Tag Archives: Performance

Performance Measurements For A Sales Call Center

Posted on by

There are many measurements used to determine the performance of a particular call center. Outstanding performance is vital because companies spend a lot of money on advertising and they need a good sales center to close as many deals as possible to boost their ROI. Satisfactory customer service is also very important to call center managers and to the companies that these call centers support. In this article we will discuss the common performance measurements of agents and the significance of each measurement.

Delays or hold times of callers: This is pretty straight forward. How long is a prospect or customer on hold before they receive assistance? Many companies now alert callers to their expected wait time, so they can choose to stay on the line and wait or call back at a less busy time. This greatly reduces the number of angry callers, because callers are informed and know what to expect in terms of weighting time.

The average talk time: This is a measurement of the amount of time actually spent talking to the caller. Agents want to be able to help as many customers as possible, but there must be a healthy balance between adequately helping the customer and helping as many customers as possible.

The average handling time: This is a measurement of the total amount of time spent on the phone by the customer. It includes the customers holding time as well. Call centers don’t want to unnecessarily take up a great deal of a caller’s time.

The number of calls handled by an agent every hour: This is simply a measure of an agent’s proficiency.

The amount of time a customer spends on hold while being helped by an agent: This is a measurement of how long it takes for an agent to do his or her job. Constantly places callers on hold to get information might be a sign that the agent needs more training.

The percentage of complete call resolution. This is a measurement of the percentage of times that an agent solves the customer’s problem or concern, the first time the customer calls in.

The percentage of hang ups: Because this is often related to long waiting times, it sends a warning that the call center might not be adequately staffed.

The percentage of time that agents are idle: This may be an instance of a lazy agent or simply an over staffing problem.

By keeping track of these performance measures, call centers can make sure they are effectively meeting their clients’ needs, and providing their clients’ customers with the proper support. Call center managers couple these quantitative measurements with qualitative ones by listening in on customer-agent phone calls. They listen for things like: Is the agent using the right tone of voice? Is he or she following the script correctly? Are objections being overcome? Is quality service in general being rendered? It is the responsibility of the call center manager to work closely with agents and change structures or policies in order to improve service.

Learn how a professional call center who is laser-focused on phone sales can earn you more revenue per call and improve your bottom line at http://www.consultsales.com

Ty Price is the E-commerce/Marketing Director of Consult Sales. The professional phone sales call center is engineered to consistently perform with excellence in the consultative phone sales and telemarketing environment, and will deliver more revenue per call than you are currently enjoying. Visit http://www.consultsales.com to see how Ty and Consult Sales can improve your bottom line.

Learn The Secrets Of Customer Experience That Drive Ultra High Business Performance

Posted on by

Is your business stuck in neutral, or worse, drifting backwards?It doesn’t have to be that way.Some companies have figured out the secret for achieving ultra high business performance, and it has nothing to do with anything you’ll find on the balance sheet.

An elite set of companies have uncovered the secrets of customer experience to achieve ultra high business performance.

Customer satisfaction is one of those extremely valuable, yet sometimes elusive, business assets.Despite its value, it won’t show up on your balance sheet as an economic asset. However, get it right and your company can soar above all others in terms of profits, growth, and universal admiration.

Wouldn’t you love to be part of a company like that?With the right tools and advice, you can.

A Journal of Marketing article published in 2006 demonstrated an amazing correlation between high levels of customer satisfaction and ultra high market performance. Using both back-tested and real-world portfolios, Claes Fornell, et al. proved that there was a significant relationship between customer satisfaction levels and market performance.Furthermore, their study demonstrated that between 1997 and 2003, a portfolio of companies with high levels of customer satisfaction

- outperformed the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJIA) by 93%,

- beat the S&P 500 (.SPX) by 201%, and

- schooled the NASDAQ by 335%!

Source: Claes Fornell et al., “Customer Satisfaction and Stock Prices,” Journal of Marketing, January 2006.

It should be no surprise that leading customer satisfaction companies are also well represented in Fortune Magazine’s list of Most Admired companies.In 2007, companies such as General Electric, FedEx, Toyota, Apple, Google, and Starbuck’s were in the top echelon of both the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) and the top 20 Most Admired companies according to Fortune Magazine.It seems obvious that companies with high levels of customer satisfaction are also universally admired by their peers.

Simply put, companies that are leaders in customer satisfaction can achieve not only good performance, but ultra high performance.

