Evaluate Workplace Performance Page 1 of 10 Created: 24/05/2017 | Revised: 26/05/2017

Evaluate workplace performance As a professional in any industry it is essential to review your own performance. This is called continuous

improvement. You need to review the effectiveness of your communication skills and your actual job related

performance. This includes reviewing and evaluating how you are measuring up against professional standards

and if you are complying with the legal and ethical requirements of your industry.

This is why developing and working to plans is good professional practice, they give you something to review

your performance against. Think about the plans in your workplace; strategic plans, operational plans, project

plans, work communication plans, they are all developed to plan and schedule work, to guide practice and

outline the required outcomes of the work that are set to meet the organisation’s objectives. Individual work

plans are based on position descriptions and list your job responsibilities, daily tasks and the required outcomes

and quality measures of your work. They are measured against Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Most organisations have a process in place for reviewing your performance. Some position descriptions even

have Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) listed that you need to perform to and will be measured against at

regular intervals.

Reviewing and evaluating your performance help you continuously improve your professional practice by

identifying areas that need improvement and highlighting any further support or professional development you

might need.

Of course there’s nothing like getting feedback from peers, clients and managers to let you know how you are

going.

Self-assessment and evaluation Self-evaluation is how you see yourself, this is not a once-only activity it is a life-long process of personal and

professional development. A reality check is pivotal to your ongoing growth and an essential process to be a

dynamic industry professional. You should begin by listing your interpersonal, technical and other skills and

attributes. Attributes can be acquired or intrinsic.

There are three types of skills and attributes:

1 Technical skills

2 Interpersonal and non-technical skills such as communication and teamwork

3 Personal attributes such as adaptability and resilience

You then identify your strengths and limitations. (Levett-Jones and Bourgeois, 2015)

Self- assessment should be followed by finding out how others see you to validate what you believe.

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KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and work plans KPIs can be organisational, they can be set by another party; such as a funding body or sponsor or they can be

your own personal KPIs that you set for yourself. They are essentially what you have to achieve by a particular

timeframe or quality standard; they are the targets that you are seeking to hit.

Here is an example of how different KIP’s work:

Organisational KPIs - Are framed by organisational requirement – what must be achieved by a particular

time/day and what standard must be reached to be deemed on track or successful. These are guided by

organisational policies and procedures and any legal frameworks of impact.

Other party KPIs - Another party such as a funding body or sponsor might require you to hit certain targets

weekly, monthly or 3 monthly, for example. A KPI is a requirement that must be met in order to keep moving

forward and for that body to keep funding or supporting you or your organisation.

Your own personal KPIs - (It is suggested to do this, you are your best monitor of what you can achieve and

what you need to get you there.) Here ask what do you want to achieve by a particular time? What are you going

to need to do so? These are guided by your own personal values, ethics and standards, along with your desire to

achieve.

KPIs are factored into work contracts and funding/business agreements – they require you to reach certain

agreed timeframes, quality output and standards or requirements.

KPIs and work plans

Reviewing your own work plan and schedule against milestones and key performance indicators (KPIs) allows

you to make improvements, to meet organisational, client or your own targets in a particular way or timeframe.

Milestones are different to KPIs but are really useful to factor in to your work plan. Many organisations use

milestones are key points they would like to reach a particular level/output or product. This is relevant to digital

media – many organisations also put in milestones as dates or a timeline when they are aiming to reach a

particular point.

The continuous improvement cycle The continuous improvement cycle involves reviewing your ongoing strategies and practices by seeking,

receiving and processing feedback, identifying areas for improvements, implementing improvements, and

evaluating the success of improvements. It helps you determine professional development and training

requirements and industry networks and groups would add value to your professional development.

Continuous improvement is a life-long learning process.

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Figure 1 - The continuous improvement cycle

Receiving, analysing and evaluating feedback

Why get feedback?

Receiving, analysing and evaluating feedback in one method of enhancing professional performance.

