Performance Scoring Reviews: Victor Lipman’s Article on Employee Engagement in Performance Goals

In the recent Forbes article, “Management Tip: When Setting Employee Performance Goals, Involve Your Employees,” Victor Lipman continues his campaign of people-management tips by touching on an employee engagement recommendation. This recommendation is just as the article’s title suggestions: involve employees when setting performance goals as management. Lipman makes clear the “final call rests with management,” but offers three specific reasons why involving employees is beneficial.

1) “Skin in the game.”

The first reason involving employees is beneficial in that it creates a level of ownership and accountability not found when employees are left out of the process. “When employees are actively involved in developing of their goals, they’re more likely to see them as fair and be invested in them,” writes Lipman. The overall theme behind goals set by employees will often be like that of management, by involving employees there is a level of ownership from an employee self-identifying and realizing what goals are being set any why. Performance Scoring encourages empowering employees with a sense of ownership and involving employees when determining the Factors that drive success in their roles.

2) “An employee may well know the nuts-and-bolts of a job better than his or her manager.”

We alluded to Lipman’s second reason while discussing the “skin in the game” reason above. Employees may have a “better idea of what are the most appropriate, meaningful metrics” of goals to drive greater success. The transparency of Performance Scoring’s Factor System always recognizes the importance of Lipman’s second reason for involving employees. Management often only has a “high-level knowledge of certain job specifics,” Lipman observes. Involving employees in goal setting ensure that this does not lead to a disconnect from the focus on high-level knowledge by management.

“It’s helpful for future employee evaluations.”

The final reason that Lipman offers stresses the importance of transparency and accountability being fundamental in business. Creating a census knowledge when defining performance goals will keep accountability focal while keeping ambiguity out. “Involving employees in goal-setting helps inoculate you as a manager from employee complaints that goals are unreasonable,” notes Lipman. One of Performance Scoring’s goals is for clients to stop the practice of beginning a meeting with getting all attendees on the same page, plainly it is an unproductive use of time. Lipman views involving employees in goal-setting as a step mirroring this goal.
Involving employees “can lead to more effective management by having more engaged employees and more meaningful goals to manage,” concludes Lipman. While implementing a performance management process, like Performance Scoring, involve your employees in the goal-setting and your company will experience a productivity boost felt across the board.