So how did these companies unlock the secrets to ultra high performance?Customer satisfaction is obviously the key.But how did they learn to excel in customer satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction is not a single event or interaction. Instead, it is the resulting measure of how well the customer was treated throughout the entire customer experience lifecycle.

Therefore, in order to unlock the secrets of customer satisfaction, you must first focus on delivering an outstanding customer experience.

Customer experience management is not new.However, more and more companies are quickly realizing that customer experience is becoming the new competitive battleground in today’s marketplace.And the stakes are high.Those companies that gain an early advantage build a strong bond between their business and their customers – a bond that is extremely difficult to break. When it comes to customer experience, the first mover advantage can be significant.

Perhaps no company will ever achieve a perfect customer satisfaction score. On one hand, you simply can’t please all of the people all of the time.On the other hand, however, this means that most companies have a lot of room for improvement.

But improving the customer experience is a serious endeavor.It requires executive commitment, patience, and a clear vision. Any company that is serious about customer experience should first begin to think about it as a process.Like any process, the customer experience process can work perfectly (or go horribly wrong), may contain numerous scenarios, and can be analyzed, re-engineered, and optimized.

The customer experience process does not begin and end at your store, sales representative, web site, or call center.It extends from the moment the customer becomes aware of your company and may last until they die, move, or leave you for another company.In short, the customer experience process is broad, deep, iterative, and (hopefully) long running.

Mastering it is no small task.Indeed, great customer experiences don’t happen by accident.They require a keen attention to detail, a focus on every touch point, and an orchestration of all encounters regardless of how each customer may navigate your company.Mastering your customer experience must begin with mastering the end-to-end customer experience process.

To get smart about customer experience, take advantage of the numerous resources available on the internet.Various online sources provide insights, tools, solutions, and advice. Utilize these resources to develop a strategy and perspective of customer experience that makes the most sense for you and your company.

Who knows, you just might unlock the secrets of customer experience that drive ultra high business performance.

Past performance is not an indication of future results.

Robert Howard is the Founder and Chief Executive of ClearBrick LLC, an innovative business services company that provides do-it-yourself business solutions and advice.

For more on customer experience, check out ClearBrick’s innovative Customer Experience Solution Kit.

Shared Business Ethics and Values Can Improve a Teams Performance

Posted on by

Shared business ethics and values make everyone’s performance as individuals or teams much easier.People know what they can and what they cannot do, what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.So where does one begin?

Having strongly communicated business ethics within a values statement is the first place to begin. This values statement must be communicated and internalized by everyone within the company or the organizations.

Companies without values statements usually suggest that these same companies may not have strategic plans in place.Maybe this is why so many companies fight the strategic planning process?

For when you commit specific business ethics to writing, now you must enforce those same values.This is what I believe is the real integrity issue that keeps many businesses from writing a strategic business plan.

After you commit the business ethics and values to writing, then you must make sure that everyone is actively engaged in modeling the desired behaviors.Policies must be reviewed and procedures analyzed to ensure that these same policies and procedures do not violate the newly adopted values statement.

For example, if customer service is number one, then sales team chasing out customers at closing time is not a good behavior.Or maybe the call center team is mandated to keep calls no longer than 3 minutes.This might be a problem if customer satisfaction is a team value.

Beyond the policies and procedures, what happens when a team member violates the values statement?This is where the rubber meets the road, again an issue of commitment and integrity to uphold the values statement.

If no action is taken, the overall performance of the team will suffer.Remember back in school when the teacher’s pet did something wrong and was not challenged by the teacher?The same integrity principle applies here.

The values statement must be uniformly enforced if the team is to truly functional at the highest level possible. If you team is not performing where you think it should be, then return to your values statement as your first step to create a culture of high performance where integrity is first and foremost.

Are you interested in learning more about how to master success? Then you may find this combination e book and e workbook of interest, Three Missing Pieces of Organizational & Personal Success. Visit http://www.processspecialist.com/e-books.htm to learn more about goals, attitudes and self leadership skills as you travel the road to success.

Call me, Leanne Hoagland-Smith, the Business Coach for People & Companies that want improved results, at 219.759.5601 or visit at http://www.processspecialist.com to explore everything from how my solutions double results to articles and resources including the Simply Speaking series.

Is This Any Way to Do Performance Appraisals

Posted on by

In the August issue of HR Magazine, an article written by Paul Falcone was published entitled, “Big-Picture Performance Appraisal.”

