The People Strategy Leaders Podcast

Benefits of Talent Management Software for Your Business

Managing talent consumes 30 percent of a manager’s time, which is quite a significant amount on a manager’s schedule. Although attracting new talent is challenging in every industry, retaining them is even more difficult. Technology plays a big role in efficient and effective talent management. In the light of this, why should talent management software be overlooked? The complete talent management cycle can be enhanced with the use of technology.

Employees need to believe that their contribution matters. Even if they are working remotely, they must feel connected. Talent management software assists businesses in precisely doing that. It not only helps organizations manage the talent lifecycle but also provides a quick insight into the potential of their workforce.

Also read: 8 Simple Tips To Demonstrate Leadership In The Workplace

What is talent management software?

Talent management software (TMS) is a technology or tool used by a human resource professional or senior management to manage the employees within the organization. It helps employees to deliver their fullest potential in an organization. TMS provides solutions that supports employees not only in their day-to-day work but also in career development.

How does talent management software work?

Most talent management solutions available in the market have inbuilt modules to support employee performance management and development. As most of them are cloud-based applications, they provide robust security, easy integration, and a range of complementary applications like training programs, payroll, career planning, and secure storage of employee data such as personal information, demographics, and compensation.

The advantages of having a talent management process are many, but some key ones include:

Plan: to align the strategies with talent and the company’s requirements. Work with teams to understand the goal and develop a talent strategy to help them achieve it.
Onboard employees: improve the new hire engagement with an onboarding portal that’s well-planned. Provide a paperless hiring process to attract and retain employees. Implement workflow automation in the onboarding, overbidding, and cross-boarding processes.
Manage employee performance: it helps employees to manage their goals. Use proper action planning for continuous performance management.
Plan and design compensation models: recognize and reward the organization’s best performers.
Develop employees: provide an effective and engaging experience to the learners. Schedule and carry out all types of training. It develops the employees as active leaders and helps them succeed. When employees see that the organization cares for their learning and developmental needs, they feel secure and valued. They tend to stay in the organization for a longer time.

Need for talent management software

The primary goal of using talent management tools is to streamline and optimize the entire talent management process within the organization. Particularly, the COVID-19 pandemic has made it difficult for medium and large businesses to keep track of their employees.

HR can use a talent management system to handle development, performance, and retention. Here are the 5 most common uses of TMS:

1. Shared data

Let us start with the data, as it is the most important. When data becomes more mainstream, the storage and accessibility of the information seem messier. It’s not uncommon for data to be held in silos, making access and analysis difficult.

An integrated talent management application allows the organization to synchronize its essential HR activities from onboarding through performance evaluation. It provides data exchange inside the company to obtain a complete picture of the employee’s information on a year-on-year basis.

2. Retaining the top talent

Retaining an existing team or employee is as vital as focusing on recruitment and bringing in new talent.

Talent management software helps organizations to track employee performance, skills, training, goal setting and tracking, real-time feedback, rewards, and recognition, future aspirations, compensations, and more. It helps employers to identify employees who are doing well and who need help. This helps employers to retain top talent and guide employees who need help.

Also read: Employee Retention Strategy – How To Retain Top Talent?

3. Improved employee experience

A talent management system makes HR life more accessible and improves employee performance. It can be a handy tool for the employees to access historical, performance-related, and future data. All data is available at the same place and there would not be required to track separately.

As an organization’s talent management system can also be used to onboard employees, employees will be familiar with it from day one.

4. Modern employee development

An integral part of the talent management software is employee learning and development. It should be an essential benefit that a company should provide to its employees.

For most employees, continuous learning and career development are more important than pay. Around, 80% of employees prefer talent management systems for learning and development. Based on their information, these employees also provide course recommendations, such as courses completed by colleagues with comparable qualities.

How to choose talent management software?

Choosing TMS often implies a considerable investment for any organization. Capterra published a report with survey results based on 350 questionnaires completed by TMS users. They asked the users about the factors that made them buy TMS. Below are the factors which Capterra found in their survey.

1. Needs of your organization

There is much to say when you think of your organization’s needs. It is about choosing a talent management tool that meets its requirements. Aligning current and future strategies, managing employee performance and development, employee recognition and rewards, etc.

Select a software which is stable to version updates and supports your future needs at the same time.

2. Find a vendor suitable for you.

Implementing the talent management tool is a big project. It often involves a lot of employees with close collaboration with the provider of the software. While it is essential to choose a system that meets your needs, it is also necessary to select a suitable vendor. It is because investing in TMS is a long-term commitment.

3. Request for a demo

Before purchasing a TMS, get a demonstration from the provider you’ve chosen. It will assist you in observing the software’s behavior and determining whether it is user-friendly. It also gives you another chance to learn more about your potential provider and ask questions regarding their installation, user training, additional costs, and so on.

Running a pilot program is also recommended.

Also read: Have you set effective OKRs for your customer success team?

Benefits of talent management for the organization

The following are some of the business advantages of TMS.

1. Deeper employee engagement

On-job training, goal setting and tracking, timely feedback, rewards and recognition, and growth promote employee engagement. Companies with excellent employee experience, such as Accenture, have a highly engaged workforce with higher profits than those with poor engagement.2.

2. Minimize attrition

Turnover metrics are crucial since they reveal a lot about talent management systems. Attrition data may be collected, tracked, and analyzed using TMS.

3. Better succession planning

Employees in senior roles hold a unique knowledge critical to completing key business processes. A talent management tool can help succession planning by visualizing strengths and identifying areas of concern.

Benefits of talent management for employees

Talent management has several advantages for employees, as noted below:1.

1. Better onboarding experience

Onboarding is an employee’s first encounter with the organization. It shouldn’t start and end with a PowerPoint presentation, as it is an essential element of the talent management process. It allows organizations to customize and interactively onboard new employees by introducing mentors, buddies, welcoming employees on the social platform, and employing individuals from other departments.

2. More opportunities for training and reskilling

Robust training programs attract many candidates. Once hired, the training program provides a way to help advance employees’ careers. It is more important for experienced employees. TMS makes it simple to discover skill shortages and link workers with training options.

Also read: How To Build A Successful Upskilling And Reskilling Program

3. Career Advancement

Linked training and development opportunities lead to higher employee engagement and improved retention. The talent management tool helps you track and manage the employee with suitable options to help them progress in their careers.

4. Improved performance management

TMS helps the organization shift to dynamic performance management. Setting goals and OKRs to track them, along with intermittent feedback, helps both managers and employees stay engaged and on track.

It acknowledges that workers seek feedback that helps them overcome their deficiencies while also working on their strengths.

5. Employee experience

These tactics work together to improve the employee experience, which is determined by an employee’s overall sentiment towards the company and whether or not they want to create a long-term relationship with it.

A talent management system can help employees to feel engaged by empowering the employees and managers to interact with the employee’s professional career progression and encourages them to contribute to their fullest potential by aligning their daily work with business goals

A purpose-driven organization has a higher retention rate because employees tend to stay in the organization for an extended time.

Final thoughts

In a nutshell, talent management is necessary for any business to maintain a stable workforce. It focuses on the development of the organization as a whole. With new opportunities coming up, developing the employee’s potential within the organization is essential for the profitability and sustainability of the business. In the current scenario, having talent management software makes the process of managing talent a lot easier.

10 Characteristics of the Most Effective Performance Management System

It was not long before organizations used manual methods to track employee performance. But, it was quite tedious and time-consuming, as it required managers to track the performance of multiple employees and provide a status report to senior management. Over the years, organizations have adapted to an employee performance management system that have had the capability to track employee performance annually. These systems also helped in overcoming the challenges of conventional systems like manual processing, manager bias, and time required for performance management. But there were still a lot of flaws that led to employee disengagement, loss of productivity, and reliance on the personal judgment of managers.

The introduction of advanced and performance-driven employee performance management systems has overhauled the entire process. Organizations now rely on systems that help in measuring employee performance at regular intervals and can provide innovative solutions to complex human resource challenges. An HR performance management system takes into consideration multiple factors of organizational performance and provides actionable insights for improvements. The system is scalable, organized, and offers multiple benefits, such as increased employee engagement, reduced turnover, reduced employee dissatisfaction, strategizing organizational goals, increased revenue, and focusing on DEI initiatives.

Before we jump to the characteristics of employee performance management solutions, let us understand the problems that traditional management systems encounter.

Problems With the Traditional Performance Management System

The purpose of having a performance management system is to create a skilled and motivated workforce aligned with organizational goals. With the changing business dynamics, increased global competition, and green initiatives taken up by organizations, it has become imperative to have a diverse and inclusive workforce that is able to take up business challenges.

The different types of performance management systems are helping organizations overcome the challenges they faced with traditional systems. Let’s discuss the problems faced by organizations.

Traditional Performance Management is Time Consuming

A report by CEB talks about the time-consuming process of performance review conducted by organizations annually. It shows that a manager spends an average of 210 hours a year in the process, and an employee devotes 40 hours. Cumulatively, it accounts for thousands of work hours that get wasted in the inefficient process of performance review.

Also Read: 10 Best employee feedback tools to track performance

Ratings do not Reflect the Real Performance of Employees

The same report by CEB shows that 9 out of 10 employees are not satisfied with the performance review process. A majority of employees are dissatisfied with the ratings they get from their managers. Ratings are based on the most recent performance and don’t take into account the complete review of employee activities.

The Process is Laborious and Expensive

The countless number of hours spent in the performance review process adds to the lost revenue and administrative costs incurred in conducting the process. A report by Deloitte pointed out that their performance review process accounts for an investment of 1.8 million hours for the whole firm. Many small and medium-sized businesses are already overworked and need money for expansion and growth. Traditional performance management systems put extensive pressure on managing expenses and maintaining an efficient workforce.

The Process Cannot Accurately Measure Performance

Seeing the inaccuracy and insufficiency in measuring employee performance, many organizations are starting to look for better performance management measures. A report by Gartner highlights that 81% of HR leaders are making changes to their performance management systems. Many leading business enterprises, like Accenture, Deloitte, Microsoft, Gap, and Adobe, have switched to an entirely new people management process that saves time and leads to better business results.

Characteristics of Performance Management System

A progressive performance management system is one that helps in motivating the employees and offers improvement plans to those with learning gaps. Moreover, it focuses on maintaining a higher engagement level and enhancing the skills of employees through frequent check-ins, constructive feedback, and accurate performance measurement.

While selecting the best performance management system for the organization, it is important to understand the following characteristics of employee performance management solutions. These traits help in making a performance management process reliable, continuous, and data driven.

Fair and Accurate

A major issue with the traditional performance management system is the personal bias and perspectives of managers, which inhibits the fairness in the process. Fair and accurate performance review is done by involving multiple people in the review process of an employee.

A modern performance management system involves 360 degree feedback and reviews that incorporate feedback from multiple partners. Such a review process eliminates the personal bias and perspectives of managers and takes anonymous feedback from the concerned people.

The System Must be Efficient

An efficient performance appraisal system establishes and communicates goals and performance expectations to employees. It helps in reducing the manual efforts and overall time required to conduct the performance review process. Thereby providing accurate results for taking actions.

Continuous, Flexible, and Intuitive

As organizations have started embracing automation, they look for performance management systems that can simplify complex tasks and are flexible enough to accommodate changing business dynamics. Performance management systems are continually evolving with technology. They offer intelligent insights based on the input data and solve multiple technical problems that is difficult for human resource managers to comprehend.

The System Must Focus on Employee Development

The purpose of implementing performance management tools is to enhance the performance of employees. It is achieved by understanding their current skill-set, challenges, engagement level, and opportunities, and matching them with the organizational objectives.

An effective system focuses on imparting employee development plans for those employees that are lacking in optimum performance and rewarding those with exceptional performance. The system helps in gathering the employees’ information and creating a well-defined learning path for them. Even the measurement of employee development results and ROI is easier with an HR performance management system.

Aligned Towards Organizational Goals

The performance of employees is directly linked with the achievement of business goals. If the workforce is not aligned to the organizational objectives then it becomes difficult to accomplish organizational goals . A performance management system aids in aligning the employee goals with organizational strategy.

It can be achieved by setting goals that reflect the business strategy of the company. It requires taking every department and business unit into consideration while crafting the goals. Once the goals are designed, leaders have to cascade the goals down to every manager and employee in the organization. The last step is to review, monitor, and measure the success of these activities.

Aligned With Organizational Culture and Values

A report by Deloitte on core beliefs and culture found that “94% of executives and 88% of employees believe a distinct workplace culture is important to business success.” Organizational culture and values constitute the vision, mission, business strategy, and day-to-day interactions of employees with leaders, managers, and peers.

Employees are able to build a strong relationship and a sense of bonding with the organization when they feel like they are a part of the culture. A performance management system drives engagement, productivity, and development by undertaking multiple initiatives. It helps in building a closer relationship between an employer and their employees. It helps in creating a sense of purpose, achievement, and involvement among employees within the organization.

The System Must Help With Goal Setting and Tracking

A performance management system helps in setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals. Research shows that setting goals in collaboration with employees increases accountability and also align individual goals with organizational goals. The check-in feature of the performance management system also helps in tracking the overall performance of team members. Thereby enhancing transparency in the review process.

Integrates All Aspects of Employee Development

Employee development is a cumbersome process. It involves various parameters, like skill development, job rotation, job enrichment, mentoring and coaching, and lateral moves. As organizations grow in size, employee development gets more challenging. Thus, it requires a thorough analysis of the workforce and creating a plan for every employee.

Using employee performance management solutions can simplify the tasks of employee analysis, learning path creation, execution, monitoring, review, and success measurement. Managers can use the performance review tools to quickly identify employee development opportunities and quickly start the process.

Customization, Security, and Integration

Integration with other HR technologies and tools is a key feature of performance review software. Because today’s businesses utilize various technologies and tools for employee management, it is important for software to seamlessly integrate and interact with other platforms to provide a better employee experience.

Specific business demand are met by tailoring and customizing performance management software. It also ensures data security to meet global business standards.

Supports Learning Culture in Organization

Creating a learning environment contributes towards the growth of an organization. It helps in increasing employee productivity, engagement, ownership, and interpersonal relationships. Developing a learning culture is a long process. It requires collaboration from all the stakeholders of an organization.

Organizations can shift toward a continuous learning process by adopting an intuitive performance management system. The focus should be on the following aspects:

Providing every employee with the opportunity to actively participate in their learning process
Rewarding and promoting continuous learning
Providing resources and tools for employee learning and development
Encourage social learning within your organization.
Providing coaching and mentoring sessions to employees
Measuring the success of learning activities and reviewing the culture at intervals

By taking into account the above-discussed characteristics, organizations can select the most effective performance management system based on their business needs and dynamics. We hope this article has answered your queries regarding the traits of performance management systems.

Why You Need An Employee Performance Management System

Employee performance management systems have become exceedingly popular these days among all organizations, big or small, and it’s easy to see why. The COVID-19 pandemic has made remote work all but universal and an increasing number of companies recognize the advantages of remote work: lower costs and higher productivity. But to take complete advantage of the benefits of remote work, it’s key to monitor your employees and record their performance, and there is no better way to do that than by using an employee performance review system. These systems are a must-have for any modern organization, even if they don’t extensively use remote work.

Why are employee performance management systems so popular?

Performance management systems have become one of the most demanded solutions because of their elegance and simplicity. These applications are fully attuned to the needs of a modern work environment, even if it isn’t remote.

Decentralized Work Environment

Work environments have been becoming increasingly decentralized since the start of the twenty-first century, long before the pandemic hit. Decentralization has many advantages: It allows companies to structure themselves flexibly and in an era of increased specialization in white-collared work. It just makes sense to give individual experts more freedom of movement and decision-making.

Not to mention decentralization has resulted in improvements to employee morale and increased employee satisfaction with jobs. Employee performance management systems are key to maintaining a good decentralized work environment since they guarantee that employees remain productive and at work, even when not directly supervised.

Increasing Automation in Workplace

According to a survey by McKinsey & Company, 50% of organizations use AI for at least one business function.

The latest wave of automation is a direct result of the internet and the information age. There are so many things software does cheaper and better than people. Nowadays, fewer and fewer people are working in the traditional workplace. One consequence of automation has been that the people whose jobs don’t get automated usually fulfill very specialized and cognitively demanding roles like management or consultation.

Therefore, using performance management tools can help to vastly improve the performance of these specialized professionals. They are accurate, objective, and help managers automate the managing process.

So there are a lot of practical reasons why most organizations today are motivated to invest in performance management software: the advantages of acquiring performance management tools are very high, and, conversely, the disadvantages of not acquiring them are also significant.

Organizational Benefits of using performance management systems

Detailed Information

Chiefly, performance management systems provide detailed information about employees’ performance metrics. This information is invaluable in assessing what areas an employee is lacking in and where they’re doing well. Managers can use this information to accurately construct an image of what their employees are doing right and what they’re doing wrong. Managers can also use this information to figure what tasks employees are better at doing and assign them tasks accordingly. Essentially, managers receive an overall perspective on how their employees are performing individually and collectively. It will allow them to vastly improve employee performance management.

Objective Feedback

Most performance management systems also have in-built feedback mechanisms that let managers directly inform employees of their shortcomings and offer them advice on how to improve. Managers can also easily provide feedback scores for employees on applications that are objective, accurate, and impartial. When evaluations are done by employee performance systems, employees don’t have to worry about any biases or prejudices creeping in. The accuracy of performance management systems is especially important for large corporations with large numbers of remote employees, as it is difficult to enforce impartiality in manager reviews on a large scale.

Also Read: 10 Best Employee Feedback Tools To Track Performance

Employee engagement and morale

Performance management systems also boost employee engagement with their organization since the applications allow employees to obtain detailed information on their performance metrics as well as about how their managers see them. The increased engagement is particularly important for remote work operations since more people report feeling alienated from working remotely than on-site. Improved employee engagement is important since it allows employees to experience higher morale, which translates to higher productivity. As such, organizations have a lot to gain from achieving higher morale by using employee performance software.

Growth and Consistency

Employee performance management systems help organizations streamline their workflows by identifying what their employee’s individual strengths are. Organizations can take advantage of this information by assigning employees’ tasks according to what they do best, which would maximize productivity and minimize inefficiency. Consistently assigning tasks to the employees best-suited to performing them will have important long-term consequences for organizations. Their ability to produce a consistent quality of work within predictable time periods will provide organizations with many growth and expansion opportunities.

Reducing Firing Risk

Employee performance management systems objectively identify which employees are the best performers, but they can also help identify the low performers. This information can assist HR and managers identify the weakest links in their organization and terminate their employment if needed. Employees also benefit from performance management systems. Their job security increases from knowing that as long as their performance is objectively reviewed,they won’t be fired unless their performance metrics decline by a certain amount. The clarity offered by these systems is effective in improving company morale.

Talent Retention and Development

Employee performance management systems are effective in highlighting rising talent and allowing managers to notice which employees have increased productivity. Managers can easily identify which employees have the most potential and offer them training and promotions accordingly. The improved ability to identify talent will also allow organizations to become more meritocratic, prioritizing individuals who have the most success. Long-term, this type of objective performance-based meritocracy ensures an organization’s employees to remain highly motivated, as they are recognized and awarded for their talent. The increased meritocracy translates to improved financial benefits for organizations long-term.

Also Read: Want To Know Why Your Employees Leave? Here’s Why

Disadvantages of not using employee performance management

Not employing a performance management software in today’s day and age has some serious drawbacks for most organizations.

Lack of objectivity

Without dedicated employee management software, at best your organization could use general database software to record information, costing a lot of unnecessary time and energy. Or worse, you don’t employ anything to track employee performance, which will make your performance reviews biased. Skewed employee performance reports mean that your managers don’t fully know who’s doing well and who’s not. Since their biases and prejudices can creep into the performance reviews, your managers might become disliked by your employees. Inaccurate employee reviews can lead to increasing tensions between management and team members, which will lower overall morale and hamper employee engagement.

Mismanagement and lack of communication

Without performance management software to provide them with easily accessible information, your employees will be left relatively unaware of how they’re performing. They won’t know what their respective strengths and weaknesses are. Also, it will be difficult for employees to communicate with managers regarding their feedback, especially if a single manager oversees a large team. The lack of effective communication and performance measurement means that in the long term, your organization could suffer from serious mismanagement problems that hinder productivity and prevent otherwise attainable growth.

Also Read: 10 Ways To Improve Communication At The Workplace

Poor planning and Task Management

Without precise knowledge of their employee’s respective strengths and weaknesses, managers will have to rely on guesswork and intuition for assigned tasks and planning for large projects. This lack of knowledge is a prime source for poor planning and task mismanagement problems to rise. Not only will it take longer for managers to decide which tasks to assign to which employees, but it’s also far less likely that your manager’s decisions will be optimal given the lack of data. Employees also suffer from this state of affairs since it’s likely they will be assigned work they’re not optimally prepared for.

Training gap

Without the ability to accurately and systematically highlight the weaknesses of their employees, organizations will not recognize what areas their employees need training in. Employees will continue working with their existing problems, and the organizations will have no knowledge of how to correct them. The lack of effective training from their employers will lead to employees suffering from decreased morale and, without their weaknesses corrected, both the employees and the organization will suffer from inefficiency. Investing in an employee review system will correct this problem by highlighting areas of weakness.

Poor Morale and Retention

Without a performance review system, organizations suffer from unnecessary inefficiency. This inefficiency translates into financial losses in the long term. If employees begin to feel that they are not receiving enough recognition, it will lead to a decrease in morale and increased attrition. The most talented members of the organization are likely to leave earlier due to a lack of recognition, which will greatly damage the organization long term.

Also Read: Employee Retention Strategy – How To Retain Top Talent?

Lack of effective compensation methods

It can be difficult to track overtime work and make overtime payments with conventional business tools, which discourages employees from working overtime, especially in large organizations. This issue is particularly bad for companies that have large and slow bureaucracies that take time to process overtime compensation requests. Many employees may even feel a sense of distrust towards their managers and employers for this lack of support during overtime work. A performance management system can bypass the issue with bureaucracies entirely and provide employees comfort in knowing that they will always be paid overtime, which will improve organizational morale.

Conclusion

In conclusion, employee performance management systems are a great investment. They help in managing today’s employees in a modern decentralized workplace. They help your managers make objective informed decisions about what your employees are doing right, what they’re doing wrong. It helps them recognize the right talent. Without using such a system, your organization is likely to suffer from inefficiency, which will result in long-term financial and productivity losses.

Want to know more employee about performance management systems? Request for a live demo.

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How to Conduct Performance Reviews for Managers?

A top-down performance review is the norm in most organizations. Employees sit anxiously as their managers rate and rank them based on their performance during the current year. The problem is, the report is only coming from the managers to their employees and not the other way around.

Study by Gallup shows managers contribute significantly (up to 70%) to how engaged an employee is at their jobs. Another showed that 71% of managers agree that employee engagement is an important factor that affects an organization’s success. So, when direct managers influence employees’ performance, why aren’t there more bottom-top performance reviews for managers?

Also read: What Is A Performance Management System?

Although this article may not directly answer this question, we will discuss the importance of a performance reviews for managers, the points to note when conducting one, and what to evaluate when carrying one out.

What is a Performance Review?

Before we drive into the article, we will quickly define performance review. A performance review is an assessment that aims to identify strengths and weaknesses, grade the work done in the past year, and give constructive feedback to improve the person under review. The goal of a performance review is to make sure the receiver can improve.

The aim is to develop the person to contribute better to the organization’s mission. According to a Gallup study, disengaged employees cost U.S. businesses up to $550 billion in lost productivity each year. Moreover, actively disengaged employees are nearly twice as likely to leave their job within a year.

Importance of Conducting Performance Reviews for Managers

A line manager is also an employee. The crucial difference is that they are to watch over other employees. This means they are not exempt from being reviewed either. That’s why here we show why performance reviews for management are crucial.

Strengthen Employee Engagement

A study by Cio showed that when employee engagement is low, it leads to people leaving their jobs, and for others, it means not giving their 100% in the office. Many employees would love to give their managers feedback to improve their work relationships, but most companies do not have that built-in into their system. A performance review for managers signals to the employee that the company cares about their voice – and wants to hear from the employees about their management. It’s a great way to boost employee engagement.

Also read: Goal Setting Software Guide For CIOs

Helps to Identify Leadership Problems

Most managers in leadership positions got there because they showed consistently outstanding results or, for a select few, a reward for their loyalty. Most managers aren’t born leaders. They learn this trait while working and grow into that position with time and training. Employees carrying out a performance appraisal can help pinpoint areas of weakness their managers can work on, and other aspects that may require training.

Improves Work Environment

The worst kind of workplace to be at is the toxic type. And to develop a productive working space. There is a need to clear the air of tensions among workers, side comments, and unsatisfactory conditions in the office. One way of doing this is by conducting a performance appraisal. Employees who have received feedback during their performance review can also “rate” their manager.

It’s a great way to exchange feedback and is also a good conversation starter. It allows employees and managers to be more honest with themselves. And they can work together towards improving their working condition. If management sees no improvement from the team, they can step in and handle the case themselves.

Points to Note When Conducting Reviews for Managers

While it is significant to look at a team’s review from both sides (employees and managers), it is also vital to know how best to carry out a manager’s performance review in the workplace. Unlike an employee’s review, where a manager rates a subordinate, in a manager’s review subordinates review the manager.

This dynamic can lead to a power play by the manager, like intimidations and threats that affect the result. To avoid this, here are some steps you can take when conducting a manager’s appraisal review.

Make the Review Process Confidential

The most important aspect of the process is to maintain confidentiality. This confidentiality means that all the reviews should be anonymous to everyone, including the HR personnel, who is likely to be in charge of the process. Doing this gives the staff members the confidence to express themselves freely without worrying about any backlash from the manager.

Ask Specific Questions But Allow for Clarification

The questions should be specific. They can come in different formats, including the Likert scale questions format, Yes or no format, and open-ended formats. The Likert scale asks a question and gives you a range of options to pick an answer.

For example: How knowledgeable is your manager about their job? Instead of two extremes, like a yes or no going for “Strongly Disagree,” “Disagree,” “Unsure,” “Agree,” and “Strongly Agree” give you a broader range of options to choose from.

Yes or No question formats are straight to the point. The questions demand that the employees give a yes or no answer. Open-ended questions need the employees to go into details. It provides room to explain the problem and suggest potential solutions for them.

Most performance reviews are a mix of two of these formats and styles. Management will need to encourage employees to answer the questions to the best of their ability to get fair reviews of the manager.

Take Prompt Action

It should not be all talk. Acting on the problem as fast as possible is as essential as conducting the performance review itself. This act tells the employees that you take them and the appraisal seriously. If the problems are not as pressing, management can take their time but should realize that the longer they take, the more those minor issues fester and disrupt the employees working under such managers.

Monitor the Process

The last point to note when conducting a manager’s performance review is to monitor the changes you have implemented. Carrying out surveys with employees, stopping by for inspections, and monitoring the performance of the manager and their team is a vital step. It ensures that the solution is long term and gives management something to compare for the next review.

What to Evaluate When Conducting the Review?

When evaluating employees’ performance, there are skills the manager assesses. They assess their work ethics, problem-solving skills, collaboration, and decision-making. In the same way, employees will need to review their manager’s skill set. We will briefly discuss them.

Supervisory Skills

Supervisory skills monitor the manager’s ability to organize, direct, and oversee his team. This skill will rate his ability to explain the details of a job, correct it with accurate instructions and guide their team to achieve their goals. Staff members can share their experiences of when the manager showed supervisory skills. Management can also ask staff members to share an incident when they didn’t show these.

Communication Skills

Communication skills are an essential skill to have in the workplace. The team members will appraise the supervisor on how well they can make their point. The staff members will review the supervisor on their ability to give clear and concise instructions.

How often do they engage in providing constructive feedback? Do they go over to re-explain a task if not clearly understood by a team member? These are also some other questions that management will ask under this skill set.

Team members will need to give examples of the manager’s communication skills. Communication can also cover communicating outside the workplace.

Emotional Intelligence

In modern times, emotional intelligence has become a crucial part of management. It determines how well managers can handle conflict and embraces emotional vulnerability. The conflict may be internal, meaning a team member is battling out-of-work issues. Or external, which is between two or more team members.

How good are they at encouraging, motivating during tough times, and connecting with their team? Can the person control themselves when angry? How does the person relate and interact with other members of the team?

Staff members will review their performance based on how their manager treats them.

Strategic Planning Skills

The reason companies appoint or promote most people into a managerial role is because of their strategic planning skills. They will assess the manager based on their ability to plan, if the manager had the foresight of noting the organizational goal while planning for the team, and how well they adapt when unforeseen circumstances render the initial plan useless. Strategic planning will mean the manager is knowledgeable and flexible enough to make calls that benefit the team and, by extension, the company.

Also Read: How To Build A Successful Upskilling And Reskilling Program

Conclusion

Performance reviews for managers are as important as performance review for employees. It gives them a better understanding and insights into how they work and helps them improve.

Want to know how Engagedly can help you conduct performance reviews for managers? Request for a live demo.

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How Performance Management Software Helps in Employee Development

A report by LinkedIn shows that 64% of learning and development professionals believe reskilling their current workforce to fill skills gaps is more of a priority in a post-pandemic world. Furthermore, employee development has been recognized as one of the most important factors in organizational development by various Fortune 500 companies.

