Destiney Cain
HRM 531
May 18th, 2015
Patrice Cloutier
Performance Management Plan
It was noted in previous communications that Landslide Limousines would focus on providing first-class transportation to customers while still being comparable to other limousine services in the Austin, TX market. With less than 25 employees, and expected revenue of -$50,000 by the year end, a performance plan is necessary to increase Landslide’s revenue opportunity. The performance management plan will involve cost-effective tools designed to give managers and employees the skills they need to meet this Landslide’s business strategy and the budget.
The organizational performance philosophy should be one that also ties in with the business strategy—first class service. In order to give first-class transportation services to customers, the employees should be given the same special treatment from each other and management. As it pertains to the client, the “first-class” would be prompt and friendly customer service, convenience, clean and maintained limousines, safe driving, and efficient routing from one place to another. As the employee, the “first-class” treatment would involve promoting a friendly atmosphere, smiling, building a teamwork environment, keeping open communication with all employees, and seeking feedback from employees about operations and what they would like to see as rewards for their accomplishments and good performance.
While conducting the job analysis we found certain skills that would be needed by employees in order to meet your performance goals. The number one skill that all employees will need for their job role is adequate customer service skills. Being able to assist a customer during a slow or fast paced environment is essential to their job roles. For drivers, additional skills include: safe driving, being able to communicate with clients, work under pressure, maintaining the vehicle for cleanliness inside and out, and professional appearance. Office and customer service assistants would need clerical skills such as answering phones, assisting walk-in customers, maintaining filing systems, dealing with paperwork, operating software on the computer and operating printers, and faxes. If there is a detail maintenance crew, those employees would need to know how to use certain detailing equipment, have open communication with management, attention to detail, and can work in fast paced environments.
In order to measure an employee’s skills we recommend using monthly customer satisfaction surveys, performance appraisals, and management observation with narrative essay. The customer satisfaction survey would cover the customer experience from the first contact to the last contact. Questions would cover their encounters with the staff and driver, promptness, the quality of the vehicle and trip, and any open comments. This would serve as a tool to measure how well employees, and the business perform from the customer’s perspective. It can be done at random on a monthly basis. Another method worth mentioning is management observation. We recommend after each review to begin observation of employees and logging key details that can be referred when doing the narrative essay. The narrative essay requires a manager to give a full review of an employee’s performance in relation to their job role, strengths, and areas where there is room for improvement. The performance appraisal will highlight how well the employee is performing their job requirements.
Skill gaps are differences in skills that are required by the job versus the skills the employee actually possesses. It is important that skill gaps are addressed promptly as it can hinder performance. Because it can be costly for a small business to provide training of any sort starting out, management should be diligent in the job application and interview process when staffing employees in order to decrease the gap as much as possible. To