Mr. Falcone is an author specializing in human resource topics…

…but, I was taken aback by what he was proposing in this article about how to look at deciding on an individual’s overall rating. He suggests that you go back to the old-school bell-curve concept.

He argues that each unit in the business should first rate itself on a 1 to 5 scale, with a 1 representing significantly under performing, a 3 performing at a 100% level, and a 5 representing significantly over performing. Let’s say a given unit like sales rates its overall performance a 4.2, Falcone says that the overall average total score of all employees in the unit should also equal 4.2. That means if you rate some people over 4.2, you need to make sure others are rated below that number.

I guess the logic is that these two numbers only make sense if they are equal. This is bass ackwards to me–you’re supposed to get overall performance from the bottom up not from the top down when it comes to rating an individual. In my mind, this doesn’t reflect the actual performance of the individual.

If an individual’s overall score is artificially restricted to their business unit’s overall score, how is this fair to the individual? More importantly, how can management look at people in the same position across the company and do an accurate comparative analysis?

Another strange point in this article is that Falcone suggests every business unit and everyone should be striving to be rated a 5 overall! If a 3 is considered a 100% performance level, it would seem to me that most people would be striving to be that “A” employee or “A” business unit. Sure, it is possible that some employees sometimes perform above expectations, but rarely should the performance standards be set so that the employee consistently exceeds expectations for all performance measures.

If employees are rated 4′s and 5′s then they are not being challenged enough. I coach my clients to set the performance standards for each performance measure in a way that asks the employee to stretch even to be rated a 3. If an employee is consistently rated 4′s and 5′s, how to they get challenged to get to their next level?

Falcone also fixates on the overall score as the number to focus on when filling out the appraisal. Here’s another area where I disagree with his thinking. Best practices says you look at each performance measure on its own and score it based on the performance standards for that measure.

At the end of the process an overall score is calculated using the weighted scores of each measure. I suggest you take that one step further…

…instead of showing the overall number on the 1 to 5 scale, you convert it to a %. Why do this?

Well, it’s natural for everyone to want to be rated a 5 instead of a 3 since a 3 is half-way down the scale giving it a connotation of an “average” rating when in fact a 3 represents a 100%, or “A”, performer.

By setting the right performance measures for each position and for each employee and rating them on these measures, you will be aligning your human capital to maximize your organization’s performance. Don’t back in to numbers set at the top. That’s the only way you are really going to know how your employees are performing so you can use those results for organizational development, succession planning, and other human-capital related actions.

Mike is an internationally recognized expert at helping employers meet their business objectives by teaching them how to get the right people into the right seat on their bus. Most employers face continuing challenges in hiring, developing and retaining their best employees. Mike guides his clients through this maze. To experience how this is done, sign up for a free job analysis survey for one of your open positions at www.eSessments.com.

Principles of Performance Management

Posted on by

The origins of Human Performance Systems Analysis can be traced from the late 1950′s and early 1960′s. These were times of activism and social reform in the United States. The field, initially called behavior technology, was a product of that spirit. In the early 1960′s a number of behavioral scientists and their graduate students made the decision to take what they had learned in their learning laboratories and apply those lessons to real world issues of learning and performance.

Business, markets and society have changed. But by and large, the principles of management, the methods and concepts of leadership and performance management have not. Rigid sales quotas, fixed performance targets, “pay for performance” and micro-management from the top are still widely established standards.

There is no lack of criticism of these traditional methods – both in practice and in the business literature. One thing is clear: we need a new understanding of motivation, performance, and responsibility.

The problems companies face today can’t be solved using the thinking and the processes that created them in the first place. A more productive approach is to define what the ‘right’ things are, and thus to examine root of the problem, rather than just treat the symptoms. To take this road, we need to put into question and possibly overcome an entire set of existing convictions.

Most of us work in organizations within the traditional model of command and control. This system may be budget control, target negotiation and subsequent top-down setting, employee evaluations, organizational diagrams, guidelines and policies, central departments, or employee questionnaires. These have been used for decades.

It is, therefore, often difficult to appreciate the amount of talent, time, and money that is wasted through these tools. Mutual trust, employee involvement, intrinsic motivation, and voluntary willingness to perform are being eroded. To question the traditions and to look for alternatives means pioneering work with a model beyond command and control.

