Some days are brilliant, and some are awful. Few employees regularly knock it out of the park and others are in a perpetual slump. What you require, as a manager are workers that deliver consistent, high-quality performance. While you can never have every day perfect (after all, you are dealing with humans who get bad colds and who have fights with their husbands), you can get more consistent performance if you plan and prepare well. Here is how to obtain consistent performance from workers.

Indulge the Pharmacists with Consistent Performance

Pharmacists are popular for delivering quality care to every person. If you come in on a Tuesday and speak to Pharmacist Jane, and then come back on Thursday and speak to Pharmacist John, both will know your condition, which medications you are on and who your doctors are. Why? Because they document the heck out of everything.

Pharmacies can give consistent care because they have consistent record keeping, and all pharmacists can access everyone else’s work. (Within the company, of course. Your CVS pharmacist can’t look up what a Walgreen’s pharmacist wrote.)

Most businesses do not deal with life and death the way a pharmacy does, but they can surely benefit from the idea. Document and have consistent performance. When do you call for help? When do you say yes? When do you say no? What is the standard of care for each project or procedure? When everyone on staff can access the necessary information, you’ll find more consistent performance from workers.

Train and Follow Up With a New Employee to gain Consistent Performance

Many, many managers are entirely swamped with work. So, when they hire a new employee, the training consists of “Your desk is here, your computer login is this, and makes sure not everyone in the department leaves for lunch at the same time. If you have any questions, let me know.” And, the new person is left to figure out her job all by herself.

Sometimes, the new worker jumps in and does a fantastic job. But, most of the time, a person requires more training. Even if your new hire is beyond fabulous and does an amazing job with minimal support, the way in which she does the job will be different from how the previous employee performed the job. She will also perform the job differently than the other three people in the department.

What happens when insufficient training is given? Customers or clients (internal or external), get different answers and see different performances from different people. They are naturally going to prefer one person over the others. This then results in a lopsided workload for employees and unhappy clients when they don’t get their preferred analyst.

Rather, invest in training your new workers. This does not mean micro-managing. Consistency doesn’t mean you must do everything identically; it just means that the performance is consistent. The client should not be capable to easily tell who did the work.

After you have trained the new employee, follow up. If your new worker has ideas about how to do the work differently then listen, and if it’s truly better, have the new person train her peers on how to do the new method.

This training never really ends. It is not an all-consuming thing, though. It is simply a regular follow up with employees, tweaking when necessary, and changing when someone develops a better way to perform the tasks.

Give Decision Making Authority to Workers for Consistent Performance

This appears counter-intuitive to the notion of consistent performance. If you want consistency, then all line workers should do the same thing, in the same way, and any exception needs to go through a manager. You see this lot in retail or call centers.

The cashier is not capable to make a return; you have to go to the service desk. The person who answers the phone at your cable company can’t lower your costs, but her manager can.

While this is standard, it can lead to inconsistent performance and unhappy customers. Why? Because the customers see the front line employees as the enemy that they have to get through to talk to the people who have the authority to solve their problem.

People who are aggressive get better treatment than people who are nice (which encourages bad behavior). And everyone has to wait in line, or on hold while you wait for the one manager.

Rather, give your employees the authority to do almost anything. There is no reason you can’t set rules for returns and ask the employees to enforce them. If the employee tells a customer, no, then the manager should back her up, as long as the decision’s within the written guidelines.

The result is customers receive consistent performance and treatment without waiting. Being a jerk doesn’t improve your chances of getting your way, and the employees feel empowered. It’s a winning situation.

Reward Consistent Performance Not Personality

If you need consistent performance, give consistent praise. Make definite that you do not assign projects and praise deployed on how much you like the worker but on their performance. If Jane gets praised for so much as showing up, and John only gets a pat on the back for doing an outstanding job, you can bet that you would not get consistent performance out of your department.

What you need is for everyone to do a great job all of the time, so you need to make certain you praise actual performance. You may like Jane better, but unless her performance is great, don’t praise her. Hold employees to consistent standards and you’ll get consistent performance.