Providing your mature age workers with the opportunity to develop or improve the skills, knowledge and personal attributes necessary to fulfil their present responsibilities and to help them pursue their career goals is an important way to improve organisational effectiveness and individual staff performance.
Mentoring
Employers can harness the experience of mature age workers by offering them the opportunity to mentor a less experienced worker.
Read more: Mentoring
Performance management
Performance management is about enhancing quality performance, management and leadership within your organisation. The goals of performance management should be to:
- evaluate the individual,
- develop the individual,
- boost the performance of the organisation.
Performance assessment is often tied in with the review of salaries.
Staff evaluating performance should measure it in a holistic way. For example, one worker may not produce as quickly as another, but could still make fewer mistakes, require less supervision and create work of a higher standard, thus making them a more productive worker overall.
Performance agreements
Performance agreements are written agreements between managers and staff covering expected outcomes of individual jobs. The agreement is usually made at the beginning of a six-month period and reviewed periodically, as agreed.
Performance agreements are aimed at:
- fostering high performance,
- ensuring that employees and managers are aware of what is expected of them individually and within teams,
- ensuring that there is a common basis for performance management across the organisation,
- identifying the level of salary paid in relation to individual performance,
- providing a mechanism for regular two-way feedback on performance,
- recognising that opportunities for learning and career development are a matter of joint responsibility between the employee and manager.
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Performance bonuses
These can be written into a worker’s performance agreement. For example, based on their performance over a set period, a bonus or percentage of the total salary can be awarded for a high level of performance.
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Rewards and recognition programs
Recognition for loyalty, effort and productivity are highly effective in retaining and improving the performance of your workforce. These programs can be either immediate or planned.
Planned employee recognition is a pre-arranged, more frequently scheduled way of acknowledging contributions and accomplishments of an individual or team. Examples include rewards and recognition for:
- safety,
- customer service,
- public service,
- employee of the month,
- productivity,
- outstanding achievements.
Immediate employee recognition provides employee rewards and recognition at any time for demonstration of behaviour that is of value to the business, contributes to the goals and objectives of the organisation or simply works as recognition of individual or team accomplishments.
Examples include rewards and recognition for:
- teamwork,
- project completion,
- suggesting a new or modified business practice,
- exemplary effort,
- employee appreciation.
Read more: Example - employee recognition program
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