Key Principles

1. Do a Performance Improvement Analysis

· First, measure the frequency of behavior (what the individual says or the physical movements made) and the outputs (the physical evidence of completed work produced by those behaviors) prior to any management change. This analysis can be done for just one behavior and output or for many by job category, department and organization. Through this analysis, one measures present performance, establishes standards, specifies why behavior is deficient, calculates the net economic value of improvement after the cost of solutions, and places them in priority order. The result of this analysis is identification of potentially high-payoff behaviors and outputs that can be improved – an important first step, because, surprisingly, key behaviors and outputs are often overlooked or undervalued in organizations.

· Then, introduce the procedures used in Performance Management and quantify the amount of change that occurs in specific time periods. Because the investment in changing behavior is often very low and the economic payoffs may be high, the potential high return on investment usually excites top management

2. Be Specific

· Describe and communicate desired performances and the standards for judging them in terms that are measurable, observable and objective. A description of the events that are signals prompting the response should be included. In training, coaching, measuring performance, feeding back performance data, conducting a performance appraisal, writing procedures, and delivering positive reinforcement, it is essential to be specific. Alas, if the language used is vague, the desired behavior may not occur.

3. Measure

· For any performance shown by the analysis to have sufficient economic value to an organization, measure the frequency of the performance against the desired standards. While most organizations measure some performance, there are, unfortunately, many key outputs and behaviors that are not measured.

4. Give Feedback

· Provide feedback on performance to the individual involved and to the individual’s manager, supervisor, or group leader, rapidly-preferably immediately-with sufficient information to allow for self-correction. Too often, feedback systems for many key behaviors and outputs are either absent or flawed.

5. Deliver Positive Consequences

· Deliver to each individual positive consequences immediately after completion of the performance of the desired behaviors and outputs. The frequency of an individual’s behavior is affected by the consequences that follow it. If the consequences are positive to that individual, the behavior tends to increase; if they are negative, the behavior tends to decrease. Consequences should be delivered for as long as the performance is desired, or until naturally occurring consequences are strong enough to support the behavior. How frequently you provide positive consequences is determined by how often the behavior occurs, the phase of behavior change you are in (causing the first new behavior to occur, changing its frequency, or maintaining it) and the pattern of responses you desire (steady, maximum output, peak for certain periods, etc.

· Unfortunately, in many organizations the wrong consequence system is in place.

Consequences of desired behavior are often negative or neutral. Undesired behavior may be rewarded. The reinforcers are badly delayed. They are delivered only on a group basis (annual company-wide profit sharing). The rewards are short-lived for behavior that is desired long-term. And almost always the positive reinforcement is too infrequent.

Reference

Brethower, D. (1972) Behavior Analysis in Business and Industry: A Total Performance System. Kalamazoo, MI: Behaviordelia Press

Assistant Professor Department of Mathematics Alluri Institute of Management Sciences Warangal – 506001, AP India

Got A Performance Measure Dictionary

Posted on by

Many organisations have hundreds, even thousands, of performance measures. And some of the problems associated with having so many performance measures are:

*lots of measures can be unnecessarily duplicated, and dozens of people are taking dozens of hours each month independently reporting the same things

*measures that should be calculated the same way often aren’t, and therefore don’t have the power of consistency (aka “apples with apples” comparability)

*measures that aren’t brought to life yet have no clear implementation plan or blueprint

*it’s difficult to formally flag unneeded or unimportant measures for deletion or modification

One very important strategy to manage your suite of measures is to have a performance measure dictionary, a structured, single system where details about every measure you monitor is kept up to date.

The data *about* your measures

A well structured Performance Measure Dictionary contains fields where you can detail exactly how each measure is to be named, the correct way to calculate it, the appropriate data to use (and where to find it), how to report it, what signals to interpret and who is responsible for it.

This is the data about your measures, often referred to as metadata, and what types of metadata you choose to define your performance measures is important. It can’t be vague or incomplete – it has to be sufficient for people to know and understand how to report each measure, so the measure actually tells you what you think it’s telling you, and that it is consistent over time.

How to set up your Performance Measure Dictionary

First step in capturing and organising your performance measures is to decide what metadata you’re going to use. At the very least, you’ll need the measure’s name, a brief description, a statement or formula for how it is calculated, where the source data comes from, and who is responsible for the measure.

