Managing

The following is an excerpt from a recent Nation's Business magazine article. Nation's Business serves as a resource to the owners and top managers of small businesses by providing practical, how-to information about running and expanding a business. To subscribe to Nation's Business, call 1-800-210-8149.

MANAGING

Improving Employee Performance

Managers have a number of ways to accomplish it, from making sure an employee is in the right job to opening up career paths.

By Michael Barrier

A small company that wants to survive, not to mention grow, has no choice but to seek ever-improving performance from its employees. ``A small business's only advantage is that it gets more productivity, if it's smart, out of the limited resources it has,'' says Dennis G. McCarthy, president of the Paradigm Group, a training firm in Fairfield, Conn.

Of those resources, the only one that a competitor cannot readily duplicate is a company's people. But what works to motivate employees to do their best?

Money alone usually isn't a sufficient motivator.

Careful hiring cannot substitute for continuing efforts to help employees perform better.

The small-business owner who tries to bully employees into better performance is not going to get very far either.

To help improve employee performance, a small-business owner or manager could start with questions such as these:

Do you try to make sure that there's the right fit between employee and job?

Do you search for ways to put your employees in direct contact with your customers?

Does your company's culture encourage high performance?

Do you seize opportunities to offer informal rewards and recognition, especially if they're based on employees' opinions of one another's work?

Do you try to tailor rewards and recognition to the individual?

Do you realize that many of your employees may find their greatest rewards in the work itself?

For all small-business owners, the surest path to improved employee performance may lie in their recognition that most of their employees really do want to do a good job.

Says Paradigm Group's Dennis McCarthy: ``Most people, when they get up in the morning, don't look in the mirror and say, `How can I screw up at work today?' But, over time, they get so frustrated about not being able to do a good job that they finally say, `I'll do what it takes to get by.'

``I don't think we expect enough out of people,'' he continues. ``When people are held to higher standards, they not only perform better, they feel a whole lot better about it. Business owners have accepted a level of mediocrity that they don't need to accept. They've blamed it on the work force, and I think they need to look in the mirror instead.''

Nation's Business covers hot topics every month. Below are a few selections from the September 1996 issue:

• Capital Ideas for Financing (Cover story)
• Improving Worker Performance (Managing)
• Small Business Financial Adviser (Finance)
• When a Customer Goes Bankrupt (Managing)
• Steering Through a Crisis (Managing)
• Health Coverage Overseas (Travel/Insurance)
• The Latest Tools for the Job (Technology)
• Selling by the Book (Marketing)

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