Annually, US organizations spend over $180 billion on the formal training and development of their employees. The focus on employee development has increased since the pandemic. It created a need for a dynamic and skilled workforce to handle critical and unprecedented business challenges.

As organizations are competing for the right talent in the global marketplace, it is becoming important to nurture their current employees as well. It has been observed that organizations that invest in employee professional development programs see a substantial increase in employee productivity, higher engagement, mitigation of critical loss making risks, reduced turnover, and increased revenue. Moreover, it gives employees opportunities to understand their career growth and become attuned to the organizational goals. Engaged and productive employees stay longer in the organization and help in achieving better results.

Many organizations are now emphasizing the importance of performance management software to develop and engage their workforce. Employee development is at the core of performance management. It incorporates a performance management program that helps organizations scale up their workforce effectively and methodically.

What Is Employee Development?

Employee development is not a new concept. It gained prominence during and after the Second World War, when countries needed skilled people to carry out work in factories and warehouses. It led to the development of employee training programs that helped unskilled workers gain the skills required to perform their tasks efficiently and effectively. Soon, with the development of technologies and the introduction of power computing, employee training and development initiatives became the norm.

Organizations throughout the world have started developing programs for employee development to cater to changing market demands, increasing global competition, overcoming quality issues, and developing a workforce for the future.

Continuous employee development involves activities undertaken by organizations to improve the overall performance of employees. It can be based on the goals set by organizations, like reducing employee turnover, increasing diversity and inclusion, and increasing employee engagement, and productivity.

Based on the goals, organizations can use different approaches to employee development. Training and development programs, mentoring and coaching, employee counselling, cross-functional training, job rotation, job enrichment and enhancement are some of the employee development activities.

Let us discuss the importance of employee development from a performance management standpoint.

Also Read: 10 best employee feedback tools to track performance

Why Is Employee Development Important?

To remain competitive in the ever-changing business environment, it is important to focus on continuous employee development. A skilled and competitive workforce helps in building strategies that are aligned with organizational goals and objectives.

By adopting performance management software, it becomes easier to organize, monitor, and measure the success of human resources. It assists upper management in strategizing employee development activities and automates the manual processes of goal setting and performance review.

Some of the benefits of employee development that can be achieved through performance management software are discussed below.

Attracting New Talent

A report by Gallup highlights that 59% of millennials focus on learning and development opportunities while applying for jobs. In comparison, 44% of Gen X and 41% of baby boomers focus on skills development as a major criterion for job selection. The increasing reliance on learning and development showcases the paradigm shift among job seekers.

Organizations that invest in their employees, develop a brand image that helps them attract the right talent. In the last decade, many organizations have started allocating more funds to the learning and development of employees in order to keep themselves more attractive to job seekers.

Reskilling and Upskilling Current Employees

A staggering 87% of millennials see career and professional development as an important parameter in their job. Giving opportunities to employees to reskill and upskill themselves keeps them involved in their career progression and also gives them a feeling of being cared for by their employer.

By utilizing the features of 360 degree feedback and continuous performance management, organizations can keep track of their employees’ performance and conduct training programs for improvement. It also helps in recognizing and rewarding the best performers

Improve Employee Engagement

A report published by Gallup states that only 36% of US employees are engaged in their workplace. Globally, this figure is just 20%. Employee engagement is directly related to an employee’s commitment towards the organization. Many executives cite employee engagement as one of the key strategies in building a performance-driven organization.

Focusing on employees’ professional development helps in building an engaged workforce that is more productive and is ready to go the extra mile to achieve their targets. An engaged workforce is less prone to making critical errors and helps in increasing the overall productivity of an organization.

Succession Planning

Succession planning is important for maintaining a strong position in the market. It is an integrated and systematic process that involves identifying important positions in the organization and creating a talent pipeline for filling those vacancies internally.

Succession planning requires taking into consideration the current and future organizational needs. It ensures that people with the requisite skills are available to take up the jobs in the future. Succession planning strengthens the overall capabilities of the organization by undertaking the following process:

Identifying key areas and positions
Determine the capabilities and skills required for key areas and positions.
Identifying internal resources interested in the positions and assessing their capabilities
Develop and implement knowledge transfer plans
Evaluate the effectiveness of the plan

Performance management software aids in the overall succession planning process by identifying employee skill sets and providing a strategic path to develop capabilities and measure the plan’s effectiveness.

Reducing Employee Turnover

Employee training and development have a direct impact on employee turnover and absenteeism. It is generally thought that skilled employees have a greater chance of leaving the organization, but research has shown that by investing in employee development, organizations can reduce the turnover rate and can also prevent frequent layoffs.

Aligning Business Strategy With Organizational Goals

Aligning business strategy with organizational goals helps in making informed decisions. It also ensures that everyone in the organization is working towards a common goal. A business strategy has a direct impact on the revenue, sales and marketing initiatives of an organization. To achieve higher results, organizations need to focus on aligning their strategy with organizational goals and objectives.

Performance management software helps with resource alignment by defining employee goals, employee development, and fixing performance criteria that support the organizational vision and mission.

Diversity and Inclusion

One of the most important aspects of employee development is strengthening the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives. Much research has shown that less represented groups feel the burden of not getting enough support from the management. Thus leading them to quit the organization early. But with the increasing focus on DEI, employers can now create focused programs that help such groups in their learning and development.

Utilizing Performance Management Software for Employee Development

Performance management software, also known as an employee performance management tool, helps managers track the performance of their direct reports and provide them with real time feedback for improvements. Therefore, many organizations have started switching from traditional performance management systems to data-driven performance management systems, powered by the intelligent insights offered by the tools.

The features offered by the software help in solving complex human resource challenges. It uses technologies like advanced analytics, AI, and machine learning, and psychological concepts embedded into the system.

Enagedly is a performance management platform that offers a wide range of features to engage, enable, and develop employees. Its scalable and customizable features like OKRs/goal setting, real time feedback, ongoing check-ins, 360 degree feedback, and talent analytics make it a comprehensive solution for managing a workforce of any size.

Let us look at the salient features of performance management software that help in employee development.

Rewards and Recognition

Researchers have found a direct link between employee recognition and productivity. Employees who are frequently recognized for their efforts are more likely to stay longer in the organization. They are also focused on the achievement of organizational objectives. As many organizations are utilizing the advantages of rewards and recognition, it has become an astounding $46 billion market- Forbes.

Organizations must focus on employee development by rewarding their employees for their efforts and contributions to organizational success.

Also Read: Performance management tools for employee engagement

Setting SMART Goals

The first and foremost step towards employee development is setting up SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals. It helps managers and employees track their performance and take corrective action whenever their performance drops. The feature also helps the upper management keep track of the employees from various departments, teams, and roles .

Setting SMART goals streamlines business ideas and focuses the efforts of employees on allocating their time to tasks and activities that bring in the highest ROI. It helps in tracking the progress of employees and can provide insights on actions to be taken for employee development.

360 Degree Feedback

Feedback helps in holistic employee development by providing them with improvement plans, tactics, and measures to enhance their performance. 360 degree feedback is a process in which employees receive anonymous and confidential feedback from their colleagues (including supervisors, managers, direct reports, and peers).

It is an effective tool for analyzing employees’ performance and motivating them to improve their skills, capabilities, and overall performance. It further helps in the recognition of employees with learning gaps and puts them on employee development programs.

Learning Management System

Learning opportunities are one of the most crucial parameters that define the success of an employee in an organization. Having a performance management system solves the challenges of learning and development. It helps in identifying the current skills of employees and promotes continuous learning on any topic.

The most advantageous feature of an LMS is its ability to track the learning of employees. Managers can check the progress of their employees, their current performance on assessments, and the learning gaps highlighted by the tool.

Conclusion

To thrive and grow in these turbulent times, organizations need to focus on the development of their most potential resource: employees. Therefore, by investing in their learning and development initiatives, organizations can create a skilled and performance-driven workforce that is able to take challenges head on and contribute towards the achievement of organizational goals.

We hope the article answers your question about “How software helps in employee development?”.

Guide to select the right Performance Review Software

Investing in performance review software is one of the best decisions your business could make, given how important these applications are for managing an increasingly decentralized work environment. This type of software streamlines work for managers and offers objective ways to measure employee productivity and improve overall management. There’s a huge variety of these performance tools though, and some are quite the investment, so it can be daunting to decide which one you should pick. Don’t worry, we’ll guide you through the entire process of choosing the right performance review software for you.

Step 1: Understand your needs

You need a clear perspective of what you need from a performance review software in terms of HR, finance, and your specific business goals.

1. Talk to HR

Since HR is responsible for evaluating employee performance and conducting hiring decisions, they will understand your company’s performance needs best. Your organization’s HR department can inform you on what specific features you need from performance evaluation software. They could easily identify how easily such software can be integrated into your company, and whether you should expect a steep learning curve from your employees when they start using it.

Also Read: 9 Progressive HR Approaches from HR Professionals

2. Budget Constraints

Professional performance review software is an investment, often a large one, so you need to set a budget range. After having a general idea of what range you can afford to invest in, you need to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of optional features, opting for only the ones you absolutely need. Ideally, you should set your investment range according to your perceived future requirements. If you expect your company to grow massively in the near future or suspect there’s a severe problem with existing performance management, it may be worth spending more.

3. Organizational Goals

Performance management software is most effective when you already know what you want. It’s not strictly necessary to have a list of exactly everything you need, but it helps to at least have a general idea of what place the system has in your company.

For instance, if you’re a software development company, you may want your employees to develop new applications quicker, but you also don’t want to compromise on quality. In such a case, you need performance management software that doesn’t just track time but also provides a checklist of project requirements to ensure new applications are developed quicker without loss in quality.

4. Use a trial or demo version.

Sometimes the best way to see if something works is to just try it out and see what happens. Thankfully, many performance review softwares have trial and demo versions you can test for a short period of time to see if they fit your needs. Usually, you’ll be given access for a week, which is enough time to collect data and conduct analysis to see whether productivity has improved or not.

Using trial software is also a good idea if you’re not sure of what additional features you want to have. While testing the demo or trial version of the performance review software, you’ll quickly discover additional things you need. For example, if you’re a real estate organization, you might find that one of the most valuable additional features you need from your performance review software is being able to calculate the time spent per unit by a vendor.

5. Note the features you want

Although every company’s needs are different, there are generally a few functions every company needs, like listing goals, recording data, and exporting information. And, depending on your organization, you may have specific requirements like providing in-app feedback to employees too.

Basic features

Assignments

Effective performance review software has the capacity to assign team and individual goals for your employees, and it should be able to integrate them in a way that makes sense from an overall perspective. Objective and Key Results (OKR) can easily be used on performance review software.

Data Recording

Performance appraisal software should allow you to collect performance-related data from employees such as the number of hours logged, the amount of time taken to complete a task, etc. This raw data should be easily accessible for managers.

Export data

You should be able to export the data stored on the application to external sources for safety, analytical, or managerial reasons. There is no valid reason for not being able to do that.

Basic statistics

At least some basic statistical functions should be present, like calculating averages. These statistics offer meaningful information for managers.

Also Read: What Is A Performance Management System?

Advanced functions

These requirements may or may not apply to your specific case, but generally the larger and more complex an organization is, their needs will also be more complex.

Goal adjustment and editability

Depending on your industry, you may have very complex tasks that you assign to employees. In that case, you need a performance review system that allows managers to collect different types of data flexibly and edit task requirements if needed.

Feedback mechanism

Being able to give feedback directly through the employee performance management application is a desirable feature for large organizations.

Real-Time Progress Updates

This feature is especially desirable for companies with large numbers of remote workers. Being able to see everything that each employee is doing at a glance helps managers better understand their employee’s conditions.

Visual Representation of Data

Some performance software lets you construct basic visual diagrams, like piecharts, bar graphs and histograms, of employee performance. These visual aids can be useful if you want to represent information intuitively.

Compensation Integration

Being able to dispense salaries from a performance application is a useful feature if your employees frequently work overtime, and you would like to track them easily.

Step 2: Consider Technical Aspects

Even if you find a performance review system that aligns with your goals perfectly, you still need to make sure it can be integrated into your existing work systems optimally.

1. Compatibility with existing systems

Larger organizations typically already have databases and systems to record employee performance. If you already have such a setup, make sure you can easily export the existing data to the new software. Also, make sure your current It setup will easily allow you to run the software.

You could start assessing your needs by consulting your IT department about the best way to introduce the performance evaluation software to your organization. Most performance management applications, especially high-end ones, are designed to be compatible with most systems, but you should still check regardless.

2. Employee adaptation

Transitioning to a new software might initially be difficult for your employees if they’re not technically literate. You might experience disruption caused by the adjustment period, that’s normal, but it should not be a prolonged problem. It should not take your organization more than a week to adjust to the new system.

This is why trial periods are crucial. During the trial period of a performance review application, take note of how quickly your employees adjust to the new system. If they take too long, it’s evidence that the specific application isn’t right for you.

3. UI – UX or Interface design

A good performance management application should be easy to use with a friendly, clear, and intuitive user interface (UI). Ideally, your staff should experience minimal confusion while using the application. A good UI will ensure the software performs optimally.

Conversely, a bad UI will lead to disruptions. Employees may find it difficult to use and will make mistakes, skewing the accuracy of the data recorded. Bad UI also indicates the company that developed the software lacks professionalism.

4. Hosting

It’s important to pay attention to whether your performance evaluation software can be hosted locally or on the cloud. Ideally, a performance management application should be hosted on a cloud-dedicated server to maximize safety. This type of infrastructure tends to be the most stable, and you should try to get applications that only run on the cloud.

Step 3: Consider long-term viability

Performance management software is a long-term investment, so you should make sure the application you choose benefits you long-term.

1. Customer Support

Inevitably, you will run into problems with any performance management software you use. When these problems arise, you want to make sure the company you’ve hired has a good customer support system. It will help you quickly diagnose your issues and provide effective support. It would be a good idea to check the customer support reviews of different performance review applications. Steer clear of applications with generally bad customer support reviews since it indicates a lack of professionalism.

2. Scalability and flexibility

Your organization’s needs will change over time as it grows, expands, and encounters new challenges. The performance review software should, ideally, be able to adapt to the changing needs. Your requirements with 100 employees will be vastly different than they are with 10. So make sure that any software you choose to invest in has the potential to be scaled up to the changing needs. The best options will allow you to change nearly everything about the application long-term.

3. Longevity

Compatibility with new systems is an important requirement. Ideally, the software you invest in today should be fully compatible with various systems for the next 5 to 10 years at least. You should consult with your application’s provider over how long they intend to offer IT support, including how frequently they intend to release updates. The best performance systems will have guaranteed long-term support for their systems and a dedicated team.

Conclusion

An employee performance management software is a great investment, but like any other purchase, you have to make sure you do it right. You need to choose the software that fulfils your specific requirements best, is the easiest to use, has the most number of desired features, and fits in your budget.

Want to know about Engagedly’s performance review software? Request a demo from our experts!

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What is Continuous Performance Management (CPM)?

Many companies today use a mixed bag of processes and tools to manage their employees. From annual performance appraisals to quarterly or even monthly check-ins, the ways managers evaluate and communicate with their teams vary widely. Some companies, like Zappos, switched to ongoing real time feedback to reinforce performance consistency in the workplace .

While that can be considered as a standard way of evaluating performance, there is a method that not only boosts steady performance but also builds trust. It’s called Continuous Performance Management (CPM) and it is changing the way managers think about their jobs as well as the way organizations manage productivity.

The CPM approach takes away the pressure of waiting for formal reviews, which often allows months to pass without any communication from management to employees on how they’re doing. In a study by CEB, the average time between a manager’s review and feedback to an employee was around 120 days — far too long for many companies today.

Also Read: How To Create A Feedback Culture In Your Workplace?

The perfect storm of social media, instant messaging and overall competitive pressures put leaders at risk if their team isn’t feeling engaged or getting quality feedback in real-time.

How Does Continuous Performance Management Work in the Workplace Setting?

CPM is a more fluid form of performance management — an approach that places the emphasis on employees, not managers. It encourages regular continuous monitoring of goals and feedback (almost daily) that helps both parties stay up to date with what’s working well and where there may be room for improvement. Here are some key components to making this work in your organization:

Using predictive analytics to understand which KPIs you should be measured at any given time eliminating those that don’t matter as much—or aren’t being properly tracked—by employees, can help minimize “data overload” and ensure information gatherers have the right material to work with. This allows for a higher success rate when giving feedback, as employees won’t feel overwhelmed with information they can’t use.

Having an agile management system in place

It enables managers to receive relevant feedback at the right time. This means creating a “micro-ecosystem” by combining HR and operational technology (OT), which has been shown to provide much more actionable insights than either OT or HR systems alone when it comes to data-driven decisions.

While this may sound daunting, any company that is already utilizing key performance indicators (KPIs) across their organization will find it straightforward. For instance, if you’re seeing trends in call times and customer complaints, this might be attributed to underperforming employees who aren’t hitting sales goals; thus requiring immediate follow-up from managers.

An opt-in approach rather than opt-out

The “you must participate” approach may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s surprising how many organizations still cling to the old “feedback is just something we do around here, whether you’re interested in receiving it or not” model. As more companies adopt CPM, they’re finding that by asking for employee input on their goals and performance processes, they get better insight into what’s working well.

For example, when employees actively participate in providing feedback on what KPIs matter most, they feel more invested in hitting them, which makes for healthier teams full of engaged employees.

Rewarding high performers who give great feedback

When you encourage each member of your team to share ideas about best practices — while also rewarding individuals who offer quality insights — you’ll see a more engaged workforce that feels empowered to contribute what they know.

For example, you could provide incentives or bonus to employees who regularly give managers valuable feedback on how they’re doing—and have them use it as a coaching tool for peers on their team. This is one of the most effective ways to show employees that bosses value good reviews just as much as high performance.

Also Read: 5 Employee Appreciation Ideas For Your Remote Team

Keeping scorecards up-to-date

More companies realize it’s not enough to measure performance over longer periods, such as yearly or quarterly reviews, but rather must do so using shorter intervals that offer instant feedback on real-time data from OT systems. Using something called “forced ranking” (or simply keeping scorecards up-to-date) is also helpful.

It ensures that managers are tracking results at all times so they can provide immediate feedback to employees on how they’re doing — while also measuring key performance indicators, or KPIs, which tell the whole story about what goals each rep is reaching, and whether their work is proactive enough versus reactive.

Overcoming challenges

While it’s good to have managers who are open to continuous performance management practices, it may present some pitfalls for underperforming employees. Implementing a new system can be overwhelming for those who don’t see themselves improving in the current year. That said, by approaching this change as an engagement initiative, companies can guide staff through these initial growing pains.

Why Organizations Should Implement Continuous Performance Management

To meet customer demand, companies are now expected to produce results faster than ever before. In the past, it was all about hitting certain milestones for a big completion date or project launch – but in today’s competitive business world, being able to deliver in small packages quickly and effectively is what counts most.

In a survey of 3,000+ global companies, 51% cited “speed and responsiveness to market changes” as their number one challenge—nearly double that of the second-highest-ranking response at 28%. This increase in speed can result in more chances of shipment (i.e., such as new products or services), but it doesn’t come without challenges: namely, an increased need to provide instant feedback across teams throughout the company.

Continuous Performance Management is one of the most effective tools companies can use to address this issue and support speedy decision-making. By involving employees at every level of the organization, CPM helps management build a culture that prioritizes real-time feedback and collaboration–empowering everyone to make informed decisions that can benefit both internal teams and clients/customers as well.

Organizations now need more people across all roles (not just managers) to be able to provide instant feedback on everything from tactical projects to strategic initiatives. This means no longer do those closest to key business operations have time for long reviews or evaluations; they must instead quickly assess situations and offer real-time and direction–especially with regard to new developments in the ever-changing digital and social media landscapes.

Benefits of Continuous Performance Management

The most important benefit of implementing continuous performance management is that it supports faster decision-making across the organization. By constantly receiving input from those closest to projects and operations, managers can help their teams make better-informed decisions on how to move forward with specific initiatives.

On the flip side, employees who are getting more and more feedback and direction on a regular basis (e.g., every two weeks) will be able to see whether they’re meeting goals–and adjust accordingly if need be.

As companies continue moving toward putting out new products and services quickly, long gone are the days where big unveilings were simply annual events–they must now capture early market opportunities as they arise. That’s having access to instant information about who’s using what, when, and where (especially longitudinally) can help companies grasp new opportunities quicker than competitors; plus it ensures a more accurate rollout of future updates.

Real-time decision-making is possible with continuous performance management because, like many other KPIs, instant feedback is captured in real-time — allowing managers to use the most up-to-date information available when making decisions. This enables teams to recognize any issues or delays early on in an initiative or project, so they can quickly move toward alternative options without wasting too much time.

Challenges of Continuous Performance Management

While CPM has a long list of positive benefits, it’s not without its own set of challenges. One is that some workers may feel as though they’re being micromanaged–having every move documented and measured closely by managers, peer-to-peer , can make employees feel uneasy.

Another issue with continuous performance management is that it doesn’t apply to all workers in the same way: salary employees don’t receive feedback or input from clients/customers at regular intervals throughout the year (with whom they do their jobs), but instead only through formal reviews. For these types of workers, CPM still holds value — namely because it provides more comprehensive communication with managers on an ongoing basis, rather than just once annually.

In order for companies to reap the full benefits of continuous performance management, they must have proper training programmes in place. This means providing the right tools and communication channels to ensure that workers are receiving accurate feedback—which can be challenging when teams are across multiple offices or cities.

Also Read: The Importance Of Peer Feedback At Workplace

It’s also critical to establish regular communication schedules between managers and employees so both parties know what to expect; not only does this make it easier for employees to track their own progress against goals, but managers will also better understand how plans change/shift over time depending on external factors (e.g., new hires, promotions, reorganizations).

The Future for Continuous Performance Management in the Workplace

Continuous performance management is the natural next step as businesses move toward a more paperless, data-driven corporate culture. Having instant access to figures and information means companies can make smarter decisions about growth strategies and future moves .

However, continuous performance management isn’t going away anytime soon. As customization becomes a bigger priority in business–customization of products/services, customer service interactions, etc.–workers will need increased feedback from managers so they know the best way to achieve these goals over time.

In order for CPM to work most effectively, employees should be involved in monitoring their own progress against certain KPIs — especially those that directly impact their role — while managers provide more high-level feedback on progress toward long-term projects.

Also Read: What Is A Performance Management System?

The growing trend in workplace technology means companies are entering a new era of continuous performance management, where data is collected automatically rather than through manual reporting by workers themselves. With the right tools and processes in place, CPM can enable teams across an organization to work better together while still maintaining individual autonomy over tasks that must be completed at one’s own pace or outside the view of others.

Want to know how Engagedly can help you with continuous performance management? Request for a live demo.

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10 Reasons to Use Goal Setting Software

Setting goals is a crucial task any organization should take with great importance. It gives the management and employees a sense of purpose and direction. Imagine running a race without knowing where the finish line is. How meaningless it would seem to most people – putting in the effort of working every day without an end goal. And because we would like to avoid such a situation, we have to set goals. Goal setting has its many pecks, and that’s where goal setting software comes into play. Goal-setting software helps you plan, manage, and track your goal, ensuring you are working with a sense of direction.

The goal setting software can assist any business with a goal-setting strategy, and in this article, we will discuss ten reasons you should use a goal-setting application.

Provides Clarity and Transparency

Goal setting provides clarity to management and employees of an organization. And using goal-setting software helps you to achieve this. A study by Inc. showed that 70% of companies ranked “communicating business goals” as an effective way to have high-performing staff members.

Another study by Gallup shows that employees whose managers engage them in the goal-setting process perform 3.6 times better than their counterparts in the dark. Meaning employees show better engagement when they understand why they should achieve their goals.

Transparency means that everyone within the organization knows the goals, why the company sets those goals and their part in achieving them. Transparency allows for inclusion, which helps with the business direction. Clarity and transparency are at your fingertips if you use the target-setting software. Employees can access the breakdown of the company objectives into goals and where they come in.

Helps Employees See the Bigger Picture

The first reason ties into this point. Staff members who see themselves as part of the bigger picture are likely to work harder towards achieving their goals. They do this because they see how their contribution affects the overall organizational goals.

According to an article in Harvard Business Review, employees should see how their goals fit into the larger organizational goals to get the best from them. Their Interaction with the goal-setting software can aid this process.

The best goal setting software in the market has the features to help achieve this.

Helps to Automate and Track Progress

In recent years, automation has become something of a buzzword. It’s a term often thrown about, and the surrounding hype is something to be envied. The truth is, there is a good reason for this hype.

Various studies like this have shown us proof of the buzz – a primary reason being an increase in productivity and reduced costs.

Automating activities like tracking, managing, and scoring makes it easier to attend to other essential activities. Artificial intelligence will carry out the repetitive process for you. Doing this makes it easier to carry out goal-setting strategies.

The goals can be customized for each employee and easily tracked from the platform by the manager in charge. The automation allows for tracking and feedback to be seamless.

Keeps Employees Accountable

Staying accountable is one of the hardest and overlooked activities in a company. It’s easier to give end-of-year feedback to an employee than to monitor and track the employee’s progress. According to The American Society of Training and Development, you are 65% more likely to achieve your goal if you have someone tracking your progress.

A goal-setting software presents you with the platform to achieve this goal.

Being accountable can bring out the best in an employee, and the best goal setting software in the market can help you achieve such.

It Becomes Easier to Manage a Team

Managing a team of people can be a tough task, and it isn’t unusual for team leaders to lose sight of the progress reports of team members because of other pressing matters. One of the many factors that ensures a company achieves its organizational goals is teamwork. When you and your team have a common goal in mind, it helps unify team members to meet the set targets.

A unit or department sets a target and then breaks them down into individual targets for each person. Each member then tracks their goals as individuals and as a collective. Since each member has access to the team’s overall goal with goal-setting software, they can keep each other in check.

A reliable goal-setting software ensures individuals can view the departmental goals. They also help individuals see how they contribute to the overall departmental goal. When departmental goals are readily accessible by team members, it helps them stay focused.

Provide a Platform for Feedback

Getting feedback from your manager is an important task. Unfortunately, this task only occurs once in a blue moon and often performance reviews take place at the end of the year. A study by Officevibe revealed 4 out of 10 workers feel disengaged when they get no feedback. They are also two times likely to feel detached from the organization.

It gets more interesting as the study also shows only 58% of managers believe they give adequate feedback to their employees. This information provides us with some fascinating but understandable statistics. Another interesting finding in this study was 65% of participants said they wanted more feedback.

Among employees that receive feedback weekly, 43% of them engage well with the business objectives. On the other hand, only 18% of people stay engaged without weekly feedback.

Feedback also presents a way to improve and see things from other people’s perspectives. Peer-to-peer feedback can also help to de-escalate tensions between members of an organization. To gain an efficient feedback framework – it’s best to use an application that can provide a brilliant platform. The best goal setting software on the market has a feedback column where team members and other added members can give constructive feedback.

Goal Setting Recognition Tools Can Help Improve Employee Morale

In any modern office, recognizing the efforts of employees of any organization is necessary. A study by Gallup shows that the number one reason employees leave their jobs is because the company does not recognize their efforts.

Another study by SHRM also shows employee recognition helps to reduce frustration in the workplace by 28.6%. Both studies highlight how effective recognizing employees’ achievements are – especially in recent times where workers need more than good pay to stay in a job. The pandemic has seen employees reflect on their career goals and have seen many people opt to resign.

Recognizing and rewarding the efforts of employees is more significant than ever. And using the goal-setting software is a brilliant way to monitor and reward meeting goals and objectives – boosting the employees’ morale.

Recognition can be as simple as using the software to publish the goals met to fellow peers. A goal-setting software can aid you by helping build a culture of rewarding and recognizing the best talents in your company.

Improves Communication within the Organisation

A survey of 400 companies by Inc. found companies lose up to 37 billion per year because of poor communication. We cannot overemphasize the importance of good communication, as it is crucial to achieving the goals of an organization.

Efficient communication helps the management convey the organization’s vision to the staff members. It allows for feedback from employees and helps improve productivity. The advantages of having efficient communication are many, but some key ones include:

Improves the workplace atmosphere.
Reduces the amount of misinformation and confusion.
Helps to increase the commitment of the employees.

Acknowledging how vital good communication is, is not enough to align employees with the organizational goals. That is why gaining and using goal-setting software is an admirable first step you can take. The importance of the goal-setting application is in the number of communicating features it possesses. The best products in the markets have features to promote communication between employees and management.

It Promotes Collaboration

The importance of goal setting means collaboration between departments is a powerful aspect for achieving organizational goals. No department is an island because it takes the effort of all to achieve the different targets the business has set out to do. For the departments to work well together, there are tools the company will need to function effectively, and one of them is a goal-setting tool.

One thing this tool brings to the forefront is its visibility. All employees can track the set goals and their progression, allowing for ease in cross-team collaboration. Working cross-team to solve a common company problem is a task that is doable with such software.

Another use for goal setting is it aids when working remotely or at home. It’s easy to keep up with your department worksheet and other departments if both departments are on a project. The best goal-setting apps in the market have features that help monitor the progress of other team members.

