Creating An Employee Scorecard

by Marilyn
(Warsaw, In USA)

I have 7 employees and I would like to create a scorecard to measure their performance. No matter what I do does not motivate them, so in doing this, I was hoping to show them their progress.

It must be kept simple so that they understand it and can review at any time they feel like it.

Comment From Shelley

Hi Marilyn

Let me start with saying you can't motivate anyone! Certainly the old carrot and stick approach does work - for the short term - as you are obviously finding out.

But for long-term inspired high performance that needs to come from within the individual.

Certainly as a leader you can set the conditions that enable a person to feel inspired (see more about that in the ebook Creating An Inspiring Work Environment.

A scorecard is one of the techniques that is carrot and stick. You get good marks and I'll reward you - you get bad marks and I'll punish you. Either way it is putting the responsibility for performing standards outside the individual - any time you do this the person's performance over the long-term will decline.

So, what to do?

As discussed in Creating An Inspiring Work Environment

1. Help the individual work to his or her strengths on a regular basis

2. Give them more control over their destiny

3. Help them to connect with what they are doing on a daily basis - to a bigger more meaningful purpose. E.g. they aren't just selling airline tickets - they are helping people to have the holidays of a lifetime.

The way that a scorecard would work is if you sit with the individual and ask them:

1. What behaviors/skills are important to doing your job well?

2. Rate yourself on how you think you are performing in each of these areas.

3. Which areas do you feel your career/enjoyment of your job/success would be enhanced if you improved?

4. Which areas do you feel you will never improve on and you need to find other/(better) ways to get this part of the job done.

Over at the Align-Lead-Inspire Club, the Assessing Team Members Performance Template may also be useful as a kicking off point for you. However, nothing works as well as designing the work environment so a person wants to shine.

I discuss helping people to work to their strengths in more detail at: Managing The Individual to Develop Team Strength


Hope that helps
Shelley