Developing an employee involves improving his or her skills in their current job as well as developing them for future

responsibilities and new positions. As manager, it is your job to develop your people. Many companies are now holding managers responsible for the development of their employees and make employee development a part of the managers performance appraisal. (To a large degree, the skills required for employee development are the skills developed in leadership, management, and supervisory training.) This four step employee development plan will put you, your employees and the whole department on track to achieve maximum potential.

1. Prepare the employee

To get the employee thinking about their own development and the areas where development can occur, here is a series of questions you will want to ask the employee. a. What are the skills needed to do your job? How well do you perform them? b. What aspects of your job do you like least/best? c. What major accomplishments have you achieved since your last performance appraisal? d. In what ways, can your supervisor and/or the organization help you to do a better job? e. What changes would you like to see in your current job? f. What are your job goals for this next year? g. Where do you see yourself in five years? h. What have you been doing to prepare yourself to move ahead in your career? i. What activities would help you develop yourself? An excellent time to begin the developmental process is during the performance appraisal. Get the questions to the employee well in advance of the appraisal interview to give them time to prepare. Their answers will help guide the discussion.

2. Provide Development opportunities

There is a vast array of things you can do to help the employee develop and every employee is different. Here is a list of some developmental approaches you can consider. a. Training Training is obviously first on the list. Often training needs are simply defined by looking at the employees performance or by understanding their experience or lack of experience with the specific job tasks. b. Peer Coaching Employees coach other individuals on their jobs. The benefits are two-fold. First, the employees develop skills in other areas and can fill in for their counterpart if that person is on vacation or out sick. Also, by in the process of teaching another person, the teacher themselves becomes more proficient. c. Job Design Changes Here, the employee defines all aspects of their job and makes suggestions as to how the job might be redesigned to enhance proficiency. You may be surprise by their creativity and superior ideas. Even though you may not be able to totally revamp a job, the employee understands the job better and you begin to recognize some of their concerns.

d. Representing the Department Have the employee represent you, the team, or the department at an important meeting. Have them report back the proceedings to you and/or the team. In the process, the employee has a better understanding of how the team, the department, and their job fit into the big picture of the organization.

e. Delegate Special Projects Make certain the project challenges the employee. The project must be seen as meaningful. Also, make sure the employee views the project as a reward for good work in other areas of their job. In doing so, the assignment becomes a motivating experience and not just more work. f. Assist the Boss Assign an employee to assist your boss or another executive on a special assignment where the employee will be exposed to new business perspectives of the organizations business.

3. Monitor Progress
Observe how the employee is doing. Schedule to meet at least once per quarter to discuss how things are going. Ask questions; review any quantity and quality measures that are relevant. Give ongoing feedback on what the individual is doing well and what they need to be doing differently. Feedback is critical to the success of the developmental process. If you do not follow up with them, you are essentially telling the employee the developmental process is not all that important to you. If it is not important to you, how can you expect the employee to take it seriously?

4. Create Confidence
Let them know you are always available. Give the employee the encouragement and support needed to feel confident in his or her ability to succeed. When things do not go as well as planned, focus on what went right. You are asking the person to go beyond their current level, take it one step at a time. Sometimes we must take smaller steps to ensure a successful outcome. The ultimate success in developing the employee depends on the employee themselves. However, the success of the developmental process depends on the manager. Follow these guidelines to ensure success in developing your people.

Motivational Employee Recognition Traps You can avoid the employee recognition traps that:

Single out one or a few employees who are mysteriously selected for the recognition; sap the morale of the many who failed to win, place, or even show; confuse people who meet the criteria for employee recognition yet were not selected; and sought votes or other personalized, subjective criteria to determine winners.

Employee Recognition That Is Motivational and Rewarding

Employee recognition is one of the keys to successful employee motivation. Employee recogni

satisfaction with their supervisor and their work place.

Informal recognition, as simple sometimes as saying thank you and please, should be on every employee's mind every day. Supervisors and coworkers, especially, have the opportunity to praise and encourage best efforts daily. These tips will help you successfully provide more formal recognition that is valued, valuable, and motivational. Determine what behaviors your work place wants to recognize. In a client company, a team decided to recognize team work, going the extra mile, and years of service.

Identify and communicate the criteria by which the proposed recipients will be judged or assessed, so people are clear about what they need to do to qualify for recognition.

Announce and communicate the recognition and the criteria that you have established for the awards.

Design and communicate the process by which employees will be selected for recognition so that all employees clearly understand the selection process.

