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The People Gardener Podcast with Rhonda Delaney
The People Gardener Podcast with Rhonda Delaney
Transform Your Approach with a Team Member Year-End Report
Unlock the secret to transforming your leadership approach with a team member year-end report. Imagine gaining unparalleled insights into your team's experiences and frustrations—this episode of the People Gardener podcast promises to equip you with a strategy to achieve just that. I'm Rhonda Delaney, your guide on this journey, sharing the evolution and impact of this powerful feedback tool from my 15 years in the industry. You'll learn how to foster an open channel for communication, encouraging your employees to voice their experiences and paving the way for meaningful change.
This week, we dive into the practical steps for implementing a year-end report system that enhances team satisfaction and productivity. Hear about my initial challenges and the rewarding results that followed, turning limited participation into a comprehensive feedback mechanism. If you're a business owner striving to step out from behind the scenes, this episode offers the perfect blueprint. Discover how addressing simple yet recurring frustrations can significantly streamline processes and improve workplace morale. Grab your pen and paper; this episode is packed with actionable insights for your leadership toolkit.
TEAM MEMBER YEAR END REPORT PDF
TEAM MEMBER YEAR END GOOGLE DOC
Well, hey there, welcome to the People Gardener podcast. I'm Rhonda Delaney, your host, also known as the People Gardener, thrilled to put this podcast together to help small business owners, new business owners, frustrated business owners and aspiring leaders, whether they're inside business or outside. Each week, we bring you some actionable steps so that you can actually improve your skill as a leader. That's what we're about. We're here to help you become a better leader by giving you access to lots of different perspectives. By giving you access to lots of different perspectives, the guests are varied. We're thrilled to have them. Get out your pen, get out your paper and be ready to learn Every single episode. You're going to be able to take something away that you can implement. Are you ready? Let's get to work. Well, hey there. Welcome back to the People Gardener podcast. I'm Rhonda Delaney, your host, happy to have you here this week.
Speaker 1:It's that time of year year end Lots of you small business owners are doing reporting on your businesses, getting all of your accounting ducks in a row so that it can go off to the tax accountant and get things filed in a timely manner. What I would like to talk to you about is incorporating a team member year-end report. This is something that I did and I have to tell you it was the most brilliant thing I think I did in my 15 years with the company, because the end result is I got to know my team so much better and I got to understand how they experienced me, experienced the company, experienced their job and their role. First year that I put this report together, I had very little participation. I think there were three out of I don't know 10 or 11 people. By year three, everybody was participating and I was getting six and seven page reports, feedback, and so what I've done is I put together a PDF and just a regular Google Doc. So the Google Doc you could actually give to each employees once you've looked at all the questions and decided which ones you want to include. You might want to add some, you might want to edit it. They can just, you can just send them that doc and then they can actually fill in right on their screen. Just encourage them to use a different color. I did this in a kind of a lighter gray scale, so black will definitely show and you'll be able to read their responses so much easier.
Speaker 1:So what's the purpose of this? So often, employees don't feel like they have opportunity to voice their concerns, their questions. If you're the type of business owner that has been operating kind of behind the scene and at your desk and you're not really doing a lot of interacting yet with your employees, they might not feel that you're interested in what they have to share. So, by putting this before them and giving them some questions to get them started, this is an opportunity for them to give you feedback Feedback about yourself and how you lead, feedback about the company, feedback about their role, feedback about the software, any processes, procedures that are in place. It just gives them the opportunity to share their experience and for you to get a window into. Okay, this is how they feel. This is how they see their role. This is how they see their job. Here's the things that are frustrating them. And then your job is you get to read all of them and then attend to anything that's easily solved.
Speaker 1:I spent a couple of weeks going through all of the reports. Many of the reports had the same frustration in them. So when you get multiple people from multiple positions having the same frustration, it's like red flag okay, we need to address this. And then you have opportunity to go to each of them and get them to expand on what they've said, so that you have a really good understanding of what the problem is. And then you take it If it has to go to the IT department, if it has to go to the software developer that is outside of the company, if it has to go to a different department because there's a real disconnect from the sales department to shipping or the shipping department to the art. However many departments you have, it's so fun to tick these off and to remove all these roadblocks and all these frustrations. So many of them are so simple. It is the flick of a switch, it's the tick of a pen. It is simply following up with them and letting them know. Okay, here's what I've been able to solve today.
