How to Improve Employee Performance in 4 Steps

The performance appraisal. Love it? Hate it? Honestly, when it comes to employee performance there really isn’t any other way to improve the quality of their work. However,there are ways to botch the process if you don’t conduct these vital performance methods correctly. Whether your organization likes formal performance appraisals or prefers a casual, real-time approach, there are ways to make sure your team gets the most out of your feedback. Thorough communication and preparation lay the groundwork to improve employee performance. Here are four ways to get started:

Step #1: Communicate performance expectations

The job description may be a cryptic determinant to employee performance, but employees need to understand what is expected of them from management. Communication before performance problems occur is an indispensable method to creating an environment of development. If leadership purveys the necessary information ahead of time, employees will have a greater understanding as to how they will be evaluated in the future.

Step #2: Follow-up after the performance appraisal

The purpose of conducting a modern performance appraisal is to professionally develop employees. However, 40.1% of supervisors fail to follow-up after the performance reviews to see the progress of their team’s work [1]. Mona Berberich explains,

“If you want to permanently succeed, you need to create and instill a routine. One workout is not going to make you look like Arnold. Schedule regular appointments and follow up with your employees’ performance.” 

Step #3: Prepare yourself     

You expect your employees to come to their performance appraisal ready with questions and input and to receive feedback. The real question is: are you prepared to give it? This is where regular performance reviews or 360 degree reviews come into play. Over half (51%) of employees rank their current performance appraisal system as average [2]. If your organization joins the other 13% of companies that hold performance reviews at least every 6 months combined with good practices, you’ll likely get a better score. 

Step #4: Challenge your employees

Your team wants a break from the mind-numbing day-to-day tasks. These might be important responsibilities, but if employees are expected to do these on a regular basis the tasks can lose their intrigue. Studies show if high potential employees are proposed with challenges (accompanied with support if they need it) that 70% of them will stay with their current company [3]. Liz Wiseman suggests:

“Try giving them higher-stakes work that addresses more complex problems and a more diverse set of stakeholders. For example, it might be time for one employee to take a divisional program to the entire company. Remember to make it hard in the right ways though…. You want to productively expand on the meaningful work they’re already doing.”

Whether you love or hate performance reviews, they are necessary. They don’t, however, have to be something to revile. You can make them productive and meaningful if you follow a few simple steps. Communicate the performance you expect of your employees before it’s time for an appraisal, and neither you or they will be surprised with the results of the review. As a supervisor, you have to be prepared before the performance appraisal and follow-up after the review with consistency or you risk losing the developmental efforts of the performance appraisal.

These few tips along with a challenging project on occasion formulate the foundation for improved performance throughout your team. Take a demo of Reviewsnap to see how we can make performance management easier for you.

Sources:

[1] HR Daily Advisory - Supervisors’ Most Common PA Mistakes (2014 Performance Management Survey)

[2] CEB - High Potential Employees - 55 Percent Set to Leave

[3] HR.BLR.com - Infographic: 2014 employee performance appraisal practices 

Explore Our Related Topics:

●      Is Employee Motivation Increasingly Out of Control?

●      Employee Morale Eroding Like the Grand Canyon

●      Recognizing the Difficult Dual Role Managers Play - Coach and Mentor

Should Employee Performance be Judged on a Bell Curve?

The common practice of professional “grading on the Bell Curve” does little to improve employee performance. In fact, it does quite the opposite - employee performance (and happiness) plummets. So, to answer the question, “Should employee performance be judged on a Bell Curve?” the answer is no. A performance appraisal shouldn’t be conducted on a group level with individual performance expectations… they should be performed on an individual basis for group improvement. Here’s why (with a couple of examples to drive our point home).

Reason #1: Forced Rankings and Collaboration Don’t Mesh

The workforce has changed. It’s not always a 9-5 day, and the way we work is changing. Despite the dissonance between old-school style ranking and the evolved workforce, in some cases, performance management hasn’t caught up yet. Flatter organizational structures and the growing desire for a collaborative workforce negate the effectiveness of the Bell Curve performance appraisal system. Why? Say an employee scores higher on the curve than their co-worker. That can place a superiority position in what’s supposed to be a collaborative team.

Computer Sciences Corp., for example, recently started grading performance on a Bell Curve at an astonishing 40% employee failure rate. Well over one-fourth of their employees will fall under what is considered company standards, no matter how well they performed, simply because their coworker [1] did better. 

Reason #2: Inaccurate Assessments

When your team hits all of their performance goals - not only reaches them, but knocks them out of the park - employee performance can’t effectively be judged on a Bell Curve. Charlotte A. Donaldson, Senior Learning Strategist at Booz Allen Hamilton, said:

“On those occasions when managers lead truly high-performing teams, someone still must be ranked low, despite meeting performance plan goals. To replace that person with an unknown is expensive.” [2]

So, each performance appraisal, you would then either replace the poor performers or place them on a probationary period while they fought for a place at least in the middle. Bell Curves mathematically can lead to higher turnover rates and an unnecessarily high recruitment budget.

Reason #3: Your Employees Hate Them

Bottom line, forced rankings diminish the value of your top performers, raises middle performers, and ignores the efforts of the under performers. Josh Bersin explained the basic faults of the system [3] and the damages to employee morale in three concise and poignant phrases:

• Grading on a Bell Curve rations high performers, regardless of those who perform well. These are (typically) the top 10% of the workforce.
• Forced rankings set a “losers” group at the bottom of the employee food chain. These are (typically) the bottom 10% of your team.
• Then there’s everyone else, the middle of the herd. Because they make up 80% of the employees you just scaled, that’s where your budget for employee growth goes. 

Even the Masters Have to Change Sometimes

This isn’t the same workforce as it was 10 or even 20 years ago. Even the corporate giants like Microsoft and Adobe [4] have realized this calls for a change. Despite their mass popularity (and resume fodder), these companies realized the need to rid their organizational performance standards of the dreaded Bell Curve. It was a sharp realization when these behemoths began to change their performance management practices that grading on a Bell Curve actually discourages collaboration and damages productivity.

Forced rankings can cause more problems with performance than they actually solve. They invalidate any kind of teamwork atmosphere and greatly disrupt productivity. Grading on a Bell Curve effectively becomes an avenue for expensive employee replacement and training. Not to mention, your employees hate the practice. Replace the faulty system with a more human appraisal that ranks an employee’s performance against their own work, versus the work of their teammates. The Bell Curve may have been effective once upon a corporate era, but the inconsistencies with modern workplace characteristics have rendered the system ineffective.

Ready to change what you believed about performance appraisals yet? We thought so. Take a demo of Reviewsnap to strengthen your employee feedback.

Sources:

[1] Washington Business Journal - CSC begins rating employees on an extreme bell curve

[2] Performance Management - Forced Ranking

[3] Forbes - The Myth of the Bell Curve: Look for the Hyper-Performers

[4] Bloomberg Business - Microsoft Kills Its Hated Stacked Rankings. Does Anyone Do Employee Reviews Right?

Explore Our Related Topics:

• Get Relief Before Cabin Fever Strains Performance
• Identify and Uplift Disengaged High Performers
• How to Grow Part 1: Performance Management in 3… 2... 

Photo Credit: c r i s via Compfight cc

Why Performance Management Requires Leadership

You can’t have a performance management system without someone that oversees the everyday happenings around the office. However, just because the organization’s management has a hand in the performance of their employees doesn’t mean that’s where the buck stops. Organizational leadership has to be involved in the performance management system as well, as they ultimately dictate the performance culture of the organization. Performance reviews give leaders the information they need to analyze the data and help improve their team’s performance. They promote high-performance standards through regular performance feedback and goal-setting through coaching. Organizational leadership has to set these changes in motion.

1.  Leadership needs to focus the team

There are many moving parts to performance management that need oversight including aspects like performance reviews to make sure employees stay on track. As a leader, your responsibility in any given performance appraisal is to motivate, coach, and mentor through effective means of communication and recognition. SHRM defines performance reviews and performance improvement as a standard for performance management [1]:

“The most comprehensive application of a dynamic performance management system occurs when the cause and effect connections of current performance are used to define and align future performance. In the field of human resources, the latter connection can be achieved by incorporating the concepts of goal setting and performance improvement plans into the feedback processes of a performance management system.” 

2.  The team needs leadership to create a performance strategy

Your employees need to understand where their team is headed. That means as a leader, you have to be the one that gets them to that end point. Unfortunately, however, 55% of organizations say that the business leadership is not entirely engrossed in performance management as they should be [2]. Employee alignment, goal coordination, and subsequently strategy suffer when leadership takes a step back from performance management integration. 

When leadership has an active role in performance management and creates a strategy for their system, employees are more likely to stay on track with their personal goals as well as organization goals. Not to mention, their managers take accountability for their team’s overall alignment and correct performance issues as they arise. A strategic performance plan keeps the entire team focused on one end goal. 

3.  Leaders track and analyze performance data

Even though leaders may not aggregate these numbers themselves, they are responsible for understanding what these numbers mean for the performance of their team and the overall success of the organization. With the plethora of talent management systems, 56.3% leadership has begun to recognize the need to integrate their performance management and plan to do so in the next 12 months [3].

Aspects of the performance management system like employee performance reviews can shed light onto practices that need to be altered or areas where employees need training across the board. Unfortunately, the performance appraisal process isn’t approved by everyone; 58% of employees said it wasn’t an effective use of anyone’s time [4]. With communication and collaboration as a part of the company culture however, you can ensure this data and the changes that are made thereafter stick and actually improve the performance standards throughout your organization. 

Leadership needs a heavy hand in performance management. Organizational leadership sets the standards for employee performance standards and company culture quality. Your employees look to you to set examples and to keep them focused on achieving company goals. You can’t do this without an effective performance management strategy and the information to track from that performance management system. Through a strategic performance management system, leaders can identify developmental and training needs throughout the organization and adjust their programs accordingly.

Sources:

[1] SHRM - Performance Management: American National Standard

[2] Training Magazine - Performance Management: Large Divide Between Perceived Importance and Effectiveness

[3] Brandon Hall - Executive Summary : State of L&D 2014

[4] Deloitte University Press - Performance management is broken

Explore Our Related Topics:

●      6 Ways Great Leaders Conduct an Effective Performance Appraisal

●      Is Employee Motivation Increasingly Beyond Our Control?

●      Are We Doing Enough to Develop Future Leaders?

Understanding the Way Minds Work: Think Like a CLO

If you could reduce a good performance management system down to ONE element (hint: you can’t), it would be the ability to allow organizations and managers to train and develop their employees in a free learning environment while maintaining an understanding of where employees rest on the learning curve. An environment that cultivates a desire for more knowledge and experience clearly benefits the employees and the organization as it can improve employee performance by up to 14%.

But how do training and development dovetail into a vibrant learning culture? Both aspects of employee development go hand-in-hand; just because your organization has a learning atmosphere doesn’t necessarily mean the training and development are as robust as they should be. Cultivating employees through performance management inspired training begins to create a learning culture in a cyclic motion of development. While each needs the other to survive, one does not automatically imply the other. Here’s how to get them working in sync.

Training

The inundation of technology has changed the way companies train their teams. Using games as a way to teach employees industry and organizational standards is now more commonplace than ever before. Gamification takes traditional workplace training and situates it in a virtual game. This increases the hard feedback for workers and allows employers to track and document employee progress in their performance management systems. 73.6% of the training provided to Fortune 500 employees is through online methods. While not technically gamification, many enterprises are heading in that direction.

Structural and serious game simulations are used to engage and motivate employees to learn better practices or change work behavior. Structural game characteristics are more popular than serious game simulations (25% and 19%, respectively), and help employees reinforce or practice skills to increase performance.

Training can’t all be fun and games...or can it? While there are one off skills that must be taught one-to-one, organizations like Evault are turning to exciting platforms to teach and engage and are trying to discuss what a real learning and gamification platform looks like:

The program is exactly what Dorothy Serdar had hoped it would be: consistent, comprehensive, efficient, interactive and, according to employees, highly engaging, if not downright fun. “The biggest positive statement is how much they learned in a short period of time,” she says. Read more about how Evault (and other companies) are using gamification both on and offline to teach and train new hires.

Learning

Informal learning is inextricably linked to training and formal learning. Informal learning provides a context for what employees glean from the company’s formal training programs. Saul Carliner (@saulcarliner), Research Director at Lakewood Media Group, said:

“One of the advantages of formal learning is its efficiency. With prescribed objectives, structured learning activities, and built-in feedback, workers can master one or more work-related responsibilities in a brief period of time. Formal learning lacks context, however.”

However linked they may be, training and informal learning are different. Training and formal learning spark instances for informal learning. Employees can take the information learned in the corporate classroom and put them into practice. The differences in formal and informal learning are based on:

• Who is in control of the learning and assesses its effectiveness
• Where the learning happens (i.e., in the classroom or outside the cubicle)
• If the learning was the primary objective or a byproduct of an activity
• How much of the learning material is conceptual or contextual

Part of the difficulty is dealing with learning initiatives is the inability of different business units to measure it consistently. Consider this insight from Jay Cross, an informal learning champion:

In 2001, training directors turned their attention to return on investment. Unfortunately, instead of learning cost-benefit analysis, people who wanted to speak the language of business studied accounting. Created long before knowledge work was invented, accounting values intangibles such as human capital at zero and counts training as an expense instead of an investment.

Developing

Employers are responsible, in part, for the cultivation of their employees’ skills and assets. They are not, however, solely responsible for developing the future of their entire team. Employees take the knowledge and experience they’ve gained from an organization and use it to build their careers. One of the biggest issue companies have in engaging their teams is creating an atmosphere that develops management and leadership when employees are overwhelmed with their workloads. Company leadership and the environment they promote within the office are two driving factors behind employee development. Josh Bersin (@Josh_Bersin), Founder of Bersin by Deloitte, said:

“‘Best places to work’ companies don’t just have ping pong tables and free lunch, they have a ‘soul’ which makes work exciting and energizing. They invest in great management and leadership. They train and develop people so they can grow. And they define their business in a way that brings meaning and purpose to the organization.”

Because training and informal learning are so connected, informal learning is a direct result of the complexity and effectiveness of the training program. Subsequently, employee development is a combination of the formal training, informal learning sessions, and how employees use this knowledge in their work to increase performance. Formal training programs have to be robust in order to see results in performance management and better outcomes in performance appraisals. It becomes cyclical: a learning culture is the culmination of the formal training, informal learning, and the development that happens when employees are able to apply their training to their jobs.

How are you implementing training within your workforce? If you had to classify your initiatives, would they be training, learning, development focused? Would they be formal or informal? Do you practice new fangled or old school gamification? Let us know in the comments.

How to Keep Track of Organizational Goals with Performance Management

Some people make lists, others put sticky notes on their computer screen, and many simply fly by the seat of their pants. It's not easy to keep track of work resolutions, especially when they are long term as resolutions tend to be. At work when deadlines begin to pile up and projects are coming out of your ears, finding time to work towards keeping your goals on track is near impossible. But don't worry, your team doesn't have to do it entirely alone.

What tools can help track goals?

Over the last few years, technology has exploded. Between the tablets, phablets, and smartphones… even your car talks to you now. With all of these pieces of technology, there's undoubtedly "an app for that" that also translates to your Tools like Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox, and Trello. These apps can help you and your team stay on task while making the most of available time. Trello, for example, separates responsibilities by importance to keep projects streamlined and the office organized.Microsoft Office 365 and Dropbox allow your team to use their mobile devices to access work documents without the constraints of a desktop computer.

While technology (i.e., big data, analytics, tracking) is necessary in today’s business world, disruptive technologies (i.e., social media, personal devices, email) can impede the success of goal setting and maintenance. Josh Bersin (@Josh_Bersin), Principal and Founder of Bersin by Deloitte said: 

“Agile software was the beginning of the era of greater transparency and continuous feedback. Now we have social media everywhere, which promotes even greater visibility into the everyday lives of everyone around us. The other trend driving this is a strong focus on analytics. Open discussion, regular check-ins, big data, and greater awareness are now part of every business and when you pair those activities with company-wide, quarterly goal setting processes - organizations can see 30-40 percent greater returns.” 

What can the workload handle?

Perhaps most importantly, employees have to understand their work capacity. The biggest issue with these newfound hopes of a brighter and more productive year is that all too often the goals are lofty. Take a look at the average workday breakdown:

●      44.5% of the day spent on primary job duties

●      13.8% of the day spent on reading and responding to emails

●      12% of the day spent on administrative tasks

●      9.3% of the day spent in useful meetings

●      7.7% of the day dealing with interruptions

●      6.9% of the day wasted in useless meetings.

That leaves a grand total of 5.7% of the day for special projects, working towards goals, and everything else. Adding lofty aspirations to the list of daily activities leaves your team inundated with a workload they might not be able to handle. 

This is yet another reason why accurate performance appraisals are so crucial to business development and employee growth. Two-thirds of highly rated employees are not the top performers, so inaccurate appraisals could give them disproportionate time at work for more goals than they can reasonably achieve. 

What is the manager’s role?

Productivity and engagement start with the right attitude. Employees have to do more than simply show up to work... they have to actually show up. While employees are their biggest critics, sometimes they need a little help getting motivated to accomplish their goals. Whether it's faith in their own personal brand or how that aligns with the organization, a little "Nice work! This turned out great with the limited time you had," or, "This is great, but it still needs some attention in these areas," are examples of simple continuous feedback. However, there are other more involved ways managers can motivate the team before failing to meet a goal.

●      Clearly define expectations - It’s a natural propensity for people to mentally wander. However, if you give employees direction, their goals will align with your expectations for development. Understand how your employees work and what their limits are so new goals don’t push them too far.

●      Believe in your team - Employees are more likely to perform well if they know their supervisor has faith in their performance.

●      Praise and correct appropriately - Nothing is quite as demotivating as public criticism. More often than not, employees are unaware of shortcomings, and they certainly don’t need to be altered to them in front of their team. On the same note, while private praise is appreciated, it’s not as effective as doing it publicly. 

No matter what your role in the company, it’s part of your job to help your employees and coworkers reach their work objectives. While it’s not your responsibility to micromanage their every task, you do have to help them understand how to manage their daily performance requirements and goal maintenance simultaneously. Performance appraisals, goal tracking software and apps, and clear motivation from supervisors all play a role in helping your team reach their goals this year in the office. 

Keeping goals on track is a team effort; don’t let your team do it alone.

Take a demo of our performance management software to see how you can streamline this process.

How to Grow Part 1: Performance Management in 3… 2…

“Only 6% believe their current process for managing performance is worth the time, 58% called their process ‘weak,’ with North American companies 20% worse than the rest of the world.” - Josh Bersin (@Josh_Bersin), Corporate Talent, HR, and Learning Analyst & Founder of Bersin by Deloitte

Only 6%... that’s a pretty slim number of organizations who have a strong performance management system. So what’s the problem? There’s a good chance these companies joined the performance management party late - as in after their employee base grew. Create a performance management system before you begin to gather your team. It’s important to know how exactly you plan to manage the performance of a team before they are onboarded. Why? Unless there is a performance system in place, it will be increasingly difficult to accurately develop and maintain a system of performance appraisals, management system updates, and team alignment with each new employee.