Allow time for people to qualify for the recognition. Every entry that qualifies for the recognition should receive the recognition.

If financial constraints are an issue, either present recognition amounts you can afford. Or, announce all eligible employees, publicly praise them for their contribution, and then, place all names in a drawing to select the lucky winner. Magnify the value of the recognition by these methods: name the employees publicly, place employee names in the newsletter, send out a company-wide email announcement, and so on.

Is it ever okay to nominate people or projects and just vote? In my book, only for trivial, fun events and prizes. Nothing of significance should ever be treated as a popularity contest. An example? One client company, in a clean room setting, has groups of employees who decorate external windows surrounding the manufacturing area each holiday season. All employees vote for their favorite window and a nominal gift goes to the teams that decorated the top three windows. Effective, fair, employee recognition is motivational for both the employees receiving recognition and their coworkers - done correctly.

Employee Recognition Rocks

Kick Employee Recognition Up a Notch

Employee recognition is limited in most organizations. Employees complain about the lack of recognition regularly. Managers ask, Why should I recognize or thank him? Hes just doing his job. And, life at work is busy, busy, busy. These factors combine to create work places that fail to provide recognition for employees. Managers who prioritize employee recognition understand the power of recognition. They know that employee recognition is not just a nice thing to do for people. Employee recognition is a communication tool that reinforces and rewards the most important outcomes people create for your business. When you recognize people effectively, you reinforce, with your chosen means of recognition, the actions and behaviors you most want to see people repeat. An effective employee recognition system is simple, immediate, and powerfully reinforcing. Employees feel cared about and appreciated. It may seem simplistic, but people who feel recognized and cared about produce more and better work. Employee Survey Pinpoints Recognition In a client employee satisfaction survey, the question about whether the company cared about the welfare and happiness of its employees drew divergent views. Some people agreed; others disagreed. So, the Culture and Communications team put out a second survey asking what would make the employees feel as if the company cared about them. We developed several answers employees could check and supplied room for their comments and additional thoughts. Fifty-five percent of the respondents said that praise and attention from their supervisor would make them feel as if the company cared about them and their well-being. As you might also expect, money, benefits, and events such as company lunches ranked high, too. But recognition from the supervisor ranked above all other choices. I have sponsored similar surveys in different organizations. The findings are always similar. Employees want to know that they have done a good job and that you noticed. Employees want to be thanked and appreciated. A leader of employees makes other people feel important and appreciated. The leader excels at creating opportunities to provide rewards, recognition and thanks

to his or her staff. A leader creates a work environment in which people feel important and appreciated. Want to Kick Employee Recognition Up a Notch? You can reinforce powerfully the recognition you provide in these ways. Write out the recognition, what the employee did, why it was important, and how the actions served your organization. Give a copy of the letter to the employee and to the department head or CEO, depending on the size of your company. Place a copy in the employees file.

Write a personal note to the employee. Perhaps have your supervisor sign it, too. Photocopy the note and place the recognition in the employees file.

Accompany the verbal recognition with a gift. Engraved plaques, merchandise that carries the company logo, even certificates of appreciation reinforce the employee recognition.

Everyone likes cash or the equivalent in gift cards, gift certificates, and checks. If you use a consumable form of employee recognition, accompany the cash with a note or letter. When the money has been spent, you want the employee to remember the recognition.

Present the recognition publicly, at an employee meeting, for example. Even if the employee is uncomfortable with publicity, it is important for the other employees to know that employees are receiving recognition.

Conclusion and More Information About Employee Recognition A simple thank you counts as employee recognition. But, you can also make employee recognition as elaborate as your imagination can conceive. Recognition is not a scarce resource. You cant use it up or run out of it. No budget is too small to afford employee recognition. For increased employee satisfaction, bring on lots of employee recognition.

