What Success Looks Like - Standards

Clarifying duties and responsibilities provides a framework for the crucial activity of setting performance standards. The supervisor and the employee both need some way of determining how well the employee is doing. It is important for the standards to be negotiated and set before the employee starts performing work that will be evaluated, whether the employee is new to the University or new to the position as a result of transfer or promotion. It is also important to update the standards as the work situation changes.

Negotiation is important because many factors (staffing levels, workloads, or stressful work conditions, for example) can affect the fairness of an expectation. The more the employee is involved in setting/updating standards and agrees they are clear and reasonable, the greater the chances for successful performance.

A standard refers to results that must be achieved or to ongoing performance criteria that must be met consistently and/or results that must be achieved in order for the employee to achieve successful performance. Standards refer to such things as the delivery of service at a specified level of quality, attendance levels, accuracy rates, response times, production rates, safety thresholds, format requirements, and behavioral expectations. In order to write an effective standard for successful performance, it should be as specific, pertinent, attainable, measurable, and observable as possible ("SPAMO").

Standards may be set for each duty or project assigned. They may be set for activities or behaviors that apply to many assignments or projects (for example, computer work or cooperation). The important thing is that everyone who will be involved in evaluating an employee's performance is clear about which aspects of the employee's performance will be evaluated and what successful performance will look like.