Do You Use Checklists?

I’ll confess, I’m a list maker. I love to use checklists to manage my life. I use them for everything from shopping, to menu planning, to home maintenance chores, and especially for organizing and tracking my work.

But have you ever thought of using checklists as part of performance management?

There are tons of applications where checklists would make life much easier for managers, employee, preceptors, HR, etc. They’re especially handy when it comes to assessing competencies. Here are just some examples of situations where you could use checklists:

• Documenting staff clinical competencies for regulatory compliance in healthcare settings
• Validating safety procedures on a manufacturing floor
• Tracking completion of onboarding or orientation activities for new hires
• Verifying the acquisition of competencies or skills after training
• General competency evaluation
• Tracking completion of required training, such as HIPAA, ethics, sensitivity, sexual harassment, etc.

That’s one of the things I love about eAppraisal. It enables you to set up competency assessments using a matrix format, and even lets you set up a separate competency evaluation process that runs in parallel with your annual performance appraisal process.

We have a reference article called, Leveraging the Power of Competency Checklists in Halogen eAppraisal, that goes into a bit more detail on this capability. You should check it out. Maybe add it to your “list of things to read”.

Can you think of any other talent management processes where a checklist could really streamline things for everyone?