Top Ten Ways to Retain Your Great Employees

Why Retention? Four Tips for Employee Retention

Key employee retention is critical to the long term health and success of your business. Managers readily agree that retaining your best employees ensures customer satisfaction, product sales, satisfied coworkers and reporting staff, effective succession planning and deeply imbedded organizational knowledge and learning. If managers can cite these facts so well, why do they behave in ways that so frequently encourage great employees to quit their jobs? Employee retention matters. Organizational issues such as training time and investment; lost knowledge; mourning, insecure coworkers and a costly candidate search aside, failing to retain a key employee is costly. Various estimates suggest that losing a middle manager costs an organization up to 100 percent of his salary. The loss of a senior executive is even more costly. I have seen estimates of double the annual salary and more. Employee retention is critically important for a second societal reason, too. Over the next few years while Baby Boomers (age 40 to 58) retire, the upcoming Generation X population numbers 44 million people (ages 25-34), compared to 76 million Baby Boomers available for work. Simply stated: there are a lot fewer people available to work. Employee retention is one of the primary measures of the health of your organization. If you are losing critical staff members, you can safely bet that other people in their departments are looking as well. Exit interviews with departing employees provide valuable information you can use to retain remaining staff. Heed their results. Youll never have a more significant source of data about the health of your organization. Ive provided retention tips in earlier articles, but will add ten more retention tips to your arsenal with these top ten ways to retain a great employee. Management thinkers from Ferdinand Fournies ( Why Employees Don't Do What They're Supposed to Do and What to Do About It) to Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman (First Break All the Rules agree that a satisfied employee knows clearly what is expected from him every day at work. Changing expectations keep people on edge and create unhealthy stress. They rob the employee of internal security and make the employee feel unsuccessful. Im not advocating unchanging jobs just the need for a specific framework within which people clearly know what is expected from them.

The quality of the supervision an employee receives is critical to employee retention. People leave managers and supervisors more often than they leave companies or jobs. It is not enough that the supervisor is well-liked or a nice person, starting with clear expectations of the employee, the

supervisor has a critical role to play in retention. Anything the supervisor does to make an employee feel unvalued will contribute to turnover. Frequent employee complaints center on these areas. --lack of clarity about expectations, --lack of clarity about earning potential, --lack of feedback about performance, --failure to hold scheduled meetings, and --failure to provide a framework within which the employee perceives he can succeed.

The ability of the employee to speak his or her mind freely within the organization is another key factor in employee retention. Does your organization solicit ideas and provide an environment in which people are comfortable providing feedback? If so, employees offer ideas, feel free to criticize and commit to continuous improvement. If not, they bite their tongues or find themselves constantly "in trouble" - until they leave.

Talent and skill utilization is another environmental factor your key employees seek in your workplace. A motivated employee wants to contribute to work areas outside of his specific job description. How many people could contribute far more than they currently do? You just need to know their skills, talent and experience, and take the time to tap into it. As an example, in a small company, a manager pursued a new marketing plan and logo with the help of external consultants. An internal sales rep, with seven years of ad agency and logo development experience, repeatedly offered to help. His offer was ignored and he cited this as one reason why he quit his job. In fact, the recognition that the company didn't want to take advantage of his knowledge and capabilities helped precipitate his job search.

Here are six additional employee retention tips. Here are the first four tips and a discussion about why retention is critically important. The perception of fairness and equitable treatment is important in employee retention. In one company, a new sales rep was given the most potentially successful, commission-producing accounts. Current staff viewed these decisions as taking food off their tables. You can bet a number of them are looking for their next opportunity.

In another instance, a staff person, just a year or two out of college, was given $20,000 in raises over a six month time period. Information of this type never stays secret in companies so you know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the morale of several other employees will be affected. For example, you have a staff person who views her role as important and she brings ten years of experience, an M.B.A. and a great contribution record to the table. When she

finds she is making less money than this employee, she is likely to look for a new job. Minimally, her morale and motivation will take a big hit. Did the staff person deserve the raises? Yes. But, recognize that there will be impact on others. When an employee is failing at work, I ask the W. Edwards Deming question, What about the work system is causing the person to fail? Most frequently, if the employee knows what they are supposed to do, I find the answer is time, tools, training, temperament or talent. The easiest to solve, and the ones most affecting employee retention, are tools, time and training. The employee must have the tools, time and training necessary to do their job well or they will move to an employer who provides them.

Your best employees, those employees you want to retain, seek frequent opportunities to learn and grow in their careers, knowledge and skill. Without the opportunity to try new opportunities, sit on challenging committees, attend seminars and read and discuss books, they feel they will stagnate. A career-oriented, valued employee must experience growth opportunities within your organization.

A common place complaint or lament I hear during an exit interview is that the employee never felt senior managers knew he existed. By senior managers I refer to the president of a small company or a department or division head in a larger company. Take time to meet with new employees to learn about their talents, abilities and skills. Meet with each employee periodically. You'll have more useful information and keep your fingers on the pulse of your organization. It's a critical tool to help employees feel welcomed, acknowledged and loyal.

