Owning and operating a restaurant is as daunting as it is promising. For both the new restaurateur and the seasoned professional the daily ins and outs can get frustrating.

While there are some things you can’t control – like a restaurant equipment breakdown or the occasional upset customer - poor employee performance is a factor that you have the ability to correct.

You expect a lot from your employees, and that’s understandable. Unfortunately the expectations you set and the performance you receive don’t always go hand in hand, and more often than not poor employee performance is a result of poor management.

Here are five ways you, as manager, negatively affect your staff’s performance:

You’re not complimenting enough

It’s a given that members of your staff get an earful when something goes wrong. Detailed feedback is expected, but how often is the same attention paid to staff accomplishments? If you want your employees to feel motivated and proud of the work they do it’s your job to make them feel like their job is worth doing.

Empathize and realize that every employee has different opinions and expectations about their job. Provide just as much detail in positive feedback as you would accidents or missteps. In a workplace full of negative comments your staff eventually tunes out the negativity. On the other hand, if employees grow accustomed to hearing when they’ve done a good job they’ll be more likely to pay attention when you’ve got something negative to say.

You’re micromanaging

Managers often see underperforming employees as a teaching opportunity. This is a good thing, but can also be detrimental when you take it upon yourself to make sure every aspect of your problem employee’s job is done correctly.

Taking away an employee’s responsibility is the quickest way to make that employee mentally check out and put even less effort into their work. A good way to maneuver around doing the job for them is to spread several layers of quality control among your staff. This way you can get your own work done and your employees will feel like you’re not looking over their shoulder all the time.

You play favorites

Applying standards unevenly is terrible. When you’re setting guidelines and telling your employees one thing only to let one or two of them slack off because they’re “in” with you you’re sending a mixed message. Pretty soon your “star” server is slacking off because they’re feeling entitled, and the rest of your crew starts to do the same because they resent how you treat your favorite employee.

If you want everyone to do side work you need to stick to your guns and make everyone do side work, it’s that simple.

You’re not setting a good example

Going hand in hand with not playing favorites, if you as manager aren’t following the guidelines you establish then you’re setting the wrong kind of example. Being hypocritical by not adhering to the rules you set gives your employees the notion that you don’t really care about the rules.

Ducking out early to spend time with the family may sound like a good idea because “I’m the manager and I work harder than anyone else” but what you’re really saying to your employees is “I know I’m on the schedule but I feel like going home”. Your employees don’t care what reasons you give for breaking the rules, all they care about is that you’re breaking them. Once this happens trying to reverse the process is like attempting to remove poison from soup.

You haven’t outlined a clear path for advancement

It may surprise you, but that star server we spoke of earlier might not always want to be in a serving position.

Without a clear path for advancement you’re most efficient employees will eventually start looking for advancement somewhere else. Be sure you’ve outlined very clearly how an employee can move up the ladder, and don’t make the only requirement be the person with the most years under their belt. It’s frustrating to an employee when the only qualification their superior has over them is a few extra months.

Strong, consistent management in the form of setting good examples and keeping the lines of communication open can make managing a restaurant an extremely rewarding experience. You’re the hub that holds the spokes (your employees, your kitchen, your customer’s satisfaction) together on the ever-turning wheel that is your restaurant, and it’s easy to start throwing around blame when something goes wrong. Before disrupting your forward momentum further try taking a look in the mirror first, you may be part of the problem.

Andrew Call provides blog insights regarding restaurant management and marketing at The Back Burner. The top-rated food service blog is written by the employees of Tundra Specialties, a company specializing in restaurant supply, parts, and a wide variety of foodservice equipment and sundries.

In fact, some would say that that the negative outweighs the positive in terms of frustration, stress and diminished morale (Hey, I deserve a higher rating than that!)

Maybe it is worse than tax time.

How do you eliminate dread and drudgery of annual employee reviews and turn them into something welcome and valuable?

Change Your Organization’s Approach to Appraisals

The first step is recognizing that performance management is an ongoing practice, not a once a year task. This approach ensures employees get the continual direction, feedback and development they need to continuously improve and succeed.

Ultimately, your organization’s performance management process should help your employees develop and sustain high performance— all year long.

Which means the annual performance review should be exactly that – a review of the performance feedback you’ve already provided your employees.

Naturally, getting your managers and employees onboard and fully engaged in ongoing  performance management discussions is critical to the effectiveness of your performance management program as a whole.

So why not make it easy for them?

How to Get Your Managers and Employees Onboard

Ensure your performance management process, forms, training and tools are designed to:

• Help employees achieve their goals and develop the competencies they and the organization need for continued success.
• Provide managers the coaching resources they need to guide their employees, develop them and foster high performance. Here are 5 ways to get managers on board with talent management.

If you want to take your performance management process to the next level – and truly demonstrate how it is driving results for your organization – don’t wait until the annual performance review season to get your managers and employees thinking about performance.

Make performance management an ongoing practice, not a once a year task.

For some great resources on how to make performance management an ongoing practice in your organization, start with the Performance Management Center of Excellence.

The center is a veritable best-practices buffet of expert articles, white papers, archived webinars and case studies that cover the how and why of implementing an effective employee performance management system.

Visit the Performance Management Center of Excellence today — and give tax time its rightful moniker as the most un-wonderful time of the year.

So what do you do when an employee has a worldview of their performance that has nothing to do with your reality?

Ignore their perspective, and your ROI on the conversation is the equivalent of talking to a government clerk with 30 years experience about the finer points of the Nordstrom customer experience program – while you’re still 3rd in line at the DMV.

Pointless, right?

On May 9th, Kris Dunn – Chief Human Resources Officer for Kinetix and creative genius behind http://www.hrcapitalist.com/ and http://www.fistfuloftalent.com/ – will give a comprehensive breakdown of the five most common faces managers see during performance reviews.

Kris will break down the five personas – including the Star, the Diva, the Deflector, the 9 to 5 and the Upwardly Mobile – and how to identify them. He’ll then explain how managers can engage each of these personas to maximize performance discussions and drive higher performance.

Presenter: Kris Dunn, Chief Human Resources Officer for Kinetix

Date: May 9, 2012

Time: 1pm – 2pm ET

Register Now

This webcast is designed to help HR and managers bridge the perception gap between how a manager thinks the employee is doing, and how the employee actually perceives their own performance.

Register for The Five Faces Managers See During Performance Reviews webinar and learn how your coaching and communication skills are a key tool for maximizing organizational performance.

Metaphorically speaking, laser beams and organization-centric goal management (and there’s no acronym for that!) are amazingly similar.

Picture how a laser beam works:

When all the light waves from a given source come together so that that they’re all in phase, we end up with (you guessed it) a laser beam. And when you focus that beam on a given target, the results can be remarkable.

In fact, the concentrated light waves are powerful enough to cut through a thick piece of metal like it’s a pound of butter.

In the work world, when every employee in a company concentrates his or her time and energy on organizational goals (i.e. goal alignment), it’s easier to “cut through” the challenges and obstacles that stand in the way of success.

Yes, just like a laser beam.

Why is Goal Management So Important?

With organization-centric goal management employees throughout the entire company align their individual goals with the organizational goals they support. This alignment is critical to effective goal management since it ties every employee’s goals to the organization’s overall strategy, not just to his or her manager’s success.

In the research report Strategic HR and Talent Management: Predictions for 2012 (PDF), Josh Bersin of Bersin & Associates discusses how organizations that regularly revisit their goals dramatically outperform those organizations that create annual cascading-goal programs.

Without strong goal alignment, employees can still achieve their individual goals. However this individual success doesn’t necessarily contribute to the success of the organization as a whole. And this lack of alignment can spell failure for an organization.

Goal Management is an On-going Activity

Goal management requires regular continuous dialogue between managers and employees to ensure individual and organizational performance stay on track. These performance discussions allow everyone to adjust their goals as needed to keep pace with evolving business and market requirements.

You might think effective goal management is only important for aligning priorities in larger organizations, but not so. It can also have a dramatic impact in smaller ones, too.

Does your company use an organization-centric goal management process or are you relying on a cascading-goal program? If you’re not sure or could use a little more clarification on goal management best practices, take a moment to visit the Goal Management Center of Excellence.

It’s a fantastic one-stop resource offering expert articles, white papers, success stories and archived webinars related to goal management. These resources can help you define a goal management strategy to ensure your workforce is aligned, inspired and delivering exceptional results.

“Fill in the job application… Complete the open enrolment form… The leave request form is on the intranet…. Did you sign off that you’ve read the employee handbook? Now about that TPS report cover…”

(OK that last one’s a joke for you Office Space fans.)

It’s no one’s fault. Forms are a part of our day-to-day lives and exist in almost any working environment. And yes, HR oversees more than its fair share. But if you look closer at the data being collected, many forms are mission critical to how your organization runs its business.

Consider the much maligned performance evaluation form. Who’s kidding who? Very few people relish the thought of completing one. But making the process engaging, focused and yes, easy can go a long way to capturing the rich data that will ultimately help your organization to:

• assess critical competencies that help your company compete,
• monitor goal achievement so that corporate objectives are on track,
• identify areas for development to foster continuous improvement, and
• competitively reward performance, fairly and accurately.

How do you make the “form” as painless as possible? That’s your challenge HR, but we have some tips that can help.

How to put your forms… well… in good form

A great employee performance evaluation form:

• Is easy use - It guides managers and employees as they fill it out, and gives HR and executives the information they need to make strategic decisions about their workforce.
• Has a logical flow - It moves from discussion about past performance to discussion about development needs, new goals, career aspirations and professional/career development needs.
• Has a clear focus - It provides clear guidelines so managers and employees know exactly what information to provide, what ratings mean, how to get information they need, etc.
• Uses a consistent, descriptive rating scale - It uses a best-practice long rating style that provides descriptive statements illustrating the various levels of competency demonstration.

A great resource that brings these best-practices together in one place is the Employee Evaluation Forms Center of Excellence. This center of excellence is packed with tips, samples and best-practices information on creating appraisal forms that employees and managers will love and effective tools for driving high-performance. Check out these employee evaluation form resources then let us know if you find them helpful or if you have questions about effective form design.