Effective gathering and evaluation of feedback is essential for evaluating your performance.

Effective feedback requires the development a safe and trusting environment, all participants having a positive

attitude, it should be specific and immediate and, if necessary, tough not mean.

Feedback can be viewed as a continuum; it is not a static process. Seeking feedback must be an ongoing process

– it must loop into your continuous improvement professional practice.

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Constructive feedback

Feedback is not necessarily just the applause or positive responses you may receive in the life of your

professional career (although take that!) Feedback can be constructive criticism. Sometimes it’s not positive and

it can be hard to hear. Nevertheless, all feedback is useful in improving your work practices and ensuring your

output meets best professional practice in your industry.

Responding to feedback

How you respond to feedback reflects on you as a professional. Think about how to react positively to

constructive criticism, comments and feedback from peers and clients. Use professional evaluation tools and

techniques to analyse the feedback. Responding openly and positively will work in your favour, it will encourage

people to give you more honest feedback that you can use.

Feedback can come from a range of sources and will include:

> peers

> managers

> clients

> target groups (e.g. a focus group that you are part of on a social media platform).

Tips for collecting and documenting feedback

It can feel daunting to ask for feedback sometimes, however, receiving feedback should be a positive experience.

Seeking feedback is an active process. Seeking feedback means that you are actively asking and seeking

responses from others to inform your professional practice and professional development.

Here are some tips that will help you:

> Clarify why you are seeking particular feedback and to communicate to the person giving you feedback

what you want them to focus on.

> Guide feedback conversations by asking questions that direct the discussion towards specific and

meaningful feedback that will inform your goal progress and actions you might take to strengthen your

performance.

> Document the feedback and your insights and reflections so you can identify what the feedback means for

your performance and what you want to change.

Prior and throughout feedback conversations remind yourself of the five simple rules shown in the diagram

below that will help you make the most of the feedback.

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Figure 2 – Receiving feedback

Methods to gather feedback

Here are some suggestions for gathering feedback from your peers, manger, clients, project or focus groups.

> Ask directly – ‘what are your thoughts on what I have produced here?’

> Leave a feedback form or create a way for people to provide feedback in the online spaces that you

engaging with or working in.

> Use a focus group – gather a range of people into a focus group who are representative of a target

audience.

> Send an email – ask people to respond to email correspondence with their feedback.

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> Use a social media platform – although you can measure ‘likes’ it’s not that effective in gathering good

quality feedback. Consider utilising social media capabilities such as ‘comments’ and ‘shares’. These would

be a better way to measure. ‘Comments’ allow for dialogue, which provides more dynamic feedback.

> Face-to-face contact – this could be one-on-one with peers or clients, for example. You could take body

language into account to gauge the truthfulness of the feedback.

What to do with feedback

By evaluating the feedback, you have received using professional tools and techniques, you will identify areas for

performance improvement and even the work you are doing. You should consider evaluation feedback against:

> audience/ client needs

> overall business objectives and organisation requirements

> legal frameworks

> current trends and technology

> professional practice.

Evaluation may lead to changes in practice, or identify professional development requirements that are required

to ensure you are working more effectively.

You may also discover some ancillary (extra or added) information that may be relevant to other sections or

business objectives within your organisation that you can feedback to.

Other feedback mechanisms

Don’t under estimate social media as a feedback mechanism. It’s important to understand how feedback works

in various social media platforms and how to deal with it.

For example, a business might have an organisation Facebook page that enables people to rate the business and

write reviews. The key is to be able to review, critically analyse the feedback and respond quickly and

appropriately. An organisation might launch a hashtag campaign (i.e. Google the #QantasLuxury twitter

campaign fail) with good intentions (i.e. a competition) and users might take the opportunity to launch into a

tirade, venting about the organisation.

There are various tools set up for social media analytics, Hootsuite is one example. Hootsuite is a social media

management dashboard. On top of scheduling posts and aggregating content, it has powerful analytics tools.