Second step in setting up your Performance Measure Dictionary is to create a single system to capture these details about all your measures. You could start out using a simple Excel Spreadsheet or Word document, but it will quickly become cumbersome, particularly because it’s difficult to sort and report summary measure information like their current ‘bring to life’ status or all the measures owned by Bob. A Microsoft Access database is a better starting point. And as you get more advanced, some dashboard and scorecard software – like SAS’s SPM – enable you to record your measure definitions.

Third step is to stocktake your measures. This is time consuming, but get it done now and you’ll save much time down the track that would otherwise be wasted trying to determine exactly how a measure was calculated, or whether the wrong data was used, or why two different reports show the same measure with different trends. You can get someone to go around and collect all the performance reports and details, then enter all the measures into your Performance Measure Dictionary. Or you can send copies of a measure definition form throughout your organisation or business for people to fill in and send back to a data entry person.

Fourth step is to develop some standards or policy around how the Performance Measure Dictionary should be used, and how all new measures in the organisation should be treated. Unless the measure has been documented in the Dictionary, it will be ignored by decision makers. Like all new behaviours, it’s not going to be habit straight away, so give it time and encouragement to become the normal way of managing performance measures.

Stacey Barr is the Performance Measure Specialist, helping people to measure their business strategy, goals and objectives so they actually achieve them.

Sign up for Stacey’s free mezhermnt Handy Hints ezine at http://www.staceybarr.com to receive your complimentary copy of her e-book “202 Tips for Performance Measurement”, and get more control over the destiny of your business.

A Performance Measure SelfAssessment Checklist

Posted on by

Where do you start improving your organisation’s performance measures? What kinds of things could you improve about how your organisation measures its performance? In what ways are you already good at performance measurement?

These questions may not be exactly keeping you awake at night, but certainly by answering them, you could both save a lot of time and effort in the process of getting better measures to manage your organisation’s performance. That’s because with the answers to these questions you can decide where to focus your efforts to make performance measurement work better.

So to give you a start in answering these questions, here is a rough-and-ready checklist of the key criteria to assess where your current performance measurement system is working well, well enough, or needs more work. Tick it if you do it well. Tally up your ticks for each section and start exploring how you might improve those sections where your tick count is lowest.

1) Selecting performance measures that are meaningful

[]The organisation’s strategy is the guideline for what should be measured.

[]Each performance measure provides objective evidence of the degree to which a specific result is occurring over time.

[]Ownership of the measures happens.

[]No one is responsible for more than 7 (or so) performance measures.

[]All performance measures are defined using a consistent definition framework that specifies exactly how each measure will be constructed, reported and used.

[]Performance measures are driving the right behaviour (which has been defined).

[]The linkages or relationships between all performance measures are understood.2) Collecting performance measure data that is reliable and relevant

[]Only relevant and useful data is collected.

[]There is a policy that makes explicit the degree of integrity required of data for each measure.

[]The data collection tools that used throughout the business are designed to collect data with the degree of trustworthiness required.

[]Each data item collected is defined consistently as part of a ‘data dictionary’ for the organisation.

[]Data collection processes dovetail into work processes seamlessly with minimum, if any, disruption to operational effectiveness or efficiency.3) Storing and managing performance measure data for easy and quick access

[]Data capture is simple, effective and maintains data integrity.

[]Data can be easily accessed by those who need it, when it is needed.

[]Historical data is readily available when required (historical data means data that is more than a couple of years old).4) Analysing performance measure data to reveal the data’s story

[]All data analyses performed, whether internal or external to our organisation, are focused on answering pre-defined driving questions.

[]Statistical techniques are used validly and appropriately.

[]Variation in the performance of business processes is measured (not % differences, true statistical variation).5) Presenting performance measures to make interpretation easy and valid

[]All performance reports produced have a clearly defined and understood purpose and a clear target audience (or audiences).

[]The physical layout of reports is simple to follow and makes finding information easy and quick.

[]Graphs are the preferred method of presenting performance measures (and the correct graph type is used to answer the driving question).6) Interpreting performance measures to draw the right conclusions

[]The owners of performance measures are the people that interpret those performance measures and communicate their conclusions to others.

[]Statistical methods (such as statistical process control charts) are used to flag signals in the data (e.g. levels of stability and change in process performance).

[]There are consistent and well defined guidelines for interpretation of performance measures (such as a definition of the evidence of a true trend or change in performance levels).

[]People involved in using data and information have the appropriate level of skill in interpreting it effectively, efficiently and validly. 7) Applying performance measures to improve performance

[]The results of performance improvement decisions are tracked using the same measures of performance that these decisions aimed to improve.

