How to Establish Team Performance Plan

1) What Does Establishing of Team Performance Plan Mean?
Continuous control over the team performance is established to make sure that everyone produces a necessary level and value of output. This determined approach to productivity and efficiency of the workforce will guarantee that your projects or daily business activity will not be failed because of poor staff efforts, lack of competency or diligence. In other words this makes sure that your people just do their best while carrying out their duties, and secures your project’s human factor from being a weak link. As every other project area, the team performance should be planned and controlled.
 
Establishing a Team Performance policy is about creating two essential documents. These two main documents which your team performance policy will be based upon are:

• Team Performance Plan;
• Team Performance Improvement Plan;

Team Performance Plan:
This is your constitution of performance. It is a detailed plan which refers to every individual and to the team as a whole. Its main function is to explain what the performance is in terms of your setting, what levels of it are required from the staff, and how this will be achieved. The main objectives of your team performance plan are:

• Identifying the desired level and quality of performance (in quantifiable terms);
• Identifying the methods to attain and secure the required level of performance;
• Identifying the administrative and managerial support which will be provided;
• Identifying the ways to measure progress towards the expected performance;

Team Performance Improvement Plan:
Usually this kind of plan is created when performance appears under the required level (a plan can be composed to deal with particular individuals who perform under the standards, or for the whole team which face complex systematic problems), but it also may accompany the Team Performance Plan from the very beginning if a gradual performance increasing is expected along with the team development. This plan mainly describes the following points:

• Existence of the problems in performance, or certain opportunities for improvement;
• Goals to be achieved with eliminating issues or with realizing the opportunities;
• A need or method to overcome the problems, or to realize the opportunities;
• Timeframe to resolve the issue, or trends and dynamics of expected performance growth;
• The success criteria for examining and approving the improvement;

2) Terms Which the Team Performance Plan Operates:
Usually the Team Performance Plan is associated with a bunch of typical terms that make it specific and uniquely different from other kinds of plans. These terms include:

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – measurable parameters that may characterize performance in terms of quality, quantity and value. These measures are necessary to capture the real level of performance as they can objectively show the business value produced by every employee in the team, including fluctuations and trends in productivity. Values of KPIs are to serve as standards of performance, and they can be very specific from workplace to workplace.

• Competency Levels – performance is explained not only in numbers, but also in specific terms of personal proficiency and suitability to certain position or role. This means a level of how well a person matches the position which he or she occupies or is expected to take, and this grade of compliance with special on-the-job requirements (including required level of performance) can be represented as a percentage (where 100% means that skills of a person completely suit his or her workplace) or a level (for example levels of competency may include: a novice, professional and expert).

• Performance Appraisal – a way to qualify the performance of a person (as sufficient or not) is to collect essential data and analyze it utilizing certain methods and assumptions. According to a conclusion made after this appraisal the competency and performance levels are identified as good, excellent or requiring improvement.

Each position or department in the team, depending on its functions needs to use its own KPIs (see more on this topic in this article: How to Manage Employee Performance), while competency levels can be applied to a variety of conceptions, including awareness of team members on shared policies and instructions, let’s say competency in a fire safety policy. 

3) Planning the Team Performance:

1. Identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for every position and unit in the team;
2. Identify Competency levels necessary for maintaining the desired levels of performance;
3. Set certain desirable standards on KPIs:
1. Minimal performance level (a satisfactory level that a novice can deliver);
2. Normal performance level (usual level of output to be produced by professionals);
3. Excellent performance level (surpassing the plan significantly);
4. Identify a method to monitor the performance level (optional or all at the same time):
1. Feedback (employee self-reporting);
2. Managerial observations and formal reporting;
3. Statistics and info derived from official documents (sales reports, customer claims, etc);
4. Surveys (co-workers, customers, supervisors, etc);
5. Identify Performance Appraisal procedures to be applied, including:
1. Frequency of performance review (reportable period);
2. Methods to calculate/derive actual values of KPIs from the information obtained during the performance monitoring process;
3. Methods to investigate and interpret low performance levels;
6. Design a complex method to stimulate good level of performance:
1. Connect productivity of team members with their compensations;
2. Encourage the team members intangibly;
3. Maintain good planning and organization;
4. Help people to improve and organize their workplaces;
5. Help people to streamline their skills;
6. Guide and instruct people on their actions;
7. Maintain feedbacks on performance;
8. Leverage people by career planning;
7. React to Performance Appraisals:
1. Investigate why performance appears lower than it is supposed to be;
2. Identify performance champions;
3. Assist people on improving current performance;
4. Assess future potential and promotability of team members;
5. Review applicability of performance standards and revise them if necessary;
8. Continually seek for opportunities to improve performance:
1. Consider innovations to boost up productivity;
2. Consider training opportunities to increase Competency levels of team members;
3. Control effectiveness of tools used and research for better ones;
4. Improve business processes and implement best practices;
5. Improve leadership, discipline and eliminate counter-productive behaviors;
9. Maintain improvements through Team Performance Improvement Plan which will help you to measure effectiveness of changes provided;

4) A simple way to Plan a Team Performance with VIP Task Manager:

VIP Task Manager is a product that stands for collaboration between people in terms of projects and tasks, so it enables its users to plan the project performance including planning of parameters essential to deriving KPIs. Let’s consider simple step-by-step instructions to plan work performance using this product:

Instruments to be used:

• Task Tree mode;
• Task List mode;
• Custom task attributes;

Task Tree mode actions (setting performance plan):

1. Create a set of task groups of the first level for the highest objectives and deliverables;
2. Create sub-folders to represent functions for business activities and project sub-stages;
3. Fill the task groups representing the workflow with new assignable tasks (practical actions);
4. Plan due dates and priorities of tasks;
5. Use Custom fields to create attributes for planning costs and other additional attributes;
6. Create more of KPI custom attributes (see the Customization Guide of KPI ideas);
7. Use “Notes” tabs of the tasks to communicate information on risks and problems;
8. Assign task(s) to appropriate performer(s);
9. Control performance of tasks by monitoring progress and statusing;

Task List mode actions (reviewing and performing work):

1. Use Filters to display certain tasks planned for performance;
2. Follow the sequence and respect timeframes of tasks;
3. Report and control their statusing;
4. If allowed by project ideology, set priorities to regulate your agenda;

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