Effective Performance Management

The dynamic nature of the current environment and circumstances has led to a sudden shift from working together on-site to the earlier alien concept of remote working. We are being thrown out of our comfort zones and are being forced to re-evaluate our mode of operation. These days, we are being pushed to constantly challenge our existing processes and make them more relevant and practical for an organization’s current needs.

As part of the team that owns performance management for an organization, one needs to ensure that the external factors are not impacting the existing foundation of evaluation of employee performance as well as productivity. Instead, we need to be on top of the game and use this time and opportunity to evolve. We must ensure to keep intact the alignment of organizational and individual goals across teams as well as constantly create new stimulants for the employee motivation, feedback, and hence performance.

The debate of paper vs system has been long going on. Today, we are at such crossroads that there is no longer any other efficient alternative. The paper version has become even tougher to administer and more cumbersome in our current scenarios. Additionally, there is also the gap of ongoing and real-time feedback to be filled. Earlier, ongoing feedback was being managed across the room whenever deemed fit. However, now we need a more organized platform to ensure feedback is disseminated at the right intervals of annually, midyear, quarterly, or monthly. For this initiative to be rolled out effectively, one is required to make certain of leadership buy-in so that the exercise is fruitful and not carried out as just a tick box in the list of annual to-dos. A good solution will help show improvement in productive usage of leadership’s time and effort towards this exercise as well.

Key features and benefits of a Performance Management Solution

A performance management solution will help track the employee’s performance vis-a-vis the expected outcomes. Overall, it will assist to deliver a structured method for aligning individual goals to organizational goals, create SMART goals, roll out continuous and timely feedback on performance against the set goals, maintain process transparency, and manage accurate data on performance. Here is an explanation of some of the key features:

Setting of SMART goals: The foundation of any performance process is defining of goals and expected competencies. These should be aligned with the organization’s balanced scorecard. The solution must enable and guide the organization as well as the employees to set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely goals that lead to the required organizational outcomes.

Integration of Processes and Policies: Such a solution must aim to allow for easy integration of the performance management process with the role required competencies & organizational values. It will also help sync performance review feedback with the compensation policy and form input for payroll. Additionally, the employee developmental aspect will be picked up and flow into the training needs for the upcoming calendar.

Regular Feedback: It promises regular feedback dissemination on periodic intervals as defined by guidelines of the performance management process. An increase in the frequency of feedback leads to improvement in engagement levels, performance, and a reduction in employee turnover.

Employee Recognition: It enables managers to boost the frequency of recognizing good performers while adhering to the rewards & recognition policy. Employees appreciate real-time recognition for their efforts and hence this will keep the morale and motivation of employees steady and make employees feel more valued.
Easy Access to Performance Data: This will support the managers and employees to go through past and year-round performance data against the agreed goals and accordingly have a well-informed review. The availability of such data will also help identify concern pockets well in time.
Systematic Evaluation of Performance: It allows for defining performance parameters, expected competencies, assigning of weightages to each and targets or deadlines for each expected outcome. It makes the employees feel more empowered by giving them the ownership to track their performance through the year.

Structured Development Paths: It facilitates the managers to view the gaps and identify the correct developmental needs for the way forward alongside the review itself. This developmental record can then be referred to by both managers and employees to track the progress of the development plan through the next year.

Process Transparency: Measuring of performance against set goals, continuous recording of feedback, and then arriving at the final performance assessment from the specified reinforces expectations and results in an agreeably transparent process for all stakeholders involved.

The Deskera tool helps to strengthen the performance management process by addressing some of the above-discussed needs.