If you put in effort and time to hire remote staff in the Philippines and if you trust them to do a good job, you may not feel the need to track their productivity or activities. Under the right conditions, a hands-off approach boosts morale and efficiency.
However, for most companies, it’s better to have a system in place for employee evaluation. How your workers perform their daily tasks has a major impact on the success or failure of your organisation. Work performance is defined as how well a person executes their responsibilities and assignments.
Why a performance review is important
This typically checks quality, quantity, and even conduct. Depending on your industry, you might also include the following assessment criteria: design, strategy, communication, revenue, creativity, decision-making, leadership, and so on. Essentially, employee evaluation is done with respect to:
- goals and objectives set
- responsibilities laid out
- expectations for the role
Measuring performance helps your business operate and grow to its maximum potential. Evaluating how your workers are doing will lead to higher job satisfaction, motivation, and profits. Other reasons why you must measure employee performance are:
- It helps employees, especially your new hire hire Filipino VA, recognise areas for growth.
- It supports SMART goal setting to ensure they aren’t too ambitious or too easy.
- It enables you to assess the systems you have in place and the growth of your company.
- It provides understanding on how to implement a culture for nurturing high-performing staff.
- It creates fair recognition and appreciation as well as personalised coaching and feedback.
- It ensures that your entire team is calibrated towards the same objectives and goals.
- It gives insights on deeper issues that are beyond hiring Filipino remote workers.
How to measure work performance
Conducting a performance review doesn’t have to be complicated. Many managers are worried about using performance tracking software and reading complex data sets, but it’s not as difficult as rocket science. Here are some suggestions on how to accurately assess staff performance:
Create reasonable standards
These are what you’ll be basing your key performance indicators (KPIs) on. The purpose behind them is to establish expectations for your new hire VA in the Philippines or elsewhere. It provides them a means for gauging their success and progress.
Standards differ according to salary, job description, industry, and several other factors. Still, there are key standards that work for all sectors, such as:
- Time management – covers scheduling, multi-tasking, prioritisation, and other skills
- Technical standards – covers certification compliance, training completion, and new learning
- Communication and teamwork – covers writing, active listening, inclusion, and collaboration
- Accountability – covers the creation of a direct line of responsibility for mistakes and recognition
To successfully set standards, ensure that they’re realistic, measurable, objective, and clearly stated in writing. Doing so minimises confusion, miscommunication, and misinterpretation for both employees and employers. This is made possible by following these distinct steps:
- Evaluate the current description of the role.
- Discuss with workers how their daily tasks align with the description.
- Check previous goals and whether employees have achieved them before.
- Know what values are most relevant to your staff and organisation.
- Select parameters or areas considered successful in the different roles.
- Determine metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) for ongoing assessments.
- Establish a rating system for employee evaluation against the set standards.
Even the best standards need modifications over time. To determine if adjustments are necessary, ask yourself if the standard is easy to measure, if it’s realistic, if the average employee meets it, and if workers express confusion about it. When the answer is yes to most or all of these questions, make the correct changes.
Also, before you hire a virtual assistant in the Philippines or make any drastic changes to your workforce, consider a trial period for checking performance standards. Encourage your staff to give honest feedback about the potential, sustainability, and language of the standards.
Choose how to measure
There are many different ways to measure and analyse performance data. Regardless which method you pick, remember to use a combination of hard numbers with soft insights. This allows you to understand what you’re looking at better.
Graphic rating scales
A typical scale uses sequential numbers, like 1 to 10 or 1 to 100 in increments of 10, for rating relative performance in certain areas. It’s used for rating behaviours such as participation, decision-making, and task understanding. It may also note frequency of specific activities like logging in on time.
Management by Objectives
Also known as management by results or MBO, this process allows managers and their teams to conduct SMART goal setting. Together, they determine individual goals, alignments, and evaluations. MBO helps employees know exactly what are expected of them as they’re part of the process.
360-degree feedback
This system accounts for the assessments, impressions, and feedback from the circle of people that a person works with. It may include supervisors, colleagues, vendors, affiliates, and more. Note both negative and positive trends when evaluating input from various sources to identify areas for additional measurements.
Checklists
For a quick and easy way of knowing which employees are lacking in certain areas, a simple ‘yes or no’ checklist will do the trick. This means asking yourself if they’re reaching deadlines on time or if they’re collaborating with their team, and so on. It allows you to know who needs more knowledge and training for greater efficiency too.
Self-evaluations
Asking your new hire Filipino freelancer and other workers to evaluate their own performance is effective. Often, they’re more critical of their own work than their supervisors. Comparing self-evaluations with objective appraisals is helpful for achieving a deeper understanding of your workforce and their development.
Consider these other tips
Now that you’ve thought about assessment criteria and performance review methods, it’s time to think about how to make the implementation easier for you and your staff.
Benchmark with sprints
This methodology is used by some companies to help teams collaborate more effectively through a mutual experience of time pressure. During a sprint, individuals are assigned tasks that must be completed within a set duration. This teaches your staff how to divide and conquer their assignments and how to rise to new challenges.
Use management tools
Measuring performance in a hybrid or remote workplace is made easier when you implement task or project management tools. Basecamp, Teamwork, Asana, and other applications enable leaders and workers to stay on top of workflows and deadlines while monitoring performance.
Analyse skills gaps
It’s hard to understand the expertise and skill sets of your employees sometimes. To gain a better understanding of which skills are being used in their daily responsibilities, conduct a skills gap analysis. This may be carried out through a simple online exam or survey.
Wrapping Up
Evaluating work performance is crucial to know if your current goals are in alignment with your business or not. At the same time, it enables you to determine whether a person is a good fit for your organisation or not. So, before you hire a freelancer in the Philippines or make any staffing decisions, get your performance evaluations set first.
To ease your worries about employee performance, it’s a good idea to hire a Filipino virtual assistant through Remote Workmate. Not only are we connected to many skilled and experienced remote workers but also we conduct initial training for your company where necessary.
Are you ready to hire a VA in the Philippines? Click the button below to start your staffing journey!