Speaker 1:There are some challenges for these other ones, because there's a snowball effect. You can't solve something in this department and make them let's say, in quotation marks happy if what that change results in is is another department being negatively affected. So your job is to check to make sure that it's making sense all the way through the process. Whatever your process is, they get it. If you go back to them and just say you know what, I totally see what you're saying here. See what you're saying here. Here is all of the things that are affected if we make this one change that you're advocating for and I totally get why you want it, because it would reduce your keystrokes down to two instead of 10. But here's the ripple effect of doing that. And if they understand and they're really clear and they can see that you've put effort into solving this problem, even if you can't, they are grateful. And something I always told them to do is, if we weren't able to solve something this year, keep it on your report. Keep a list throughout the year of all of the things that you would like to see addressed and make sure that it gets back on the report, because next year there might be new software, there might be new personnel. You might have gotten rid of a product that was really frustrating them. Things can change.
Speaker 1:So the whole purpose of this and how you present this to your team is hey, we want to hear from you. We want you to give us a performance review as your manager. I want to know Full amnesty. And this is what I told them. It took them a few years before they were really honest about things that I did that drove them nuts, but they did get there. You want them to feel complete freedom to share everything that they want to share without being worried about any ramifications to it at all. I mean employees. They're constantly being bombarded with communication about how they are doing, and this is an opportunity for them to come back and say, okay, boss, band, boss, lady, this is how you're doing, this is how I feel In this document. I'll put it in the show notes. If you're on my email list, you'll get both the PDF and the Google Doc links, or if you're watching this on YouTube, it'll be there too.
Speaker 1:But it's a list of questions trying to get information for you that is actionable, I guess, is the best way to say it. So you're wanting to find out what were the most fulfilling aspects of your role this year. You want to know how they feel about the job that they're doing, because if they're unhappy in that, you need to have a conversation and find out. Okay, so what lights you up? What would you rather be doing? It opens the door to a conversation. The other thing is asking them how they experienced the company, how they experienced you as the boss, as the owner, or you as their manager leader, asking them if they felt included and valued and respected. Finding out whether or not they feel there's been sufficient training. Find out whether or not their role somehow got changed and they're not even doing the job they were hired for and nobody asked them if they were interested in changing up. Asking them if they feel that the company recognizes and acts on employee feedback. This is a really good start If you're not giving that having them fill out this questionnaire and the other thing is I just came up with a bunch of questions that I feel would get you the greatest amount of insight into how your employees are thinking and feeling.
Speaker 1:Please edit this, modify it, make it yours. There may be specific things that you want to add to it. There may be things you want to take away. This is just a starting place for you, so you're not starting with just a blank piece of paper. I absolutely treasured these reports. It was so fun for me to get employees coming back with new product ideas right. The sum of their intelligence, their IQ, is far greater than mine, so it's so cool to get information from people from all walks of life. Doesn't matter male, female, young, old, highly educated, not educated, married with kids, single every spectrum, because they see the world differently and you want those different perspectives because all of those perspectives, those are your customers too. Right, your customers are very, very diverse.
Speaker 1:Go through this list and make sure that you're asking the questions that get you the answers, the feedback, the data that you feel you most need in order to make solid decisions as a business owner moving forward, and be patient. This is going to take a time. Again, like I said earlier, if you have not spent a lot of time getting to know your people and being interested in them as humans, this could come at them out of the blue and they're going yeah, right, like you care, like you're really interested in what I think, and it could be that you need to send a series of emails letting them know, series of emails letting them know. This is something that I reminded my team every year at the beginning of the year that it was coming and they needed to keep a document of things that they wanted to include in this as those things were happening. Because it's so hard.
Speaker 1:You give this year-end report and say, okay, answer all these questions, and they're scratching their head. They know there's things, but you know it has happened multiple times, but it's not happening right now, but it still needs to be addressed. So give them the opportunity throughout the year and remind them. Hey, don't forget any stresses or strains Now. There are things that you are going to need to address and fix on the fly is something that you might be able to just handle in the year-end report. Again, you want every single employee to take this seriously as their opportunity to grade you, to grade the company, on what the company said they were all about and what the company said they were going to do to support the employees. You want to know if you're doing it and these folks, these team members, they're the ones that can help you see your blind spots. Because, hey, we all go through life with rose-colored glasses when it comes to checking up on ourself and we bring out the microscope for everybody else. So you need their help in order to see your blind spots.
Speaker 1:All this is going to be in the show notes. In the show notes and in the new year, I'm going to be launching the Leaders Grow First full five-module program. We're going to have a group coaching. Don't have all of the details yet. This is part of it. This is part of the first module of Be Interested. You have to start that communication with your team. That's it for this week. We'll talk to you again next week. Well, thanks for joining me today. Just a quick reminder if you were not on my email list, go to my website, rondadelaneycom, and there's a place there that you can subscribe, keep you up to date on all things people, gardening and leadership. And also a reminder that the Raving Fans Society app is available on the Apple Store and the Google Store. I do have a free membership in there that you'll be able to access some of my material. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you again next week.