With the shift from traditional performance management focused on the annual appraisal, to continuous performance management focused on everyday conversations and check-ins, there has been an explosion in the range of software tools to enable the everyday process of performance management to take place more easily.
The move to continuous performance management has come about because the traditional performance management process wasn’t working. It has been enabled and accelerated because today’s technology allows the conversation around agile goals, the check-in conversations, the peer feedback and the annual reviews to take place so easily now compared to heretofore.
What is Needed
Traditionally, companies conducted performance reviews at least annually. However, it’s important for employees to receive ongoing feedback in order to understand how they are performing and contributing to corporate goals, as well as what the next steps are in their career development. This means that aligning and assessing performance continuously and gathering feedback from not only a direct manager, but team members, peers, and indirect managers as well is now vitally important.
A continuous performance management system will offer the following functions as a minimum:
- On-going goal-setting, alignment, and management
- On-going feedback management from multiple sources
Coaching and Development
Performance management is shifting from an evaluation model towards ongoing coaching and development.
Research has shown that companies who provide high levels of development planning and coaching to their employees have less voluntary turnover of staff and generate more revenue per employee than their peers.
Thus, modern performance management software isn’t just for HR — it’s for employees, managers, and leaders, and modern performance management systems offer coaching toolkits and features for managers as well as on-line training for managers.
Agile Goals
These days, business priorities change fast and frequently. There’s no guarantee a goal set at the beginning of a year will be relevant weeks or even months later.
Research shows that organizations which have employees revise or review their goals quarterly (or more frequently) are 45% more likely to have above-average financial performance.
The Future
As the entire performance appraisal process evolves, it’s best to think of your workforce as a valuable sports team: a weekly game, performance stats, regular feedback and communication, lots of coaching.
To facilitate high performance going forward, it’s necessary to have modern software and processes that allows for agile processes, changing goals, encourages feedback, and enables frequent check-ins.
The explosion in software and mobile apps gives companies a huge opportunity to enable and embed a culture of feedback and continuous improvement which brings out the best in everybody.
If you want to see your business grow to the next level through improving overall performance management, make contact today and see how we can help you succeed.
