Not Your Father’s PM

Effective Performance Management Strategies

With inflation at a 39-year high, your team members are facing increasing costs in housing, food, and energy. That could drive them to switch jobs. In fact, when it comes to earning more, job switching is more effective than job holding, according to the Workforce Vitality Report by ADP’s Research Institute.

How do you prevent their leaving? Give them continuous signs of progress and achievement via progressive and consistent performance management.

Before learning how that can be done, we need to have the same definition of performance management. It is a continuous process of constantly monitoring and managing the performance of the employees. It encourages employees to utilize their full potential while working to accomplish the desired goals and objectives of the company. Moreover, effective performance management will assist companies in increasing their efficiency and gaining a competitive edge over their competitors.

It's Not Your Father’s PM

Today, working structures are constantly evolving. So are the approaches to effectively manage employees’ performance. This article highlights five strategies to help companies enhance their performance management system whether their employees work in the office, work from home, or work from anywhere.

1. Set clear expectations and goals

When employees understand what is expected of them, it will encourage them to be more productive and efficient. Hence, it will get easier for business leaders to measure their performance.

Normally, these desired employee outcomes are stated clearly during the onboarding process. At this time, you should convey the importance of the new employee’s role toward the company’s goals and objectives. Once employees are clear about their roles and responsibilities, it will encourage them to be more productive and more engaged in their work.

To substantiate, as per Asana’s research, 51% of the employees in the UK believe they would be more productive if they understand how their role fits well in the organization. In addition, 49% of the employee’s state that gaining an understanding of roles can increase their productivity by 50%.

Moreover, companies should also make sure that their goals should be S.M.A.R.T. to get the most out of employees' efforts. Setting up S.M.A.R.T. goals will assist in creating an effective plan in order to achieve them. To elaborate, S.M.A.R.T. stands for:

S - Specific

M - Measurable

A - Attainable

R - Realistic

T - Time bound

2. Foster the culture of 360-degree feedback

360-degree feedback is an effective mechanism in which employees receive feedback about their performance from their managers and their colleagues over a certain period of time. 

The feedback from managers or peers can be both positive and constructive. Positive feedback can boost the motivation of employees to perform better whereas negative feedback can highlight the key areas where employees can improve. This will assist companies in avoiding the cost of poor performance.

In fact, as per the stats by LinkedIn Talent Blog, 92% of the respondents agreed that if negative feedback is provided appropriately, it can help improve their performance. Moreover, getting both types of feedback helps employees in learning the right path to become the most efficient version of themselves.

Feedback from peers can also be effective and will assist in strengthening the relationship between the teams.

However, many companies believe in providing annual performance feedback and employees usually do not want to wait that long. Hence, companies should always believe in providing instant or regular feedback to ensure that employees can constantly work on improvising themselves.

Moreover, companies can also take feedback from employees in order to point out the key areas that are causing hindrances to the growth and performance of the company. After effectively identifying the key areas of problem, companies can eliminate them to ensure the smooth workflow of the organization.

Along with this, feedback can assist in conveying to employees how they have done on the path to achieving the expected goals. In addition, it can also reflect how employees can improvise better to utilize their full potential. Furthermore, tracking feedback of employees will assist in measuring the overall performance of the employees.

3. Introduce performance management software

Technology has made its way into almost every industry, and HRM is no different. Today’s performance management software can assist in tracking business performance. It can assist in analyzing the performance of teams along with tracking individual productivity.

Moreover, many performance management systems can help in eliminating the culture of providing annual feedback. These tools can help in providing real-time and instant feedback to the employees which can assist in increasing the efficiency of the business. The software can also assist with:

• Getting regular updates from the employees on their completed tasks in a day. This assists in increasing the productivity of employees and keeping a record of their performance for a certain period of time.
• Providing virtual recognition and appreciation to the employees in front of the whole team. This assists in increasing the confidence of employees along with motivating them to perform even better to achieve recognition from their managers.
• Documenting everything eliminates the possibility of managers being biased toward employees.
• Tracking the efficiency of employees’ performance in comparison to the goals and objectives of the company.

4. Create a positive work environment

One of the main objectives of utilizing the approach of performance management is to ensure that employees work in an environment where their abilities can be fully optimized. A substantive part of that is creating a positive environment. To make that happen, below are a few tactics you can use:

• Involve teams in the decision-making process: This engages employees and helps them create decisions from multiple opinions. Involving employees in the decision-making process can effectively foster a positive work culture.
• Focus on creating a diverse workforce: This allows team members to learn from each other’s culture and perspectives which can assist in increasing the team’s knowledge base and efficiency. Moreover, when employees acknowledge and respect different cultures and backgrounds, it helps create a positive environment.
• Encourage and appreciate innovative ideas: This motivates employees to come up with more innovative ideas that can assist in achieving the desired goals and objectives of the company. Moreover, appreciating the employees because of their efforts and contributions can assist in creating a positive work culture.
• Avoid using the approach of micromanagement: Micromanaging reflects the lack of confidence of managers in their teams. Moreover, it frustrates the employees because of constant interruptions by the managers in their regular tasks.
• Motivate employees using various engagement approaches: This has always been the best option to create a positive work environment. Since employees will be engaged in a work environment, they will be more satisfied and motivated to work towards the growth of the company. Various employee engagement activities can include organizing happy hours, team lunch parties, and a playday.

5. Focus on constant upskilling/reskilling

Upskilling/reskilling employees is one of the crucial aspects that can align employees with the growth of the company. In fact, according to the stats provided by Talentlms, 91% of the companies and 81% of the employees claimed that upskilling and reskilling training has boosted productivity at work.

To elaborate, upskilling can assist in constantly improving the efficiency of the employees. Reskilling can assist in preparing employees for performing multiple tasks.

Since every employee has different capabilities and skills, personalized training sessions should be used. This encourages and motivates employees to perform more effectively and efficiently towards the growth of the company. Moreover, it will also become easier for managers to analyze the performance of employees as per the provided training.

Remember that regulating and managing the performance of the employees is one of the core duties of the managers and the human resource department. Hence, it is crucial for the companies to effectively analyze their work environment using the strategies above.

REFERENCES AND NOTES
●      https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/successful-transformations
●      www.humu.com
●      www.valuepenguin.com
●      https://www.valuepenguin.com/news/ADP-wage-growth-report
●      https://www.talentlms.com/blog/reskilling-upskilling-training-statistics/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kiara Miller is a content marketing professional at SpeakingNerd. She has more than 5 years of experience in content marketing and writing. For more information, please email [email protected] or visit https://speakingnerd.com. You can also follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KiaraMiller.