Monitoring Employee Progress
Once you have shared expectations with a team member, it is important that you monitor their progress, compare their work with your expectations, and provide appropriate feedback.
Depending on the individual’s development level and the nature of the task, the frequency and method of monitoring progress varies. During the initial stages of learning a task monitoring may take place every 5 minutes or hourly and move to daily. A highly skilled person may be asked to provide their manager with weekly or monthly progress reports.
Before comparing an employee’s results or progress-to-date with your expectations, it is important to review the written description of your expectations. We often don’t tell others or put in writing exactly what we were thinking when we assigned the task. If the individual’s progress is not in line with the written expectations you provided, then providing guidance for them to make changes is appropriate. However, if the work they are doing is in line with written expectations but not in line with what you really wanted, it is important that you acknowledge having left out key elements of your written expectations and revise them promptly.
The third part of monitoring employee progress is to communicate successes and areas for improvement. Provide specific positive feedback on parts of the task your team member is doing well. Communicate areas for improvement in a calm manner. Discuss how they can improve their work towards meeting your expectations.
Your role as a leader is to support employees for success. This requires that you monitor their progress, compare progress to stated expectations, and provide both positive feedback and corrective action that helps them become high performers.