Performance management seeks to keep employees engaged and achieving optimally.
When necessary, performance management will reinforce defined objectives with the employee and leverage coaching and mentoring tools and communication strategies to get and keep people on the course.
Key Features
Performance management differs from the well-worn tactics of quarterly and annual performance reviews. For employees to be happy, productive and engaged in their work, they want to know (1) how their work fits in the organization’s overall strategic plan and (2) how their supervisor views them and their contributions. These are the core needs of any engaged employee.
The features and characteristics of performance management that this comprehensive understanding include:
- Ongoing communication – By using check-ins, updates and regular feedback loops, performance management is characterized as “frequent” or “continuous”. The point is to flip the dynamic of the traditional annual performance review as the penultimate judge of how an employee is doing to merely a summary of all the conversations and updates held throughout the quarter or year. This alleviates pressure on both manager and employee and eliminates ugly surprises and subjective appraisals.
- Focus on action, behaviors, and results – Effective performance management sets clear expectations around how success will be measured. This helps employees know what they have to do daily, weekly, and monthly and what criteria will be used to check how well they are performing.
- Link to larger strategic objectives – Employees seek meaning for their work in how what they do is related to the overall purpose of the business. Managers help connect the dots as to why what employees do matters in the greater strategic objectives of the business, the customers they serve, and ultimately how they make lives better.
Tools for Building Performance Management
Here are some of the fundamental tools for building a performance management system:
It seems elemental but clearly defining titles, essential tasks and responsibilities of an employee’s job through an up-to-date job description removes confusion. A current job description will also include requisite knowledge and skills needed for the employee to be successful. This can reinforce what the employee knows or provide aspirational goals for skills and knowledge to be acquired.
What to Expect from TechCXO
Employees and managers get frustrated by communication gaps, conflicting expectations of work to be done and quality of performance misperceptions. The clarity that performance management techniques offer and the frequency with which they are discussed can eliminate potential conflicts and disagreements.
By employees and managers participating in the planning stage and defining goals and objectives, requisite knowledge and skills, job descriptions, work products to be delivered, and expectations about how to behave with clients, colleagues and supervisors, agreement, buy-in can occur.
With clarity of purpose and the job to be done, comes motivation. Employees will be able to self evaluate their performance at any stage and feel satisfaction and encouragement for work to be done and/or know when its time to redouble effort, ask for help, or seek out new resources.
All the psychological and energy-draining baggage that comes with severe warning, probations and corrections can be mitigated with the frequency of check-ins and clarity of tasks to be performed. Remediations come quicker and gentler and severe peaks and valleys are avoided.
Impact
- 12% Happy employees are 12% more productive and highly engaged workplaces have a 10% increase in customer ratings
- 21% Highly engaged business units where employees feel they are stakeholders of their own future increase profitability an average of 21% according to Gallup
- 2.4x Companies with more engaged workers grew revenue 2.5 times as much as companies with less involved workers over a period of seven years.
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