by Kathleen Mohar, Carolina Chapter Management SIG Manager

The Management SIG (Special Interest Group) held two interesting meetings in the first quarter of the year. The January 11, 2006, meeting was attended by both new and loyal SIG members, and we also had several RTI staff join us by special invitation. This meeting was devoted to performance evaluation.

Linda Pietrzak, of RTI’s Human Resources specialist, presented “Performance Reviews and Tax Filing — One Is Not Just an Annual Event.” She gave a lively presentation (replete with toys!) on ongoing performance management in contrast to yearly performance evaluation (with a great sidebar on dealing with reference checks). Her comments generated lively discussion among the attendees.

Linda recommended the first resource book below and I added two that I have used and recommend:

• The Performance Appraisal Question and Answer Book, Dick Grote, published by American Management Association (AMACOM), available at http://www.amacombooks.org
• The #1 Guide to Performance Appraisals: Doing It Right!, James E. Neal Jr., Neal Publications, Inc. (I purchased this at Barnes and Noble last year for $9.95)
• Effective Phrases for Performance Appraisals, James E. Neal, Jr., Neal Publications, Inc. ($10.95 at B&N)

The group also met on March 14, 2006, at RTI. At this meeting, Pat Moell led a discussion of strategies and tools for communicating with staff across geographic locations. Attendees learned that there are many ways of interacting with folks on conference calls and remote training sessions that can remove the amount of distance it seems there is between you.

In addition to referencing the different definitions and terms used to describe virtual teams, Pat sites tips and techniques from two articles that you may find helpful:

• Virtual Collaboration: Opportunities and Best Practices by Andrew Black. The article appears in the March/April 2002 issue of Sbusiness, published by AFSM International, Fort Myers, FL.
• When No One’s Home: Being a Remote Writer on Distributed Teams by Nancy Larbi and Susan Springfield. The article appears in the STC’s 50th Annual Conference Proceedings.

We hope to see you at our next Management SIG meeting! Stay tuned to the web site for upcoming topics and locations for our meetings.



Kathleen can be reached at kbm at rti dot org.