Page 174 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

the mobile performance management process � 153

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Once you’ve agreed to the goals for the year you can breathe a big sigh
of relief and go about your business until it’s evaluation time again,
right? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Now you work for your employee as he or
she sets out to achieve those ambitious goals. You don’t take responsi-
bility for his or her work, but you are there to remove obstacles when
needed. You’ll be a coach and an encourager at times, and you’ll be
there to give valuable feedback to help keep performance on track.
Sometimes you’ll need to go out and get resources—new technol-
ogy perhaps, additional staff or volunteers, maybe just a three-hole
punch—that they’ll need along the way. Maybe they need to learn
some new skills or to develop relationships with new people. You
might have to pony up for some training or a trip to meet with them.
Your job now is to help them get to the finish line.

evaluation and reward
When you set goals and other expectations with your employees you
will also need to be clear about how evaluations will be made and how
each person will be rewarded based on the performance you have both
agreed to. That is the time to make sure your employee understands
completely what is expected. You should make sure you have plenty of
time to talk these expectations over with your employee. Encourage
questions and discussion, because you don’t want to set the employee’s
performance expectations in a vacuum. You need to know the reality
your employee faces and to be open to learning something that might
affect something that you both agree to.
With this kind of setup, performance evaluation is a relative
breeze: you both go down the list of accomplishments and expecta-
tions point by point. You’ll be able to say with confidence whether
each has been accomplished or not. Reward according to the commit-
ment you made when you set goals.
Sometime, perhaps after your annual evaluations, sit down with
employees and think about what would improve performance for the