[]The results of interpretation of performance measures are an input into our planning review process, taking a visible role in the formulation and evaluation of our business goals & targets.

[]The root causes of performance results are identified through further analysis of lead indicators and/or other data.

[]Performance improvements are decided upon through application of systemic thinking and are prioritised before they are taken on and implemented.

[]Intuition, emotion and gut feel are used to guide further collection and analysis of objective data (both quantitative and qualitative) rather than to drive decision making alone.

Stacey Barr is the Performance Measure Specialist, helping people to measure their business strategy, goals and objectives so they actually achieve them.

Sign up for Stacey’s free mezhermnt Handy Hints ezine at http://www.staceybarr.com to receive your complimentary copy of her e-book “202 Tips for Performance Measurement”, and get more control over the destiny of your business.

Performance Appraisals From Dreaded Routine to Helpful Change Agent

Posted on by

Performance appraisals, as you may know, can be very stressful for both the employee and the manager. I’d like to share some of my tips in making the appraisals less nerve-wracking and more productive.

Tips for Employees

For the employees, performance appraisals are inherently difficult because evaluations are naturally anxiety-provoking. For most people, it is intimidating to feel that you are being critically evaluated. Because many employers are not the best about giving regular feedback, employees are often unsure what to expect and the fear of the unknown is difficult. There is often a good deal riding on these evaluations (your job, a promotion, a raise, etc) so that adds pressure to it.

When you have a review, go in with a strong working knowledge of your own performance appraisal. Know where you have been excelling and where you have been weaker. Proactively saying, “I have struggles a bit on this account and want to improve my sales skills,” will come across very well to your manager and make her want to help you. Also prepare specific questions and ideas about what you need to do your job better. Be careful not to complain but to request specific resources or assistance to help you perform your best.

Recognize whether your boss is giving you helpful criticism or whether he is being overly critical or malicious. If it is the latter, do your best to remove yourself emotionally from the situation and let the criticism roll off you. If your boss is reasonable and has some helpful pointers and ideas, remind yourself how the criticism will help you and that your boss’s purpose is to help you perform your best.

Tips for Managers

For the manager, these evaluations are difficult, especially when constructive criticism needs to be given. While it is important that managers give honest and direct feedback, they often fear compromising the quality of the relationship with their employees, hurting the individual’s feelings, decreasing morale and teamwork. Managers worry about how employees will take feedback and whether it will be taken out of context. Managers sometimes doubt their own leadership abilities and wonder, “who am I to give this type of feedback?”

It is also common for managers to dislike the performance appraisal where almost everything is positive because they worry that their employees will then slack off or think that they are pushovers for going so easy on them.

How to Set up Your Session

Frame the session within the employee’s goals for her career and your goals for her and the company. Create direct links to using the session to make changes with specific incentives. The worst thing to do is not to follow-up because that sends the message that the session was not important. Make sure that the employee has the necessary resources to make the changes you are asking him to make.

How to Deliver Difficult Feedback

The best performance appraisals do not present any shocking information. Managers should give ongoing feedback to employees so employees know what to expect in their appraisals. This reduces the anxiety on both sides and improves the usefulness of the appraisals. Follow-up on the appraisals is equally important.

The employee will best hear feedback (positive or negative) when it helps them to accomplish their goals. If the manager can frame negative feedback as help or advice that can enable the employee to reach his career goals, it will be taken much better and even appreciated. It is also important to balance negative with positive feedback so the employee does not dismiss the important negative feedback as the manager being overly critical.

If your employee reacts negatively, here are a few tips. First, recognize that the employee is likely to have that reaction because they care about their position and want to do a good job. Second, try to empathize with their position or put yourself in their shoes. For a crying employee, you can say, “I see it is very important to you to do well in this position and I really appreciate that. Would you be willing to work together to make that happen?” Third, address the behavior specifically.

If the behavior is inappropriate, the employee needs to know. A good way to diffuse a defensive response is to give specific, concrete, behavioral examples. Fourth, if the employee is having a strong emotional reaction and not hearing your feedback, schedule a follow-up session to discuss it when he is feeling calmer.

Remember that ongoing communication and follow-up make the sessions as productive and change-inducing as possible.

