4 Trends That Are Transforming Performance Management and Organizational Learning

At its core, performance management is all about giving our people the information, resources and guidance they need to achieve specific goals. Sounds simple enough. Of course, the devil is in the details.

One reason performance management is so challenging—the business world isn’t static. Our organizations evolve. Our business goals and targets shift. Our customers’ needs change. Some of these changes occur swiftly while others take time. But there’s no stopping them.

It’s a good thing, then, that significant changes are occurring to the tools, technologies and techniques at our disposal for managing performance and developing our employees. In fact, here are four trends that are on their way to becoming standard operating procedure for improved performance management and corporate learning:

1.     Bring your own device (BYOD) policies—Many companies are adopting these policies for a variety of reasons including their cost-effectiveness, their appeal to younger workers, and the 24/7 connectivity mobile devices provide to workers who travel frequently and work remotely. In addition, a growing cadre of talent management and learning/development providers are now delivering mobile solutions as part of their offerings, which enable companies to share powerful tools and resources with their people in exciting new ways. (See Gartner’s interesting research on BYOD here.)

2.     Bite-size learning—This refers to the practice of breaking topics and lessons into smaller, more “digestible” pieces. The rationale: to enhance retention of information and to allow busy employees to consume a topic in a few minutes. It also makes learning incredibly more effective in the age of the mobile, fluid, and multi-generational workforces.

3.     Location-based learning—This is the kind of learning you see taking place in museums and tourist sites. The learner is presented information on the spot via sound, images or text—or a mix of these three. Sound is delivered through headphones or speakers while images and text are delivered to a variety of devices including smartphones, laptops, tablets or screen projectors. Smartphones, in particular, have dramatically increased the popularity of location-based learning.

4.     Cloud computing—The “cloud” offers a convenient and inexpensive way to access an increasing selection of tools designed to help organizations track and improve employee performance, learning and development. Cloud-based solutions eliminate the need to update software manually, and they facilitate the easy sharing of information, resources and tools (especially those related to learning programs and knowledge sharing). Plus, cloud-based solutions are particularly attractive to enterprise organizations and companies with large, dispersed workforces.

Without question, those of us who want to improve all aspects of performance management—from assessments to learning and development programs to compensation management—need to take better advantage of these concepts and technologies.

For most of us, this means arming our companies with systems and solutions that enable us to do several key things well:

·       Empower our learning leaders to easily create development goals and recommend specific learning activities based specifically on an employee’s performance appraisal ratings.

·       Give employees easy access a full external learning curriculum that supplements our internal training and development content.

·       Provide our people with online access to a comprehensive learning management system.

·       Provide our managers with real-time access to reporting analytics and transcripts of learning activities.

The more we embed these strategies into our business cultures, the better we’ll become at building workforces that deliver real competitive advantages.

Interested in reading further about the convergence of talent management and transformational technologies? Download our white paper, “Performance Assessments in an Increasingly Mobile World,” which is available here.

Is Your 360° Feedback a Few Degrees Short?

For many companies, the answer to this question is a resounding, “Yes!”

The reason—their employees aren’t conducting self-reviews.

If this is the case at your company, your “comprehensive” feedback is not only incomplete but

it’s also causing you to miss out on a golden opportunity—the opportunity to drive truly targeted performance improvements, to raise employee engagement levels and to manage your talent more effectively.

Properly instituted and utilized, self-reviews impart all of these benefits to employers by helping them facilitate open communication between managers and direct reports; by encouraging personal growth in individuals at every level of the organization; and by making performance management a responsibility that managers and employees share.

Additionally, self-reviews help employers:

·      better understand how employees “see” their performance and the contributions they’re making;

·      address critical gaps between employee perception and reality;

·      and determine whether performance goals are being communicated and understood clearly.

Employees themselves also benefit from self-reviews in a number of ways. For example, employees gain a greater sense of control over how they’re being judged and evaluated when they conduct self-reviews. This translates into greater satisfaction and commitment. Self-reviews also give employees the opportunity to:

·      engage in a constructive dialogue with their managers in a setting that’s devoted entirely to them (as opposed to team and departmental meetings where performance may be discussed);

·      highlight their significant achievements and how they’ve addressed past performance issues;

·      ask for support, education or training to address skill gaps and weaknesses;

·      and think/talk about their performance in a larger context (i.e., how they’re helping to achieve the goals of their teams, departments, functional areas and the organization at large).

Bottom line, all of this adds up to more engaged employees. And, as a growing body of research has shown, organizations that have high employee engagement are more profitable, more productive and enjoy greater customer loyalty.

So here are a few suggestions that can help your company make better use of self-reviews and reap the considerable rewards:

Have employees begin their annual reviews with self-reviews. This is a clear demonstration of your respect for employees and your interest in hearing what they think about their performance. Instead of feeling like a one-way critique, your performance reviews will take on the characteristics of a two-way exchange of ideas and information. And you’ll be able to address gaps in perceptions and expectations more proactively.

Encourage employees to focus on the aspects of their performance that are most important to them. Again, this gives you the opportunity to make sure there is agreement between what employees consider important and what management considers important. As a result, fewer disputes are likely to arise and differences of opinion can be discussed more easily.

Use self-reviews as a reason to hold more frequent (and less formal) performance appraisals. We’re always encouraging clients not to get stuck in the annual review cycle. Companies that hold reviews and performance-related discussions more often can make small, steady adjustments to performance and resolve problems before they become epidemic. Employees are far more open to small “course corrections” in their performance, and they won’t feel blindsided by negative feedback as they might if you wait an entire year to critique their work.

Have employees get personally involved in creating their own performance goals. Don’t just hand your employees their performance goals. Make them your partners in goal-setting and creating performance targets. Employees who have a direct hand in these activities embrace their goals and take ownership of their performance to a greater degree. It’s another way to build up their engagement—and to build a workforce that will give you a true competitive edge.

For other ideas on transforming your performance review process, download our white paper, “From Dread to Moving Ahead: Taking the Pain Out of Performance Management,” available here.

Don’t Be One of Those Managers!

A common mistake is to deliver a performance review and then kick back and wait until the next review period before providing substantive feedback. It’s important that you avoid being one of those managers.

A more effective approach is to follow up after the review and then on an ongoing basis.  One of the

important elements of performance management is ongoing communication and feedback to and from employees.

Follow up is important because it allows for reinforcement of important points made during the review and it allows the employee to provide input in terms of either how he or she is working to modify work behavior to improve performance or meet goals or how he or she may be struggling to improve performance. As a manager, you want to hear from the employee and you want to be able to coach as needed including reinforcement of key points made through the review process.

If the employee has shown improvement or continues to do well, you’ll want to recognize and convey that to the employee. This reinforcement of positives often breeds more positive work behavior.  If the employee is continuing to struggle or is exhibiting negative behavior after the review, the follow up session should be used to address the need to be positive and focus on working to improve performance. 

We know that effective communication with employees before during and after formal performance reviews enhances overall performance. The key is to develop an ongoing communication platform with your employees so that you and they become comfortable sharing positive outcomes, concerns, and ideas with one another. When feedback, formal or informal, is done infrequently a communication void can develop and open two-way feedback tends to lag as a result.

After the next review you perform, follow up with the employee within several weeks to discuss how things are going. Without rehashing the review, reinforce the two or three most important points from the review if you aren’t seeing positive changes in work behavior and let the employee talk openly about any frustrations or any steps taken since the review to address deficiencies or progress toward goal achievement. Coach as appropriate and then make a point of talking to the employee periodically to do a check on progress.