Importance of Ethics
Most of us would agree that it is ethics in practice that makes sense; just having it carefully drafted and redrafted in books may not serve the purpose. Of course all of us want businesses to be fair, clean and beneficial to the society. For that to happen, organizations need to abide by ethics or […]
A Resume – What it is and Why You Need One?
While writing about resume, the first thing that came to my mind is the unique comparison of a Resume with that of a movie trailer. As the movie trailer is short, crisp and precise, similarly a resume is a trailer of the movie “YOU”. The way audience has 3 hours to judge a movie; a […]
Essential Steps Involved in Building High-Performance Teams
High-Performance teams ensure the long-term success of an organization by delivering excellence in business outcomes through collaborative teamwork. Such teams rarely are formed naturally, rather they are formed and managed with certain strategic intent. Given below are some of the crucial steps involved in the formation of High-Performance teams: Fostering Collaboration amongst the team members […]
Benefits of Enterprise Risk Management
In the previous article, we have discussed the concept of enterprise risk management (ERM) and how it is different from traditional risk management. We also discussed how enterprise risk management (ERM) is now being adopted by an increasingly large number of companies across the world. This large-scale adoption is because of the various benefits which […]
Resolving an Ethical Dilemma
In a business setting mangers are put to test when they face the challenge of resolving an ethical dilemma. Often certain situations do not fall in the ambit of procedures or the official code of conduct and this is when the managers feel the heat. The problem with ethical decision making is that a decision […]
Performance appraisal is considered as a challenging task by many business managers. It becomes all the more daunting in case of virtual workplace.
With the virtual team members distributed globally and coming from different cultures and backgrounds, it is important to ensure that the entire process of performance evaluation is perceived as fair and upright by all the stakeholders.
Let us look at the below example to better understand where the real challenge lies:
Steve Brown is a Module Lead in a reputed IT firm based in US. He has two software engineers reporting to him, Justin & Peter. Justin works out of the same office as that of Steve, while, Peter sits at another remote location.
Steve has never met Peter face-to-face, though they regularly stay in touch through work-related emails and phone calls. On the other hand, Steve meets Justin everyday and they get more opportunities like coffee and lunch breaks to have casual discussions.
During these sessions, Steve also gives informal feedback to Justin. Thus, Steve feels a higher degree of personal connect with Justin while he finds the talks with Peter more serious and mostly, task-oriented. Also, he never gets to see Peter’s working style, additional efforts or how long he stays in office etc.
At the end of the year, when the time for performance review comes, Steve finds himself in a dilemma. He realizes that though both Justin and Peter have met their pre-defined goals but his opinions are favorably inclined towards Justin.
This usually happens because visual images have more profound impact on human mind. Thus we see from the above example that managers should think objectively for comparing and assessing the individual performance of co-located and virtual team members. Each process stage is equally critical for a fair and just performance appraisal.
The virtual team leader should set clear and precise SMART goals where S stands for Specific, M stands for measurable, A stands for attainable, R stands for realistic and T stands for time-specific.
All the goals have to be 100% result-oriented without any scope for subjective assessment. It is better to explicitly define all the success criteria in consultation with the team member at the project’s kick-off stage itself.
Both the leader and the team member should agree to the defined objectives. This would command greater commitment from the employee. The goals have to take into account team accountability as well as individual performance.
Team accountability goals will promote group interaction, team cohesion and collaborative efforts. The seven critical competencies of virtual team members (discussed earlier) should also be factored-in when deciding the goals.
The leader can monitor the performance of their virtual team members by using a combination of traditional methods like daily/weekly progress reports, frequent review meetings and keeping specific time for weekly informal feedback sessions & more innovative ones like tracking web activity and computer usage.
It is advisable to seek utmost discretion while adopting innovative performance monitoring approaches which usually jeopardize the trust demonstrated in the employees.
Rather than the single source assessment by the manager, it would be highly beneficial to use 360 degree performance assessment for virtual project teams. This gives a comprehensive picture with inputs from oneself, line manager, functional manager, project leader, client and team members.
Managers should not forget that the performance reviews serve as opportunities for giving and receiving feedback about goals achievement, creating individual development plans, providing inputs for reward & recognition program and defining future action plans.
None of these basic objectives should be neglected in cases of virtual team members.
A poorly done performance review makes the employee sitting at a far-flung location dissatisfied, hence decreasing his energy and motivation to perform.
How a performance review is completed by a manager has huge impact on the productivity levels of their team members.
For a successful virtual team, the onus lies on the leader to ensure that the good performance is recognized and fairly rewarded even if he has not met the individual in-person.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