Flexible Goal Formatting for Different Departments

Different departments need different metrics in order to give a fair assessment. Good target-setting software is flexible enough to accommodate different goal formats. Some examples of goals and their tracking formats include:

“Hit $15m in the first quarter.” – We can track the goal in dollars.
“Increase sales of product X by 5%.”- the goal’s format is in percentage.
“Visit the company’s 10 new sites for inspection.” – This goal is measured in numbers.
“Send out a performance survey on Friday.” – This is a simple binary type goal. It requires a “done” or “not done” kind of goal format.

The best application out there has the flexibility to format and track different goals as the need presents itself.

In conclusion, goal-setting software will be a big plus for your business. It can help you take your business to a whole new level where direction, accountability, and clarity become the norm.

7 Steps To Setting Workplace Goals And Making Them Happen!

Often businesses have the time, resources, and money to be successful. Nevertheless, they fail miserably. Have you ever wondered the reason why? It is because they fail to understand the importance of workplace goals and effective goal setting in the workplace. Having clear goals provides motivation, clarity, purpose to employees, besides improving focus and engagement.

Setting effective workplace goals is the first step towards achieving success. The next step is to develop a plan to fulfill these goals. But the question is how to set effective workplace goals that motivate you to achieve them.

Continue reading “7 Steps To Setting Workplace Goals And Making Them Happen!”

Engagedly Inc. Wins Big with Six Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Technology Awards 2021

Brandon Hall Tech Awards recognizes Engagedly Inc.’s Technological Advancements in the area of Talent Management and Future Of Work

St. Louis, MO, Dec. 21, 2021: Engagedly Inc., a leader in performance management and employee engagement software, won five Brandon Hall Tech Awards announced on 9th December 2021. Brandon Hall Technology Awards, conducted by Brandon Hall Group, is a leading independent Human Capital Management Research and Analyst firm.

Engagedly won:

Gold in ‘Best Advance in an Integrated Talent Management Platform’ and ‘Best Advance in Performance Management Technology’,

Silver in ‘Best Advance in Rewards and Recognition Technology’ and ‘Best Advance in Technology Innovation for the Remote Workforce’, and “Future of Work”

Bronze in ‘Best Advance in Social Talent Management Technology’.

Also read: Engagedly Named Performance Management Leader In G2 Summer 2021 Awards, Fourth Quarter Running

Engagedly helps organizations digitize their performance management and improve employee engagement. Engagedly’s cloud platform is built to enable your teams, execute your strategies, and engage your employees. It offers an easy-to-use and comprehensive set of features to ensure that people’s reviews are effective and easy, so that employees stay engaged and productive.

“It’s an immense honor to be associated with a passionate team at Engagedly to help other organizations build a better, more fulfilling workplace. Winning these awards is a testament to the vision of our team and our client partners, who share in that vision.”- said Sri Chellappa, President/Co-founder of Engagedly.

“Technology has never been more critical for success in human capital management than it is today. We were thrilled to see many new innovations in all areas, but especially related to the future of work,” said Brandon Hall Group Chief Operating Officer and awards program head Rachel Cooke. “Thanks to the many innovations from our Excellence in Technology winners, organizations have many compelling options as they make important decisions on how to leverage technology to drive their people strategies.”

“HCM solution providers must be experts and visionaries in technology, but they also must have the ability to anticipate the diverse needs of employers as they work to adapt to ongoing change,” Brandon Hall Group CEO Mike Cooke said. “This requires a blend of curiosity, empathy and agility that is difficult to achieve. We have seen an extraordinary level of insight and creativity from our Excellence in Technology winners that has been exciting to see.”

A panel of veteran, independent senior industry experts, and Brandon Hall Group senior analysts and executives evaluated the entries based upon the following criteria:

Product
Unique differentiators
Value proposition
Measurable results

View the complete list of winners here.

About Engagedly

Engagedly is a fast-paced growth provider and an award-winning talent management solution provider. Built upon best practices and decades of research, Engagedly’s People + Strategy platform is evolving performance management, development and engagement to drive successful organizational outcomes across the globe. Engagedly’s E3 unified platform combines the power of business strategy execution, talent enablement, and employee engagement into one easy-to-use software solution.

To learn more about Engagedly, visit: https://engagedly.com/

About Brandon Hall Group, Inc.:

Brandon Hall Group operates the largest and longest running awards program in Human Capital Management. As an independent HCM research and analyst firm they conduct studies in Learning and Development, Talent Management, Leadership Development, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Talent Acquisition and HR/Workforce Management. These benchmark studies help organizations by providing strategic insights for executives and practitioners responsible for growth and business results.

Brandon Hall Group has also launched professional certifications for business and human capital management professionals to upskill themselves and gain credentials for career advancement. (www.brandonhall.com)

Best Practices for Building a Performance Management Metrics Strategy

A familiar situation: the team can no longer cope with the volume of work, and the manager hires another employee. This is a perfectly logical decision, but far from always effective.

Social psychologists have come to the conclusion that in a team, a person tends to put less effort than in individual work.

In this article, we are going to tell you how to make teams work without losing efficiency, why to monitor employee performance, and how to improve performance management metrics.

What Is Performance Management?

The most important goal in experimenting with performance management (PM) is to develop ways to align it more closely with company performance. As organizations become more team-oriented, a PM is also beginning to shift from focusing only on an employee’s individual performance to evaluating their contributions to the team, and the team’s impact on overall business goals.

Also Read: Why These 8 Top Companies Redefined Their Performance Management Systems

Cisco, GE, Google and Cloudways were the first to implement this model. These companies have built software to understand team dynamics, assess group goal systems, and evaluate how effectively employees contribute to their teams. The goal of performance management is now transformed from improving an individual employee’s performance to improving team results.

What Is the Ringelmann Effect?

Maximilian Ringelmann, a French agronomist, conducted an experiment in which he asked participants to pull a rope as hard as they could, first alone, then in pairs, threes, and finally in a group of eight.

Being alone, the participant applied a force equivalent to 63 kilograms. It is logical to assume that two people together would apply a force of 126 kg, three people would apply a force of 189 kg, and so on.

But the results showed that as the number of participants increased, everyone’s individual effort decreased. The more people are there in the group, the less efficient each of them becomes. This phenomenon has been called “social laziness”.

5 Ways to Cope with the Ringelmann Effect

Increase Tasks as the Group Grows

When a manager tells employees that a new employee will join the team, he or she sends an unconscious message: “Now you can work less”.

This triggers the Ringelman effect. Instead of that, you should say: “We did 100% of the work when there were X people. Now, there are X+1 of us, let’s do 120%.”

Keep Everyone Motivated

When people embark on new tasks, it’s important for them to understand that their work makes sense.

Constantly remind employees what the point of their job is, and why they are doing a particular task. It will help you keep them engaged.

It’s important that each employee understands exactly how much he or she contributes to the organization’s goals.

Remember Exactly What Everyone’s Tasks Are

In order to evaluate an employee’s productivity and how it changes as the team grows, a manager or HR needs to understand everyone’s range of responsibilities. Well, let’s say that you run such a business type as an LLC. Then, it will be easier to control that since all the nuances of the company are outlined in one document, which is known as an Operating Agreement. In this case, he or she will more quickly notice that the work is performed worse/slower. Accordingly, this person will be able to take action more quickly.

Increase the Sense of Responsibility in the Group

The aim of the leader is to set tasks and achieve their fulfillment.

Leaders should show that they need the professionalism and assistance of the employees in order to achieve goals. In this case, employees feel significant, indispensable, and make more efforts.

Offer Employees the Role of Mentors

If you are hiring someone, offer current employees to act as mentors and help integrate and onboard the newcomer. This will increase productivity. Invest in mentoring software such as Mentoring Complete to find the right mentor-mentee match. Their 3 step matching process and proprietary algorithm ensures that employees are paired with the correct mentor.

A Few More Tips for Successful Performance Management

Set SMART Goals

One of the most important aspects that directly impact performance is SMART goal setting. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Time bound goals. If the tasks you set meet these criteria, your employees won’t encounter confusion and will know exactly what they need to do and why. It will help them stay focussed and stay engaged at work.

Poorly set goals and tasks are bound to cause miscommunication between managers and employees, poor performance, and uncertainty.

Focus on Team Accomplishments

If the goals and tasks should be transparent and clear to all team members, as we mentioned above, so should the results and achievements. When people work together on the same project, neither the goals nor the results should be made confidential.

Connect With Your Employees Frequently

Employees should always be informed of all company innovations, new projects, and any other relevant information. That’s why we advise you to always keep in touch with your employees. Especially in the case when they contact you in order to get answers to their questions. Start using email marketing to always be in communication with your employees and strengthen the connection between departments. This is especially relevant for remote employees.

Conduct Surveys

Periodic surveys help managers assess team effectiveness. Regular engagement surveys or “pulse” employee surveys provide insight into when and why some teams are ineffective, dissatisfied, or frustrated.

Do Annual Reviews on Employee Productivity

Depending on the size of a company, you may want to do this more frequently (semi-annually or quarterly). This can give you a full picture of each individual employee’s performance, helps qualitatively assess the situation and receive clear data. With this data, it will be much easier for you to define a strategy to improve the performance of teams or individual employees.

What’s more, to make your job easier, you can use one of the platforms to collect information on employee productivity. These platforms count the number of tasks completed, and the time spent on them. Some of these platforms even automatically average values and allow you to see ready figures for a certain period.

Trust Your Employees

This point arises from the previous one. Why should leaders collect information about employee performance? A few years ago, it was done solely to evaluate the productivity of a person, nothing more. At most, it was the reason to get a reward. But not today.

Now, most successful managers, leaders, and business owners focus on coaching and developing the skills of their employees. This means that when they notice a problem in performance, they first want to help their employees solve it.

Conclusion

Match performance management to strategic and organizational needs: the basic principles of metrics, flexible goal setting, and frequent feedback are becoming commonplace around the world. But some companies still want formal reviews, numerical ratings, and development plans. Organizational culture takes years to change, so companies have to adopt these methods at a speed that works for business.

Want to know how Engagedly can help you with performance management? Request a demo today.