The platform not only tracks standard engagement numbers, but measures your team’s performance. For

example, it records resolution times for customer service issues.

Platforms such as Google Analytics are used for analysing website traffic, and are ideal for evaluating social

media metrics. You can use it to measure the value of traffic coming from social sites, determining how visitors

behave and if they convert; i.e. come on board with your organisation or intent of your key messages.

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Reviewing feedback

When reviewing feedback and determining required improvements, John’s Model of Reflection (fig 3), or Gibb’s

Reflective Cycle (fig 4) are useful tools to use. Using these models can show you patterns, or examples of

continuous behaviours occurring.

Figure 3 - John's Model of Reflection

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Figure 4 – Gibb’s Reflective Cycle

To survive and succeed as an industry professional you need to be able to review and evaluate feedback in order

to determine and implement required improvements.

Implementing improvements

Identifying improvement goals

The next step is to set some goals for improvement. A sound approach to setting professional improvement

goals is to consider the SMART goal principles:

> Specific - a specific goal is distinct and defines as much of the goal as possible and contains no ambiguous

language.

> Measurable - a measurement gives feedback and lets one know when the goal is complete.

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> Achievable - goals must be assignable to individuals or groups.

> Realistic - goals are challenging yet attainable within the given timeframe.

> Time specific - timeframe must be aggressive yet realistic.

Improving communication skills

In the development of a communication strategy, you would identify methods to measure outcomes of your

communication. These would feed into the continuous improvement cycle. For example, they will help you

reveal what you need to do to improve your communication strategies.

Some ideas for improvement of your communication strategies might include:

> Adding depth to your professional language style.

> Gaining access to a specific person who can support you to improve.

> More effective ways to meet some of the identified barriers.

All of these elements add to the depth of potential that you can achieve by communicating effectively in your

role as an industry professional.

Professional development plans A professional development plan identifies your professional improvement goals and outlines how and when

you will implement improvements.

Committing to learning and development opportunities is an important part of the Professional Development

Plan (PDP) and continuous improvement process. In some organisations this process is monitored and audited

and workers are required to provide evidence of completing personal development activities.

Typically, a professional development plan includes:

> performance improvement goal/s

> a priority for each goal

> identification of how the goal will be achieved

> support, coaching or mentoring required to achieve improvement

> methods to monitor or measure progress of required improvement

> timeframe for your goal to be achieved.

Professional development opportunities

For professional development (PD) opportunities you should check in with your organisation, or regulatory body

in your chosen profession. Some organisations require you to participate in mandatory professional

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development activities. These are usually to comply with legal requirements, such as Code of Conduct, Bullying

and Harassment, Equal Opportunity, Conflict of Interest, Workplace Health & safety or other industry specific

regulations. Some PD activities might align to organisation values and objectives, such as sustainability.

Some industries even use a system of ‘continuing development’ points/hours which vary depending on the job

role.

Professional development opportunities can arise on and off the job. They can be formal and/or informal.

Formal training

Formal training examples can include undergraduate or post graduate studies at a Registered Training

Organisation or university.

Informal training

Informal training examples can include, but not limited to, participating in information technology development

activities, online MOOC’s and short courses to learn a skill or explore a particular area of knowledge.

Industry currency

Industry currency can be demonstrated by actively participating in a quality improvement projects, writing a

publication, contributing to research, being an active member of a professional group, being mentored or

mentoring others, skills demonstration, educating others and/or presenting at a conference. (Andre and

Heartfield, 2007)

Self-care and support requirements

Working in a demanding, busy digital media environment that is continuously moving forward, and changing

can lead to work related stress, fatigue or burnout, so good self-care skills are essential, right throughout your

career.

Burnout arises in relation to chronic workplace stress, characterised by negative attitudes and feelings toward co-

workers and one’s job role, as well as feelings of emotional exhaustion. These experiences can lead to pervasive

cynicism or lack of enthusiasm and motivation and can be harmful to both yourself, your clients and your

colleagues.