Problem: Performance Appraisals

Is it really a performance appraisal if it doesn't truly identify performance? The answer is no. In fact, performance appraisals are sometimes wildly erroneous and can lead to more performance problems than they actually solve. For example, two-thirds of employees who receive the highest marks during their performance appraisal are quite frankly not the organization’s top performers. Sounds like an oxymoron, right? The underlying problem is that these performance appraisals are outdated and tend to be overly biased. The results are less than flattering. While good employees know they are good, bad performers on the other hand don’t know how poor their performance is. This is because the performance appraisal system wasn’t created until after the maturation of the team, so a set standard of performance regulations wasn’t immediately put into action.

Solution: Create a performance appraisal plan when you recognize the need for growth in the number of employees. Doing so will prepare the organization for the new hires and monitor their growth and performance.

Problem: Updating Outdated Issues

It's really just a formality. Does it honestly need to be updated? Absolutely. The outdated system your organization currently uses needs to be updated. While the company may have originally compiled some sort of performance system for compliance regulations, that certainly doesn’t mean the data from the performance appraisals couldn’t be useful. The data for how the employee works and what they get done during the day can set expectations of the employee, demands of the position, and expectations of the supervisor. Updating your performance management process not only helps the development of your employees, but drives business value as well. Unfortunately, only 8% of HR executives say that their organization effectively uses their performance process to drive business value. Therein lies the problem with using an outdated system - it can in fact damage the value of your business.

Solution: Consistently update the performance management system to meet the needs of the organization and the employees.

Problem: Team Alignment

The team doesn't know the goals of the organization, so they don't understand how their performance fits into organizational needs. Often, the biggest downfall for employee performance is their lack of understanding of organizational goals. If employees are unaware of how the company plans to grow, how can they gauge their own performance? When employees are aligned with organizational goals, they are more engaged while in the office. When employee engagement is high, employees perform 20% better and are 87% less likely to leave the organization. In order to form a high-performing team, it’s crucial the entire organization understands and shares goals. President and COO of Technomedia, Marcel Messier said:

“If leadership is unable to create a clear roadmap that can be communicated and embraced throughout the organization, it will be much more difficult to establish a high-performing workforce able to meet those goals. Alignment only will be achieved by ensuring strong leaders are in place at the top and capable of clearly communicating goals and expectations and providing employees with ongoing learning opportunities to expand and enhance their skill sets. Once these factors are put into place, the organization can benefit from an optimized workforce that operates cohesively to overcome challenges and achieve key objectives.” 

Solution: Integrate alignment into performance management. When the team knows how their work affects the organization, they are less likely to leave and more likely to become high-performing employees.

Not all performance appraisals were created equal… the outdated and antiquated ratings will do little to improve an employee’s performance. Performance appraisals must recognize accomplishments and notate areas needing improvement. Likewise, if the management systems the organization uses aren’t up-to-date, it’s unlikely the performance management system will do much to drive business value. Ultimately, without alignment throughout the organization there’s little hope for an overarching level of high performance and engagement.

Your company needs these three things before your team can grow. Otherwise, it’ll not only be difficult to manage employee performance, it will be ineffective. 

See how you can begin cultivating growth in your organization right this second.

Negotiating vs. Dictating Performance Goals

Modernizing performance reviews (and performance management at large) is the subject of a recent LinkedIn post by Robert Bacal, CEO at Bacal & Associates.

In his post, Bacal offers 10 ideas to update how organizations manage performance and appraisals, including: individualize expectations even for employees doing the same job; put to bed the myth of objectivity; and realize that the purpose of reviews is improvement.

