Initiative and work motivation

With the help of quality circles, your employees work voluntarily and together to improve your company. Quality circles promote initiative and work motivation.

Assessing performance of team members

You will learn how to assess the performance of your employees.

Increasing work performance

You will learn how to correctly criticising and praising your employess. These are important tasks of a manager.

How to perform a quality circle

You will learn the roles and the steps on how to perform a quality circle to improve you leading skills.

Unit 1        -          A

The quality circle and its rules

Unit 2        -          B

The 4 roles and the process of a quality circle

Unit 3         -          C

Increasing work performance thorugh motivated employees

Unit 4        -          D

How to assess performance of team members correctly

In a quality circle there are 4 roles with defined tasks. The staff members in the quality circle belong either to a project group or to the quality circle team.

Coordination is particularly important in a quality circle. Therefore, the roles form controlling and coordinating instances. The precise distribution of tasks encourages active participation.

The Quality Circle team (QC team) meets regularly and consists of a maximum of 9 members. The team puts together and coordinates the individual project groups. First, an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the company is carried out. Then the team puts together an action plan to address the weaknesses that have been uncovered. This work plan should be as concrete as possible and contain scheduled milestones. The work plan results in work assignments that the team gives to the project groups or individuals from them. There should be a separate project group for each topic. After the tasks have been distributed and scheduled, the team has the task of controlling the execution and receiving the reports or presentations from the project groups. In addition, the team reports to the team leader on the success of the implementation.

Each project group has a mentor who is part of the group and coordinates it. He has the task of monitoring the implementation of the tasks and helping with obstacles, e.g. if additional staff or know-how is needed. The mentor is responsible for the final results report on the group's work.

Step 1

Step 3

Carrying out a weak point analysis and determine the actual task

Identifying and assigning the environment, causes, customers and suppliers

Definition of weak points, necessary work steps and goals, which determines the desired outcome of the quality circle.

(Now the actual work of project groups begins)

The project groups are each assigned an identified weak point and analyse the problem and its causes.

Step 5

The analysis is presented and possible solutions are developed.

The causes and solutions are presented to the QC team with a corresponding evaluation

The problem is tackled concretely. Necessary staff and material resources are estimated and cost-benefit analyses are carried out

An implementation plan is drawn up and distribution of the tasks for implementation by the support of the mentor and the QC team

Step 9

Step 11

the solutions developed must be implemented and documented. The implementation plan may have to be successively adapted

After the solutions have been implemented, the team analyses the results and documents the successes and failures

Successful implementations can be firmly integrated into company processess

The project is concluded in the form of a final report. This will take stock of the quality district and document the experiences from the project groups

 Observe

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Keep written notes well in advance of the appraisal, e.g. during an improvement project, in order to evaluate the performance and behaviour of your employees as systematically as possible and to be able to prove it during the appraisal interview. Use the notes, for example, to refer to the "reliability", the "work commitment", the "work behaviour in different work situations", the "cooperation" or the like of your employees. of your employees. In this way, you avoid that your assessment is only based on impressions shortly before your appraisal interview.

Keep a small notebook for your notes, which you always carry with you. In the best case, you can refer to concrete facts for your assessment. Therefore, always document these events as soon as possible.

PRACTICE TIP: Be careful how you handle these written notes.

Be careful how you handle these written notes; avoid destroying the trustful cooperation. Under no circumstances should your staff get the feeling that you are "keeping files" on them.

Assess

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Look at your notes carefully before the appraisal interview so that you do not have to refer to them during the interview. Note: It is not evidence you are keeping, but your personal memory aid for a fairer appraisal of your employees.

Talk through

V

Always discuss the appraisal with the respective employee and record the result of the discussion. So that your employee is not blindsided at some point when he or she receives an assessment that does not seem comprehensible to him or her, you should talk openly about it with him or her. This discussion will also serve to plan your future staff deployment for improvement projects. Ask yourself:

Objective assessment criteria

The objective criteria are easy to determine because they are completely detached from your employees, e.g.:

Subjective assessment criteria

There is no employee who has only strengths or only weaknesses. Therefore, draw up a list of criteria according to which you judge all employees, e.g: