Performance Management has continued to evolve over the years from a primarily traditional approach to encompassing in-formal, continuous feedback. With the impacts of the pandemic, many companies are forced to rethink their employee evaluation approach with a remote workforce and less informal office contact. Instead of sticking with the annual review process, consider changing to enhance the overall employee experience and achieve business goals with on-going feedback.
Although this paper was written prior to COVID-19, the importance of performance management evolution has never been greater than it is today.
Strategic Communication: Key to a Successful Performance Management Evolution
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
For many companies, performance management is becoming a strategic, business-led initiative centered around ongoing conversations between managers and employees. It’s no longer a single HR-directed event involving an annual review and some combination of ratings and rankings. This new approach, which involves introducing a new philosophy as well as implementing an unfamiliar process, involves much more than a single statement or a simple “flip of the switch.” It’s a transformation that’s most successful when coupled with an innovative approach to employee communications and engagement. This white paper will help HR leaders understand the various challenges and solutions they can leverage when making this shift. It describes the evolution of program design, explores the stages of the user journey through transition, and includes actionable insights into how to support transformation through strategic communications.
THE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT CONTINUUM
FROM A PROCESS TO AN EXPERIENCE
Many companies are transitioning performance management from an annual review based on ratings to ongoing, conversational coaching. They’re changing their approach to enhance the employee experience and achieve bottom-line business goals—two things that increasingly prove to go hand-in-hand. Compared with the traditional approach to performance management, today’s performance management programs focus on:
- Developing employees. Rather than backwards-focused evaluation, employee development is about improving performance today and building skills and goals for the future.
- Empowering managers. Rather than focusing solely on ranking and rating employees, workforce leaders need the training and tools to focus on the “what” and the “how” of performance, and how to communicate these observations.
- Leveraging systems for success. Rather than using the talent management system to automate workflows of the past, organizations now lean on technology to reinforce the key actions, behaviors, and tools that support the new process.
- Enabling success. Rather than impeding progress by sticking with the “same old, same old,” companies are implementing new processes and technology tools that measure performance, engage participants, and drive ongoing change.
ONGOING CONVERSATIONS – THE KEY TO NEW PROGRAM ADOPTION AND SUCCESS
While making the shift, HR leaders have the opportunity to redefine their role: instead of one-time change champions, they’re transition owners. And, reinforcing the transition over time is critical. According to a recent study by IDG research, while 87% of employees said they liked the concept of ongoing, informal performance management, they’re more ambivalent about how it’s working in practice. Nearly half (48%) of employees, for example, say they’re not getting enough feedback from their manager. Read on to learn how HR can support the new performance management program and ensure its long-term success through effective and ongoing communication…