Larina Kase PsyD, MBA is a business psychologist and The New York Times bestselling author of The Confident Speaker. For more resources on the psychology of workplace communication visit http://www.pascoaching.com

Getting Paid for YOUR Job Performance

Posted on by

The current world of pay for performance, whether one works for a business, a non-profit organization or even government at any level, requires a different way of working.In the past, it was enough to work hard, do what you were told and be a team player.That would get you a cost of living raise for sure and maybe a bonus. Not any more.In the pay for performance world, those who follow the old rules are left behind – and in many cases without even the full cost of living increase much less a bonus.No, new rules apply for success and top ratings with pay for performance.These are the new rules.

1. Learn your organization’s mission inside out.All objectives should relate directly back to the mission.It is important not only to do your job but also to know how it fits into the bigger scheme.

2. Make sure you have a job description.Learn your job description well.Make sure you have all the skills that it requires.If you do not, take steps at night and on weekends to insure that you have all the skills described in your job description.Anyone who has more or better skills than you could replace your tomorrow.

3. Get a clear set of performance objectives from your supervisor.Whether you are a first level boss,

a business unit executive, a department head in a local government or an executive director of a nonprofit, you have a boss and your boss has objectives. Make sure your boss or supervisor provides you with your objectives.Take the time to go over what is expected of you and make sure you understand what is due by when and how it is measured and by whom.

4. Again, everybody has a boss.Even CEOs and Executive Directors report to Boards of Directors.Your number one objective is to make sure you understand what your boss expects of you and how your boss’s success is measured.While your boss may be successful and you may not be, if your boss is not successful, then any success on your part will be for nothing.Get inside your boss’s job and her head.

5. If your boss has a boss, get to know her too.Make yourself known.Understand her job and her objectives.How does she define success?If your boss is gone tomorrow you are nothing without having a relationship already in place with her boss too.Note of warning, some bosses are jealous about access to and relationships with their bosses so be sensitive to this.

6. Unless you are in the military or professional sports, forget all this team stuff.Few organizations measure much less reward teamwork.You must often get things done with and through teams but this is often over emphasized.Your success is about you – not about some amorphous group of people brought together randomly to accomplish whatever task.You must shine alone – and stand out a star performer – not as a member of “the team”.

7. While some organizations us peer ratings or what have been called 360 degrees ratings (above, peer and subordinates), these are far from a science in terms of data collection, reliability and linkage to performance.At the end of the day, you are fighting for your performance rating, your raise, your bonus and your next promotion against your peers.Do not view them as team mates, friends, buds or family.They want your money, your rating and often your job.Be professional but not familiar.The world of pay for performance is survival of the fittest to the extreme.

8. Subordinates ARE important.If you do have people who work for you, then your success is based on their success.You must do all you can to make sure they know what their objectives are, that they are on track to meet and exceed every one of them and that you eliminate poor performers who work for you.Make sure they have what they need to do their job.Make sure they shine as stars and make you shine as a star too.

9. Special projects are the kiss of death.Some bosses include in objectives: “special projects are assigned” or “other responsibilities based on the needs of …”Fight these tooth and claw.They are deadly.You can be 110% on every objective and these will drain your time, your focus, your resources and ultimately cause you to fail to meet your overall objectives.If your boss wants you on a special assignment, then have her suspend – in writing – your current objectives and write special and specific ones for the special project including time frames, criteria, dates and so on.Anything less will doom you to not meeting or exceeding your performance objectives.Remember: get it in writing and get it signed and dated.

10. Even if your organization only has on annual performance review per year, sit down with your boss to review your performance formally every six months.Every three months is even better.Come prepared with a summary of your objectives and your quantified accomplishments for each of the objectives. Do not throw in extra things like “ran the company bowling tournament”.Have a candid and formal review of each of your objectives and your performance to-date against each.If you are not on-track to meet an objective, include an “action plan” to pro-actively meet and exceed the objective with specifics.

Pay for performance can be good and it can be bad.It can be good if your work at being the star of your organization by knowing and exceeding every one of your objectives and knowing how to make your boss successful at the same time.Pay for performance is deadly if you work hard and do your job and expect to get a raise much less a bonus.It is a new world and that new world requires a new and different set of actions to be successful.

George F. Franks, III is the President of Franks Consulting Group, a Bethesda, Maryland management consulting and leadership coaching practice.George has over twenty-five years of experience working with companies of all sizes, nonprofit organizations and leaders.He is a member of the Institute of Management Consultants (USA) and other professional and nonprofit organizations.

