Happy and engaged employees are an essential component of any organization. If workers feel like they are just a cog in a larger machine, then they may start to become demoralized, which will lead to a decline in productivity.
Performance management is, to put it simply, the process by which a manager monitors and assesses the performance of employees to keep them both happy and productive.
This isn’t the same thing as talent management, which focuses more on your worker’s specific personal needs.
Instead, performance management is about breaking jobs down into achievable steps and providing consistent feedback on how they should be completed. In a workplace that has a good performance management system, workers will never be in the dark about what they are supposed to be doing and will have clear, attainable goalsthat they can work towards.
As well as receiving feedback from their managers, it is also expected that employees will get the chance to offer their input as well to ensure the system helps everybody to create a more cohesive work environment.
This article will take you through what performance management is, and how you can break this process down into actionable steps that will benefit both the company and its employees.
What is Performance Management?
Performance management is the process of making sure employees clearly know what their jobs are and have all the tools necessary to complete them. This commonly manifests as a system where workers and managers can trade useful feedback so they are constantly aware of what they are doing right and where they can improve.
Other elements of a good performance management system will include clearly defined goals and the use of software like PulseHRM for monitoring how well each employee is meeting their targets. This process can be broken down into four steps which we will cover below.
Step 1: Make A Plan
As with any good system, forethought and planning are essential. The first part of the planning phase is to define the job you want your employees to do. Try to create clearly defined job descriptions that consist of a set amount of work within a set amount of time.
This brings us to the second step in forming a plan, which is to break the job down into smaller more manageable tasks. Managers should always aim to create SMART goals. If you aren’t familiar with what SMART stands for, it refers to tasks that are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time- based
For example, you could give your employees a vague nebulous instruction like “Organize as many files as you can”. This isn’t very helpful and may cause your workers to quickly burn out as they have no specific end to their task. Instead, it would be better to phrase this goal as “ Organize and compile 12 files every week”.
This is much clearer and as such your employees will understand specifically what you are asking of them. SMART goals set a clear baseline for what you expect from your workers, which makes it easy to know who is on target and who is underperforming.
Once you have created a plan, it is vital that you discuss it with your workers and give them the opportunity to offer feedback. Not only does this keep them in the loop, but it will make them feel more engaged with their targets as they will have had some say in defining what they are.
After the manager and the employees have arranged a plan both of them can agree on, it is time to move on to the next phase.
Step 2: Provide Training and Coaching.
Once you have a plan of action, it is important for management to ensure that their employees are able to achieve all the goals that have been set. Coaching doesn’t mean holding your employees’ hands and helping them with every little aspect of their work.
Rather it is about hosting regular meetings at least once a month to check how your workers are coping with the objective you agreed upon in the planning phase. Training and active assistance are a much better way to deal with under-performance than sanctions or other forms of punishment.
Use meetings to identify where your employees are struggling and give them constructive feedback that helps to address their issues. As always, save time at the end of the meeting for your employees to give their own feedback, such as why they are struggling and potential goals that they are uncertain how to complete.
These meetings will make it easier for you as a manager to pinpoint and deal with potential issues as they emerge. You can offer concrete solutions and hear from your employees about how they think their work is going and what can be improved to help them meet their goals.
To get the most out of this phase, it is essential to hold meetings very regularly, at least once or twice a month. As you have more of these meetings make sure to revisit the goals you have set and see how they can be changed to better suit your workers and the current objectives of the company as a whole.
Step 3: Access Your Employees’ Performance
This is where HR software like PulseHRM can really make a difference. Whatever method you use, it is vital to have some quantifiable means of measuring your employees’ performance. This means keeping a clear record of what goals were set, and solid data to show whether or not they were achieved.
This information should be used in meetings to give actionable feedback that your employees can use to improve and learn. Again it isn’t about issuing punitive measures to anyone who didn’t complete all their tasks.
Instead, management should identify workers who are struggling and engage them in a discussion so they can work together to increase productivity.
Remember this isn’t just about reviewing your worker’s performance, and you should also take the time to review the management system itself. This involves checking whether personal and organizational objectives were completed and if not, finding out why.
Ask your employees what challenges they faced so you can provide clear and useful feedback on how to overcome them. Find out what kind of training may be helpful for increasing productivity, and request feedback on your own feedback to see what is helping and what needs modifying.
These are the kind of discussions that give workers a chance to feel more involved in their roles and how they are carried out. If your workers feel like they are being listened to and helped with achieving their goals, then they will be much more willing to put the effort into achieving them.
Step 4: Take Action
The final step of the performance management process is looking at the information you have gathered about your employee’s productivity and taking action. This could mean arranging training sessions to help those who are struggling or revising goals that are unrealistic, or have been met and surpassed.
As well as pointing out where improvements can be made, it is also important to reward employees who have met all their targets. Rewards don’t always have to be in the form of monetary compensation.
Here are a few ideas for rewards that will make your employees feel appreciated and recognized for completing all of their objectives;
- Time off.
- Exciting, new projects that your employee will be interested in.
- Company-wide recognition of their accomplishments.
- Opportunities for career progression or potential leadership roles.
Rewarding those who achieve all of their goals and objectives, will motivate others to try and do the same. This is the final step in the performance management process, but that doesn’t mean it ends here.
As we said earlier, a good performance management system needs to be in constant rotation. All of the above steps should be repeated from month to month to keep your employees engaged and so you can address problems as they happen.
How To Improve your Companies Performance Management System?
Good performance management is about constantly looking for ways to improve. This doesn’t just apply to your workers and as a manager, you should always be looking for ways to enhance your existing system to help your employees stay happy and productive. In this section, we will be discussing a few ways that you can perfect your performance management system to benefit both your employees and the company as a whole.
Standardize Systems and Practices
If people are unsure how to carry out a certain task, then they won’t be able to work as effectively. Standardized techniques and practices in the workplace help to eliminate guesswork and will guarantee that employees know what they need to do as well as how to do it.
This is where automation tools and software can be very helpful. Not only do they make it easier to have a standard, set way of doing things, but they can also streamline the work process itself by removing unnecessary admin.
If everyone is using standardized software, then you can be sure that they will carry out tasks in exactly the same way, which will be very beneficial for productivity and keeping all of your workers on the same page.
Make Meetings a Two-way Discussion
This point can’t be emphasized enough, good performance management should be an ongoing system of feedback between the employer and the employee. For this to work, as well as providing active feedback to help your workers meet their targets, you should be ready and willing to receive feedback from them.
This could include ways to make targets more manageable, new systems or techniques for standardizing work and even feedback on your feedback to gauge whether or not it is as helpful as you want it to be.
By making performance management something that your employees are actively engaged in, they will feel like they have more agency and will be more motivated to try and reach their goals.
Only Use Punitive Measures as a Last Resort
The most important aspect of a good performance management system is rewarding those employees that do well and helping those who are struggling in a non-punitive fashion. If workers feel like they will be punished for not meeting their goals, they will be more reluctant to provide feedback and communicate with their managers.
A lack of communication will only make issues of underperformance worse, so it is essential that both managers and employees feel free to bring up problems and discuss potential solutions.
If your employees are failing to meet their weekly objectives, or are exhibiting negative behavior that is having an effect on their co-workers, it can be very easy to assume they are the ones at fault.
However this isn’t always the case, and as a manager, you should aim to meet your workers halfway and try to see issues from their perspective. Perhaps an employee is underperforming because they are unsure how to carry out a certain task.
This could be down to a lack of resources, or necessary skills, as well as a whole plethora of other factors from workplace bullying to a lack of understanding among co-workers.
When you do encounter employees who are underperforming, always try to identify what the problem is that is causing them to struggle. Once you have a clear understanding of what is going wrong you will be much more capable of dealing with it in a way that benefits everyone involved.
This is not saying you should never employ punitive measures, but more that they should be saved as a last resort.
Conclusion
Companies that employ a strong performance management system will be far more likely to succeed and grow. Furthermore, the employees that work for said company will be much happier, as they will have a clear idea of what is expected from them and how to carry it out.
If workers know that they can have an honest discussion with management about how their work is going, then they are far more likely to engage with their jobs and be more productive. This process takes a lot of work, but implementing it can make the world of positive difference to any workplace
