Q. How do you measure their performance?
We put a lot of time in performance appraisals throughout the year to judge whether the person’s getting it. If not, let’s not wait till the end of the year to nail them in the review. …
We do 90-day reviews with new employees then [another after] 30 more days if there are any areas that aren’t being exceeded. [If there are,] they go through our whole process: We give them verbal notice, written notice, performance plan with realistic measures and goals, and termination.
Q. On the flip side, how do you reward employees for good performance?
You’ve got to recognize your people for adherence to things that are important to you.
You’ve got to create a system that you can actually implement. Technology allows for these things to occur. The Web is a powerful tool to keep people connected in real time.
We have a program called G.R.O.W. It’s an acronym for Great Reward Opportunities With Celtic. That program is a Web-based, real-time program, which recognizes and rewards people.
We put about $100,000 into the G.R.O.W. program each year. People can take their pay out quarterly either in cash or time off. It’s recognizing people for adherence to our core values.
All our managers are able to recognize employees by just logging in to our Web-based application. It sends an e-mail notification to the employee that [they] received X points, and then those points go into a bank. They’re weighted, so a person with 10 points versus a person with two points is going to have more of that pool of money for that quarter.
Recognizing people in the act of doing good is probably more important than bonuses and money. Yeah, they need a paycheck, but they want to know if they’re doing something worthwhile for the organization.
If I see somebody being accountable to a project, I’ll log in to our system and give them two or three points and a little message saying, ‘I’m happy you were able to hit that project. You did a nice job on it.’
If you put together a rewards program that takes five steps and mailing letters, are you going to take the time to do that? No, but log on and type in someone’s name, and instantly they get an e-mail. You really
just get people to buy in to your core values because you’re constantly recognizing them.
HOW TO REACH: Celtic Healthcare Inc., (800) 355-8894 or www.celtichealthcare.com