Franks Consulting Group is on the web at: http://franksconsultinggroup.com

George can be contacted at: gfranks@franksconsultinggroup.com

Increase Claims Recovery by Engineering Subrogation Performance

Posted on by

The term subrogation used to bring about mixed emotions for adjusters.Now, with more resources available, identifying subrogation potential claims and meeting recovery goals are a higher priority for most companies.The subrogation landscape has continued to evolve beyond traditional insurance claim business models over the past 10 years. The formation of the National Association of Subrogation Professionals (NASP) in the late 1990′s has contributed in part to a new group of thinkers who are visionary and results oriented in the subrogation space. The architecture and vision put on paper a few years ago has now become reality in subrogation practice.The incorporation of new technology, performance indicators, benchmarking studies, and alternative funding now offer carriers, captives and self-insured entities the ability to engineer their Subrogation performance and results.

If you can remember “back when” subrogation was handled manually, prioritized by the

tallest pile of files or mail, and recovery goals predicted based on last year’s recovery

numbers, you know we have come a long way.(If you are still handling subrogation as

mentioned above I suggest that you read on..)

Unlocking capital through “subrogation assets” has now gained a higher status in most

companies as “subrogation recovery and monetary assets”, together, have a certain ring to

CFO’s and Investment Executives.Because of the higher profile of subrogation, new

ways of doing business have readily been embraced by leading edge companies.

Technology:

State of the art technology is now available to efficiently expedite any type of

subrogation claim.Subrogation operations are now able to process in a paperless

environment through imaging. Identifying subrogation opportunities through the use of

technology allows companies and captives to increase subrogation potential claims although having trained adjusters on the lookout for subrogation claims is still preferred over reviewing closed or flagged files.

Prioritizing cases and tracking progress through new technology has reduced recovery cycle times by

increasing efficiencies in workflow. There are platforms and software that incorporate

scoring based on subrogation potential, liability characteristics, type of claim, statutes of

limitations, state laws and claim characteristics.Scoring, along with adverse profiling

can assist companies and captives in predicting accurate recovery results and in decreasing cycle times.

Performance Initiatives:

As a result of earlier benchmarking studies by the Ward Group and the new Auto and

Property and Workers Compensation Benchmarking studies sponsored by the National Association of Subrogation Professionals (NASP information is located at http://www.subrogation.org), companies now have a

roadmap to achieving at least averageor “above average” recovery goalsbased on their

lines of business and particular size and state.Adjusters and Subrogation personnel now have higher

standards to meet to achieve goals and utilize technology tools.Subrogation expertise

and training can be achieved through educational opportunities and certification

through NASP.

Leveraging alternative funding to capitalize subrogation assets is an attractive alternative

to companies looking to utilize capital for new business initiatives, credit enhancement, cost reductions, guaranteed recovery or for financing capital surplus.

Through scoring technology and predictable outcomes, along with benchmarking, Subrogation assets can now be capitalized in advance of recovery through alternative funding.

Industry Trends

As efficiencies improve and technology is utilized, some companies have already decided

to utilize outsourcing resources for improving performance in subrogation.

Employing various work queues in subrogation can separate tasks that

traditionally have been handled by internal adjusters.By doing so, employees who are

skilled in negotiation will not be slowed by assembly of evidentiary material, or by

manually ordering reports, or following up on money to be collected on settlements.

Expanded resources in subrogation will continue to allow companies and captives to become more efficient, to lower their costs of recovery, reduce cycle times, increase recovery results and ultimately engineer their subrogation performance.Captives and companies who embrace partial

or complete outsourcing partnerships may more rapidly achieve their desired goals in

recovery, as opposed to allowing the subrogation function to remain with the third party administrator, whose core expertise is claims adjustment, medical cost control and management of disability.Those entities who involve executive management early on to help educate

and bridge the gaps of the benefits of various subrogation resources and desired financial

benefits will be well on their way to building an effective subrogation program.

Kimberley J. Gunther is Chief Marketing Officer/Vice President-Business Development for Latitude Subrogation Services, LLC, Bloomfield Hills, MI.Ms. Gunther is a founding board member of the National Association of Subrogation Professionals and is a frequent speaker and author on subrogation management, benchmarking and subrogation technology.Ms. Gunther is the founding editor of “SUBROGATOR” magazine (http://www.subrogation.org) and has assisted insurers with outsourcing solutions to improve business performance in the US, UK and India.