Sound advice, for sure. But Bacal’s wisest counsel was his plea for managers to negotiate goals and objectives during reviews, not dictate them. “Employees know far more about their jobs than their supervisors,” he writes, “in addition to wanting to be more involved in steering the direction of their jobs. No longer does it make sense for goals and objectives to be dictated by the manager. When employees are active in determining what they need to do to contribute to the company, you'll find higher levels of employee engagement and commitment.”

Some managers might have trouble swallowing the idea of “negotiating” goals and objectives—especially those tied to departmental and organizational targets. However, Bacal correctly points out that employees have a better, more intimate understanding of their roles and responsibilities than their managers. Smart managers put this knowledge to use in the process of managing performance effectively. If the word “negotiate” isn’t quite palatable, ask your managers to “collaborate” more with their teams regarding performance goals and objectives.

One item we take exception to is Bacal’s dismissal of ratings forms, which he flatly calls “terrible and demoralizing.” While that’s true of some ratings tools, not all are categorically terrible. Many organizations have found that modern performance management tools actually help them take a more disciplined approach to holding reviews and extracting real value from them.

For instance, with easy-to-use software in place, both managers and employees are more engaged in the review process, reviewers are more aware and respectful of timing and deadlines, reviews are completed faster, and the communication between reviewers and employees is often greatly improved.

In one of our latest case studies, Roseann Rush, Vice President of HR and Risk at PrimeSource, describes how modernizing her company’s review system improved results across the board, including raising its completion rate for reviews from 65% to 89% … slashing its annual review period by more than 50% … and making significant improvements to its documentation and communication processes. You can read about PrimeSource’s experience here.

Bottom line, for many employers, updating their tools and systems goes hand-in-hand with modernizing their approach to performance management. Doing both together can lead to long-lasting, meaningful change.

~

Connect with the individuals and sources highlighted in this post by clicking the links below:

@rbacal

For Feedback To Be Effective, Put First Things First

First things first.

This wise little maxim is the underlying theme of “Stop Teaching People How to Give Feedback,” a thought-provoking post written by Fistful of Talent guest blogger, Ben Olds. When Olds instructs us to nix the feedback lessons, he means temporarily of course. Just until we’ve put first things first.

The “first thing” in this case, according to Olds, is for us to recognize that simply teaching managers to give feedback “doesn’t work.” The reason? “Because this approach starts in the wrong spot! There are four traits that have to exist to have a strong feedback culture, and we typically need to foster each,” writes Olds. These four traits are: 1) the will to receive feedback; 2) the skill to receive feedback; 3) the skill to give feedback; and 4) the will to give feedback.

Olds’ position is that giving feedback is part of a larger continuum and we need to instill other necessary feedback proficiencies across our organizations before and after we train managers.

Olds’ points are eminently sensible but it’s not entirely true that teaching managers to give feedback effectively doesn’t work. Our employees want feedback and the vast majority say it improves their performance. Read the Harvard Business Review post, “Your Employees Want the Negative Feedback You Hate to Give,” which makes a strong case for the value of both positive and negative feedback. And even if 100 percent of employees don’t put feedback to use, many do.

Undoubtedly, we would be better off if we took Olds’ advice and created workplace environments in which all four of his traits could take root in the proper order. These environments would be true “feedback cultures,” nurturing continuous learning and improvement, inspirational performance reviews, and universal accountability.

But even in our less-than-perfect workplaces, managers who know how to give feedback effectively do make a difference.

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Connect with the individuals and sources highlighted in this post by clicking the links below:

@FistfulOfTalent

Benjamin Olds (LinkedIn profile)

@HarvardBiz

HR Tech Wrap Up

Getting ready to pack up and head back to the office after several great days here at the HRTechnology Conference and Expo.

As always, attendees were treated to some truly thought-provoking presentations including a lively panel discussion moderated by David Gergen about how data and analytics will shape the workplace. And, as always, I met some extremely dedicated HR professionals who were interested in discussing my favorite topic, the state of performance management.

