Performance management is the process of continuous feedback and communication between managers and employees to ensure the objectives of the organization are achieved.
Earlier the performance management was the annual process but nowadays it has become a continuous evaluation process to achieve higher goals. The goal is to ensure that employee’s performance is not disturbed throughout the year and any issue would not affect employee’s performance.
Performance management differs from talent management in that the latter is a set of initiatives taken to engage employees to retain them. Performance management, on the other hand, guides the employees towards achieving the goals of the team which actually contributes to the objective of the company in a better way.
Best Practices in Performance Management Process
“To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace.” - Douglas Conant
Frequent reviews to highlight the training needs
By introducing frequent reviews, whether formal or informal can help understand the skillset of the employee. Provide an open forum for employees so that they can discuss and share their roles regularly which will help them to identify training needs before they have an impact on productivity.
Performance management and regular reviews can help in identifying whether the employees need to brush up on certain skills or simply get up to speed with new trends for their role.
According to Deloitte’s Global HR Trends, 70% of companies are reinventing their performance management process.
Appreciate often
Everyone likes it when they are praised by the supervisors and their subordinates. Performance management provides the perfect setting to formalize and document praise.
But reviews shouldn’t just be about setting objectives for the coming quarter. It should also provide an environment for the line manager to recognize individuals on their team.
Happy employees are very productive and even 69% of employees say that they will work hard if their efforts on work are being recognized. Not only paycheck recognition but continuous reviews are key to maintaining employees’ morale.
Streamline performance review process
When all employees go through the same performance review process, it helps in identifying employees’ work and their suitability for promotion. Using a process management tool helps to define the streamlined process, and ensure that is always fair. In this way, the managers can better evaluate the people for promotion, salary increases, or transfer in the same consistent manner. This will not only help you in finding the right employee for promotion but will allow fairness and transparency in the selection process.
Discuss workload
When the peer review and discussion sessions happen at regular intervals, it helps in understanding workload and supports workforce planning. Discussing current and future workload with the employee can help to identify any requirements for future staff. If the employees are struggling with their current workload then you can divide the work among the team members and prioritize the most important tasks.
Create a culture of autonomy
Employees should be aware of wider business objectives and their contribution to those. The employees will be free to make their own choices about how they go about their responsibilities. As a result, employees are happier, more committed, more productive, and more loyal than those whose every action is dictated.
How to improve your performance management process
Having a process is not enough, you must improve it as required from time to time to ensure it is relevant and output driven. You need to use a BPMS software like GoodFlow which allows you to tweak existing processes and measure the output.
Understand what does your workforce wants from the performance management process?
Performance management can either help or hinder your workforce. However, before making changes to your current process and tools you need to understand what isn’t working. You also need to understand what your employees want from a performance management program.
Talking to your employees is very important because your employees and manager likely have some strong opinions that they’ll be happier to share with you.
Employers want their employees to be happy, but happiness isn’t necessarily what people want from their employers. Instead of that employees want to feel that there is understood by the managers. So, there should be continuous communication between the employee and the supervisor so that goals must be achieved. To be successful this conversation should be lightweight and future-oriented.
