Improving performance management practices is a year-long effort requiring a focus on process and technology. We’re now halfway through the year, and for many organizations this means it’s time for semi-annual performance reviews or check-ins. But it’s also a good time to re-evaluate those practices and the solutions through which you conduct them.
So with that in mind, reflect on the following aspects of performance management in your organization:
Ongoing feedback vs. annual or semi-annual reviews. Traditional performance reviews were designed to annually or semi-annually collect data about employee accomplishments, performance, gaps, etc. They were geared towards justifying merit raises, supporting promotions, or justifying terminations. What they have not generally been about is continuous, natural conversations: they instead focused on process (too often a rigid one at that), and far less on actual people and improving overall business performance.
But this need not be the case. Modern solutions, such as those provided by Taleo, can lead organizations to transform their performance management approach to enable continuous, natural conversations between managers, project leaders, and employees. The ability to frequently provide feedback and adjust goals, and thereby institute vital course corrections to optimize performance, is the best way that organizations can succeed in the fast-changing modern world.
Feedback from the many instead of the one. As Taleo’s Dan Flanigan noted in his recent blog posting Performance Appraisals: The Future is Now, employees have a need for feedback from a variety of sources. Organizations are increasingly complex, with employees quite often being managed by matrix managers, project managers, or mentors. Further, modern projects can be wholly within a core team and overseen by one’s manager, but just as often can span across teams and be led by other managers. As a result, true peer reviews are no longer a nice to have, but a must have.
What are required today are open, flexible systems that enable anyone to comment on anyone else’s work and contributions in real time, in support of specific goals or independent of them. Taleo Performance encourages employees to solicit input from anywhere in the organization at any time, allowing the employee’s manager to play the role of curator or facilitator when appropriate, not merely that of the ultimate judge.
Process simplification by leveraging familiar tools. Employees today use an ever wider variety of software tools, and yet there remains one tool that everyone uses throughout the day: their email application. Leveraging this already familiar tool is one way to smoothly move from once-a-year performance reviews to a more continuous, natural conversations approach.
Taleo provides email integration through Taleo Anywhere, allowing users to request and respond to feedback, approve tasks, review and update goals, and more, all from the comfort of their email application. This sort of solution also eliminates the frustration of saving and later searching for communications, because any email – at the moment it is understood and relevant – can be turned into feedback for any performance element, including goals, competencies, reviews, career planning, development efforts, and more.
Identifying and retaining top performers. Whether the economy is booming, muddling along, or in recession, retaining high-potentials is always a top priority. The best employees will frequently have intriguing opportunities arise, so identifying and doing everything you can to engage and retain them is critical. By shifting from annual performance reviews to continuous conversations, and by simplifying the process by using familiar tools like email, managers can tap into that regular performance feedback and stay on top of their high potentials throughout the year: Who are the biggest flight risks? Who would benefit from learning and development, mentoring, or stretch assignments? Who could use more challenging goals to keep them engaged and growing? Don’t let your top performers slip through the cracks because your approach to performance management is stuck in the once-a-year review paradigm.
Integrating performance management to obtain Talent Intelligence. Performance management is just one aspect of integrated talent management, and has key touch points with recruiting and onboarding, compensation, succession planning, and learning and development. Getting insightful business analytics from all of these components works best when you have an integrated approach.
Take the time now to review where you are on the integration curve, and where you’d like to be for the next fiscal year and beyond. Do you have robust unified talent profiles that provide information on your employees’ work history (including pre-hire data), skills, competencies, performance feedback, learning and development programs, career aspirations, and more? If not, then you are not able to get the benefits that true Talent Intelligence provides, such as the knowledge that you have the right people, in the right roles, doing the right work, at the right time – or where you are falling short through skill gaps, misallocated resources, and a lack of talent mobility. With a Talent Intelligence perspective guiding you, talent management becomes a strategic productivity tool, rather than simply an HR tool.
The year is half over – so take the time now to review your approaches to each of the above challenges and opportunities. To provide you with additional insights, we encourage you to attend one or both of our upcoming webinars on performance management:
- Are Performance Reviews Dead? If so, What’s Replacing Them?
with Allan Schweyer, Partner & Principal, Center for Human Capital Innovation (CHCI)
Wednesday, July 13, 2011 – 2:00 p.m. EST / 11:00 a.m. PST
- Performance Management: Annual Exercise or Driver of Results?
with Matt Rice, Sr. Director of Product Management, Taleo
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 – 12:00 p.m. EST / 9:00 a.m. PST
Related Links:
The Top 50 Problems with Performance Appraisals
Questioning the Underlying Assumptions of Performance Appraisals
Annual Performance Reviews Underperform
The Performance Measurement Conundrum
Related Posts:
Performance Appraisals: The Future is Now
Learning and Talent Management: Performance Management and Goal Planning
Knowledge Workers and Talent Management Practices