and what he can do to improve attendance. During the second week, John will be given additional materials for including education regarding the attendance policy. By the end of the two weeks, John should have demonstrated an increased understanding of the policy. Failure to which he will be terminated.
Also, the time frame for performance improvement will be extended further than three months if John does not attend the weekly meetings with his manager Mary. John must attend all the meetings and the training class and be able to score more than 85% in the post-test. Failure to meet these requirements will lead to the demotion of John from the position of supervisor. Also, if John is not using the correct accounting codes and has not reconciled the ledgers by the end of the deadline, he will be terminated.
Concerning the attendance meeting of his employees, if there is not an improvement of 17% at the end of the quarter, John and the staff that does not attend will be placed on a probation period for another quarter. If by the end of the second quarter, there is no improvement in attendance meeting, John will be terminated from working for the organization.
B6. Final Meeting
Today marks the final meeting between John, Mary, and I. The purpose of the meeting is to review outcomes based on the performance improvement plan that began three months ago. Based on the results shared by Mary, below are the outcomes:
To begin with, John has completed the performance improvement plan during the three months. The rationale steams from his attendance of weekly meetings scheduled between him and Mary without failure.
John has exceeded the targets set for personal attendance meeting which stands at 95%. Concerning the attendance rate of his employees, however, John was only able to achieve 12%. The attendance rate falls short by 5% of the overall goal that was expected to be met by the end of the quarterly.
John has also improved on encouraging and motivating his employees. Regarding the entry of invoices into the system on time, his employees have exceeded the expectations. At the beginning of the performance improvement plan, the goal was 1/50 and John together with his staff has achieved .20/50 invoices.
Concerning the general ledgers, John has met the three-month expectation that required him to complete the reconciliation of twelve ledgers.
John has also shown tremendous improvement with coding invoices. Recently, he has not recorded any error with the codes. Through double-checking for each entry, his efforts have paid off.
Overall, John has made great strides in meeting and accomplishing the goals that were expected of him at the beginning of the performance improvement plan.
In conclusion, John’s manager and I expect that John will maintain the good work of meeting expectations in the future. This will avoid having performance improvement issues in the future. Also, considering John was able to improve on direct report performance, there is no need of holding a supervisory workshop. The results indicate that he is self-motivated and with a performance improvement plan he can achieve more among his employees and for the overall success of the organization. Regarding his report that has not met the expectation, he can work with the performance improvement plan. The overall progress should be appraised in a meeting and his efforts verbally recognized. This will foster the appreciation and encourage other members to work on self-improvement as John did.
References
Osborne, S., & Hammoud, M. S. (2017). Effective employee engagement in the workplace. International Journal of Applied Management and Technology , 16 (1), 4.
Redlein, A., Hohenbereger, C., & Turnbull, P. (2020). Workplace Management. In Modern Facility and Workplace Management (pp. 177-222). Springer, Cham.