Being that we’re here in Sin City, however, I also happened to see some pretty crazy behavior when the nightlife got underway, the kind of behavior that made me look the other way. Thankfully, none of these shenanigans took place at the event itself! But now I fully understand why they created the slogan, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

It struck me that I’m not usually in the business of looking the other way, and neither are the people I spoke with at the conference. We’re performance management and HR professionals. It’s our job to pay attention to behavior—to recognize and reward good behaviors in our employees … to offer counsel and feedback when we see the wrong behaviors … and to develop and instill the right behaviors throughout our workforces by modeling desired behavior ourselves.

Of course, I’m using the term “behavior” in a pretty large sense here and I’m mostly referring to performance-related behaviors, the kind that make individuals either effective or ineffective in their roles. Still, the whole behavior issue got me to thinking that this is one more reason performance reviews are more necessary and valuable than ever—provided they’re conducted well.

At one point during the conference, I was asked whether performance reviews are here to stay or whether they’re dying out. I said that performance reviews, in one form or another, will always be around for a whole host of good reasons. But I’ll add a caveat here. I certainly don’t want those traditional, once-a-year, paint-by-numbers reviews to stick around. As we’ve said in the past, they’re not much good to anybody.

The good news is … the performance review revolution has begun! I’ve seen firsthand how more and more employers are updating and improving their review process. (Read a few of our recent case studies to see for yourself.) When I think of the progress they’re making, I want to do backflips and jump for joy.

But that kind of behavior tends to draw attention—unless you’re in Vegas.

It’s Not Just Millennials Who Desire Meaningful Work

Articles about “meaningful work”—and what that phrase means—are cropping up everywhere.

Here’s a small sampling:

·      “4 Tips To Help Millennials Find Meaningful Work,” from Fast Company, tells employers point blank that Millennials “aren’t motivated by money.” Instead, these younger workers are “driven to make the world more compassionate, innovative, and sustainable” through the work they do.

·      In “Millennials Want Meaningful Work,” Hoopla CEO, Michael Smalls, writes that Millennials “prefer to have meaningful jobs that provide opportunities to effect positive change in their communities and the world at large. … A study by The Intelligence Group reports that 64 percent of Millennials would rather earn $40,000 a year at a job they love than $100,000 a year at a job they find unfulfilling.”

·      A Huffington Post infographic tells us “more Americans are pursuing meaning over money at work” and offers this trio of compelling statistics:

·      96% of working Americans agree that being able to apply personal interests in their career would make them happier in general.

·      68% would be willing to take a salary cut to work in jobs that better allowed them to apply personal interests.

·      And 79% are willing to take a pay cut at the start of their careers for jobs that allowed them to focus on meaningful work.

Again, there’s a virtual mountain of articles on this topic and the more of them you read the more one thing stands out: most are written about Millennials. But the fact is older employees want meaningful work as well.

In April, Forbes published an article titled, “What Older Workers Want, But Aren't Getting,” which cites a Sloan Center survey of employees age 50 and older at large companies. When asked about the most important elements for a quality job, the second item on their list was “opportunities for meaningful work.” In this case, older workers defined meaningful work as having their skills and experience valued and used well; making a difference in the world; and opportunities to engage in the things they value personally. Sounds a lot like the definition given by younger workers, doesn’t it?

The article also quotes Elizabeth Fideler, author of the books Men Still at Work and Women Still at Work, who said that the desire for meaningful work is a key reason many professionals over the age of 60 haven’t retired.

It’s pretty clear that most individuals, regardless of their age, want meaningful work. If we hope to reap the substantial rewards of having employees who are truly engaged in what they do, we not only need to come to terms with the power of assigning meaningful work—we need to master it.

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Connect with the individuals and sources highlighted in this post by clicking the links below:

@FastCompany

@hooplasoftware

@mwsmalls (Hoopla CEO)

@cassandra_daily (The Intelligence Group)

@healthyliving (Huffington Post)

@Forbes