Untitled Document

Praise for Painless Performance Evaluations!

From HR Magazine, March 2006

Supervisors and managers responsible for employee performance evaluations will find advice, formats for recording performance, tips on preparing for performance meetings with employees and more in this handbook on making performance evaluation part of the supervisor’s daily routine.

Author Marnie E. Green, founder of the Management Education Group in Chandler, Ariz., details performance management roles played by supervisors, executives, employees, human resource professionals and others.

Noting that “forms and formats are largely irrelevant,” Green says that organizations bog down in details when they should focus on making certain that performance management is regularly and easily updated and discussed. Green does not prescribe one system of performance management but gives readers tools and ideas to use within their current systems. In Painless Performance Evaluations, Green looks at:

Setting goals. Make performance expectations clear with tools, including success criteria, completion deadlines and progress reports. Work with employees to develop performance goals.
Documenting performance. Reasons for performance documentation can include creating work histories and supporting managerial decisions such as firings or training choices. Green lists the kinds of information supervisors should have in their files on each employee, and she notes which data are inappropriate for supervisors to have.
Making performance management a daily routine. Tips on becoming “a more disciplined performance manager” include using e-mail as performance documentation and using performance logs regularly.
Learning to identify performance problems. Assess whether your concerns about an employee are based on “legitimate performance issues or [your] personal pet peeves.”
Giving legal and objective ratings. Learn how to explain rating categories to employees and how to create legally defensible ratings.
Writing performance evaluation documents. Green lists possible information sources for evaluations, discusses how employees’ self-evaluations can help both employees and supervisors, and looks at how specificity and examples make evaluations effective.
Conducting evaluation meetings. Three rules apply: Eliminate surprises; let the employee talk more than the supervisor; and focus on the future, not the past.

“You hit a home run with your first swing of the bat. The writing is clear and straightforward and the content is dead-on. Best of all, you have avoided all the usual HR mumbo-jumbo and given supervisors a tool they can really use.”

--Michael Ingersoll, Ingersoll Consulting

“Once again, Marnie Green is squarely on target dealing with a key management challenge, the often ‘dreaded’ performance evaluation. Marnie’s new book lays out a simple but powerful set of tools to make performance evaluations a positive experience for everyone involved.”

--Bill Stein, Retired Director of Administration, Port of Los Angeles

“Painless Performance Evaluations is broken down very nicely to make succinct points. Makes for an excellent desk tool for reference.”

--Valerie Rodak, Assistant Director, San Diego County Library

“Painless Performance Evaluations is a collection of short, practical, easy-to-apply principles that will make your supervisory life much easier!”

--Janice L. Ramirez, Ph.D., Assistant Superintendent, Human Resources, Mesa Unified School District

“In most organizations, managers and employees dread the performance appraisal process and are even more dissatisfied with its impact on business results. In this book, Marnie Green presents a practical outline for a sound performance management process, and gives the reader all the tools necessary to implement it. Both managers and employees can then view performance management as a valuable asset to running the business and charting their futures.”

--Kathy Haake, Human Resources Manager, Salt River Project

“What a fabulous perspective on employee performance management. Ms. Green addresses and embraces issues that will help organizations get in touch with their most valuable assets.”

--Fred Bocker, SPHR, Owner, Fishel & Bocker HR Associates, Inc. and Arizona State SHRM Director

Order Painless Performance Evaluations Here!