“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” – Earl Nightingale
Setting goals is imperative to creating a culture of performance. Goals must not only be known, they also must be displayed and focused on. Individuals need to know not only their year –end goals to shoot for, but also the quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily goals that need to be met in order to reach that yearly target.
Offices with a strong culture of performance understand that daily goals need to be focused on and met by each individual. They are displayed at each person’s desk and there is an awareness of each member of the team; and they take it seriously. At lunchtime, individuals focused on their daily goals will check their phone time and number of calls made to make sure they are on target.
At the end of the day, those focused on their goals will do what it takes to hit their new job orders, send outs and Quality Candidate targets. Having an intense focus on daily goals goes a long way to ensuring that weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly targets are achieved.
Offices with a culture of performance also focus on team goals. Monthly, quarterly, and yearly targets are set to encourage individuals to rally and come together for a common cause. Team goals are displayed in as many places as possible to reinforce the message, and often some method of tracking and posting progress is also shown to keep the goal current. Everyone is continually reminded of what the team goal is and what needs to be done to get there.
Environment where winning thrives
In order to enable goal achievement, having an environment that encourages winning certainly helps. Creating buzz is an important management technique used for years in many telephone-oriented businesses. The term buzz simply means that the environment sounds like things are happening. To create buzz, many offices put in sound systems, play “white noise” or in my office we play XM/Sirius radio.
The bottom line for success in recruiting is that you need people on the phone. In the morning when things are slow, to help create more buzz, I often crank the radio up a few notches. This makes people talk on the phone louder and gets the others on the phone. It usually gets an immediate response and when the buzz in the office is at an acceptable level, I turn the music back down. Our office also has Big Screen TVs playing CNN or Fox News with no sound. We want the environment to feel like things are fast-paced and things are happening. It has been proven that music and sound can affect the productivity of employees.
It is always important to celebrate every win with some type of noise and attention. Most offices use some way of immediately getting attention for placements that occur, like banging a gong, ringing a bell, bellowing from a bullhorn, or stopping production altogether to announce and discuss the details. Whatever the chosen method, offices with a strong performance culture get the entire team involved in making some noise and celebrating the win.
“Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude.” – Ralph Marston
Many offices also create awareness of activity going on by the use of white boards in locations that are out in the open and constructed to publish activity and results. Watching a coworker walk to the board repeatedly during the day to record send outs or new job orders that they got that day works well to get the others in the office motivated to make it happen. It allows individuals to get recognized for their efforts and spurs competition.
Competition is encouraged
Competition brings out the best in people and there cannot be a true performance culture in place without it. Whether it is competing for recognition in an office environment or a trip to Hawaii, it works. To build a strong performance-based culture, the more you can establish an aggressive yet friendly competitive environment, the more the team will work to encourage all to participate.
“The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important — and then get out of their way while they do it.” – Jack Welch
As a manager, I try to get my recruiters to compete for the most phone time, job orders, sendouts, and placements. If newer employees can’t yet compete with tenured individuals on the results side, they can still compete with them on activity. Activity competition helps keep tenured staff from resting on their laurels.
Once major accounts are established, many experienced individuals tend to stop doing the developmental activity that is needed to keep them at the top of their game. Competition helps them get the activity up to where it is needed.
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Jon Bartos, a guest writer for the Top Echelon Recruiter Training Blog, is a premier writer, speaker, and consultant on all aspects of personal performance, human capital, and the analytics behind them. In 2010, Bartos founded Revenue Performance Management, LLC. The RPM Dashboard System is a business intelligence tool used worldwide for metrics management for individual and team performance improvement. In 2012, Bartos achieved national certification in Hypnotherapy, furthering his interest in learning the dynamics behind what motivates others to achieve higher levels of success. Click here to visit Bartos’s website.
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