No matter the circumstances, never, never, ever threaten an employee's job or income. Even if you know layoffs loom if you fail to meet production or sales goals, it is a mistake to foreshadow this information with employees. It makes them nervous; no matter how you phrase the information; no matter how you explain the information, even if you're absolutely correct, your best staff members will update their resumes. I'm not advocating keeping solid information away from people, however, think before you say anything that makes people feel they need to search for another job.

I place this final tip on every retention list I develop because it is so key and critical to retention success. Your staff members must feel rewarded, recognized and appreciated. Frequently saying thank you goes a long way. Monetary rewards, bonuses and gifts make the thank you even more appreciated. Understandable raises, tied to accomplishments and achievement, help retain staff. Commissions and bonuses that are easily calculated on a daily basis, and easily understood, raise motivation and help retain staff. Annually, I receive emails from staff members that provide information about raises nationally. You can bet that work is about the money and almost every individual wants more.

Take a look at your organization Are you doing your best to retain your top talent? Employ these ten factors in your organization to retain your desired employees and attract the best talent, too.

40 Ways to Say Thank You at Work

Cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude in Your Workplace
Are you interested in ways to say thank you at work? I hope so. In a workplace committed to creating an attitude of gratitude and employee recognition on a daily basis, every day should be Thanksgiving Day. Employee recognition doesnt have to be expensive and is appreciated by employees in almost any form. Company leaders appreciate a thank you from employees, too, when the organization takes time to recognize employees. The boss appreciates a thank you just as much as you do. Employee recognition is best approached creatively. While money is an important way to say thank you, once money is spent, it is easily forgotten. It is as if the recognition never happened. Ideas about ways to say thank you at work are limited only by your imagination. The power of saying thank you is magnified when the action, gift, or interaction is accompanied with a thank you note or card. Use the following 40 ways to say thank you at work to employees and coworkers. Spoken Words Just say, thank you - any time, any way, any how, any reason. Want to say more than thank you? Here's how to give great feedback to employees at work.

Money

Base salary raised Bonuses Gift certificates Cash awards

Written Words

Handwritten thank you notes A letter of appreciation in the employee file Handwritten cards to mark celebratory occasions Recognition posted on the employee bulletin board Contribution noted in the company newsletter

Positive Attention From Supervisory Staff

Stop by an individuals workstation or office to talk informally Provide frequent positive performance feedback at least weekly Provide public praise at a staff meeting Take the employee out to lunch.

Encourage Employee Development Send people to conferences and seminars Ask people to present a summary of what they learned at a conference or seminar at a department meeting Work out a written employee development plan Make career development commitments and a schedule

Treats

Buy pizza or another lunch for a team Bring in cookies, gelato, a deli tray, or fruit basket to share Bring in an ice cream and toppings bar Rent a popcorn machine for a week

The Work Itself Provide cross training opportunities Provide more of the kinds of work the employee likes and less of the work that he or she does not like Provide opportunities for empowerment and self-management Ask the employee to represent the department at an important, external meeting Have the employee represent the department on an inter-departmental committee Provide opportunities for the employee to determine his or her own goals and direction Participation in idea-generation and decision making

Drawings

You need to keep drawings on the light side, especially if only one employee can win, but quick, fun drawings are ways to say thank you. Hold a drawing for company logoed merchandise and other inexpensive items, for things like most product sold, best customer service, project completed, sales leads obtained and so forth

Gifts Company logo merchandise such as shirts, hats, mugs, and jackets Gift certificates to local stores The opportunity to select items from a catalog The ability to exchange "positive points" for merchandise or entry into a drawing for merchandise

Symbols and Honors

Framed or unframed certificates to hang on the wall or file Engraved plaques Larger work area or office More and better equipment Provide status symbols, whatever they are in your organization

Benefits See: Getting the Best Benefit From Your Benefits? for a comprehensive list of over 120 more ideas, opportunities to thank employees by providing perks.

Make saying thank you a common practice, not a scarce resource, in your organization. With these ideas and the 120 provided in the benefits and perks article, you have many ideas that will help you develop a work environment that fosters employee recognition and hence, employee and customer success. Motivated employees do a better job of serving customers well. Happy customers buy more products and are committed to using your services. More customers buying more products and services increases your company's profitability and success. It's an endless possibilities circle. Hop on the employee recognition bandwagon to keep the circle spinning. Use all of these suggested ways to say thank you at work. More About Saying Thank You and Employee Recognition

The Power of Positive Employee Recognition Employee Recognition Rocks: Kick Employee Recognition Up a Notch Five Tips for Effective Employee Recognition What Employees Want From Work