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Guest blog contribution by Dmitry Tsybuliak

Dmitry is the co-founder of AG Inc., a digital agency that specializes in website design and digital marketing. With over 10 years of experience in the technology, SEO and digital marketing industry, he is passionate about helping online businesses take their branding to the next level.

5 Virtual Office Celebration Ideas[Infographic]

Due to the pandemic, the last two years have been about coping with uncertainty and adjusting to unprecedented changes. More than half of the global workforce first found themselves working remotely and later in a hybrid environment. With 2021 coming to an end, it is time for celebrations and festivities. It will not only help your employees to take some time off from work during this time and reduce stress, but will also prepare them for the upcoming year. Moreover, it will help in building employee engagement and deepen bonding as a team.

Also Read: Employee Feedback : The Do’s And Don’ts of It

Last year offices were functioning completely remotely, but this year things changed a bit. Many organizations started offering their employees the flexibility to work from home and from the office, too. This new working model that organizations follow now is known as the hybrid work model. It is critical that your office celebrations include both your work from office employees . This might sound like a tedious activity, but with so many tools and technology at your disposal, it will be easy to make all your employees feel included in the yearly celebration.

Here’s an infographic with virtual celebration ideas for this holiday season.

In this current era, where people are still suffering from the side-effects of the pandemic, a virtual celebration will work wonders for your organization. It will motivate your employees, make them feel appreciated and important, and will boost their morale. It will help improve productivity, engagement, and thereby directly improving the retention of your organization. So what are you waiting for?

Also Read: Tips To Manage Stress of Your Remote Team

Do you have any other virtual office celebration ideas in mind? Let us know in the comments.

Want to know how Engagedly can help you with employee engagement, request a demo from the team!

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Importance of Competency Mapping in the IT Industry

A competency model is a framework that lists the required competencies to perform a specific job and function productively. Competencies of individual employees are organised as per the model that assists in identifying, understanding, and applying the model to workforce performance.

What is Competency Mapping?

In order to remain competitive in the continuously changing IT sphere, it is crucial to understand the competencies at various levels of the organisation to procure, retain, and develop competent team members. Competency mapping is the way of assessing and identifying the competencies of an organisation and inculcating them into various processes of job evaluation, training, recruitment, and learning and development. It is one of the most accurate means of identifying individual behavioural and job-related competencies.

The skills required to execute a job depends on a number of factors, such as technical challenges involved in the task, technical and functional competencies required to accomplish the task, organisational structure, nature of processes and assigned activities, business nature, social culture, and behaviour and attitude of the employee towards the job responsibilities. Competency mapping helps in aligning the skills required to perform activities productively with the individual skills and attributes.

Also Read: Performance Review Tips For 2022

The process of competency mapping involves breaking down a given job role or function is into constituent tasks or activities and competencies (technical, managerial, behavioural, conceptual, behaviour) required to perform the job productively. It further helps in determining the various job-related competencies of employees. It lays the foundation for the development and sustainability of competencies with the changing organisational requirements.

The IT organisations employ various competency models with a design strategy aligned with the organisational goals. The ultimate goal of a model is to create a sustainable and productive workforce that enhances the proficiency level of an employee in executing a task. The model helps employees find the gaps in competencies and measures their on-job performance. It suggests training programs and workshops to increase employee efficiency and productivity at the workplace.

What is Competency?

As per the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a combination of measurable and observable skills, abilities, knowledge, and personal attributes are defined as competency. It consists of a number of success factors required for achieving important results in a job role. Knowledge, skills, attributes, personal characteristics are described in terms of employee behaviours required to execute a job function productively. Competency comprises behaviour and employee aptitude, skills, and functional knowledge and is similar to an iceberg model shown in the figure below.

Image Source: Capitalwave

Competencies directly impact organisational success, and a well-defined competency mapping helps the IT industry achieve the desired professional missions and goals.

Competencies in the IT Industry

Competency for a job is a set of skills, attributes, and knowledge that are required to exceed the expectations of the internal and external stakeholders. These skills lay the foundation for accomplishing the tasks efficiently and thus help the organisation achieve the desired results.

Traditionally, the Human resource team would employ a set of tools and techniques to identify the competency skills of the IT employees’, but with the technological changes and remote working challenges introduced by the pandemic, the focus has shifted to involve a set of behavioural attributes along with the IT expertise. The competencies are mapped as per the technical skillset and the behavioural characteristics of an employee.

There are various ways to think of competencies, but for an IT organisation, the following factors are helpful while studying the IT industry competencies.

Technical Competencies: IT organisations deploy several tools and software in their projects to get the desired output for clients. To perform well in the assigned job role, an employee should have technical expertise in software development, testing, and project management. The rampant changes and advancements in the technical domain require employees to stay abreast of various software domains. The advent of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning has metamorphosed the technical architecture, and IT professionals are expected to have a strong understanding of the technical area to face the challenges. Hardware, software, and networking skills should be common to everybody working in the development teams.

Management Competencies: IT professionals have to be competent in management to attain a competitive position in the business field. Some of the management competencies expected from an IT professional include IT-Preneur, project management, ethical judgement, and multitasking. These competencies are common to all the employees working on a specific project.

Also Read: 5 Email Management Tips You Should Know

Leadership Competencies: Irrespective of the function, leadership skills form the basis of effective IT management. Under leadership, there are three types of competencies- Self Leading, Leading Teams, and Leading the Business.

Self Leading: Time management, analytical thinking, and emotional intelligence form the basis of leading self and is expected in all the individual contributors.
Leading Teams: Team leading skills, conflict resolution and avoidance, mentoring and coaching, and increasing team productivity are the competencies required from managers.
Leading the business: The competencies of business leaders include an entrepreneurial mindset, competitive strategy, change management, and a compelling vision to ensure business success.

Behavioural Competencies: Behavioural competencies are the most difficult to ascertain. These competencies constitute Adaptability/Decisiveness, Initiative/Perseverance, Interpersonal Skills, Organisational Skills, Stress Management, Valuing Service and Diversity. HR managers have a tough job of understanding an employee’s personal characteristics and attributes and aligning them towards suitable job functions that contribute towards employee and organisational success.

Now that we have understood the competencies required in an IT organisation, let us understand the competency mapping process.

Competency Mapping Process

Competency mapping is a complex task and requires collaboration from various departments. Check out the steps involved in the competency mapping process below:

Gathering employee information: Various measures are used to gather employee information, such as filling out questionnaires, personal interviews, and surveys. The crux is to find the technical, functional, and behavioural skills required to accomplish a task.
Create draft competency model framework: The data gathered from employees helps in creating a draft framework. The draft framework includes competency names, definitions, and descriptions.
Take assistance from industry experts: Subject matter experts with expertise in the specific domain are selected to provide assistance in refining the draft model. Their job is to re-model the framework to focus on the specific job functions.
Refining the framework: The next step involves analysing the framework and incorporating suggestions from the focus group (industrial experts); aligning competency names, definitions, and processes towards industrial standards.
Validating the framework: To ensure the model is effective, it is validated against the competencies identified in the framework and the data gathered from employees.
Putting the model into action: Once the model has been validated, it is time to put it into action. The HR managers monitor the success of the model and keep track of its performance at fixed intervals.

Need for Competency Mapping

As per Gallup’s 2017 State of the American Workplace report, only six out of ten employees are aware of their job expectations and only 41 per cent agree that their job description matches with the work assigned to them. The statistics show the urgent need for competency mapping in organisations.

Also Read: How To Build A Successful Upskilling And Reskilling Program

Competency mapping is complex yet effective in aligning the employees with the organisational goals, resulting in a highly productive workforce. It has gained prominence, and many IT organisations are realising the need to build a competency model to make their employees more productive, skilled, and ready to take challenges. The changing business ecosystem and the pandemic-led developments in the IT industry call for developing distinguished competencies for every organisation.

The following points highlight the need for Competency Mapping in the IT industry:

Changing Global Business Ecosystem: The Covid-19 pandemic has overhauled the global ecosystem and has disrupted the IT industry. In the changing scenario, it is imperative to have a robust competency model that aligns the employees and new talent towards the goal of the organisation.
Recruiting Right Talent: Competency mapping underlines the skills required for every task in a job function. It helps the HR managers and leaders in designing a selection process that focuses on hiring the right candidate suitable for the job.
Retaining High-Performing Employees: High-performing employees are critical to the organisation, and it is essential to create a mechanism to retain them for maintaining effective workplace dynamics. Competency mapping plays a vital role in recognising the efforts of such employees and helps in rewarding them suitably.
Increased Customers Focus: In the last decade, IT organisations have become highly customer-centric. With the intense competition in the global market, it is imperative to provide effective and timely delivery of projects. It is possible when a high-performance team is available to deliver as per the agreed standards.

Benefits of Competency Mapping

Successful competency mapping and execution is beneficial to both the employer and employees. It helps in creating a standard for employee recruitment, training and development, re-skilling, and effective positioning of resources.

A well-defined competency model helps in skilling the employees in performing the job functions efficiently and setting benchmark standards for a particular job function.

Source: Careercliff

Organisations can reap the following benefits from competency modelling:

Ensuring that training and development sessions organised for employees are cost-effective, productive, and aligned towards the specific functions’ goals.
Outlining the skills, knowledge, and attributes of an employee relating to every activity of the task.
Helping in containing the cost overruns caused by the poor performance of employees and miscommunication in setting job expectations.
Creating an effective communication channel between the employer and employees.
Helping in training employees on multiple skill sets that are useful in various projects as per the industrial requirements.
Creating a workforce of skilled and trained employees that can execute tasks within deadlines and aids organisations in scaling whenever required.
Creating a framework for constructive feedback assists in organising training workshops at frequent intervals for reskilling and upskilling.
It clearly outlines the career development path for employees within the organisation.
Helping organisations in selecting the right talent suitable for a job. It also helps in retaining the high-performing employees critical for workplace dynamics.
Setting the benchmark for performance appraisals.

Also Read: 8 Tips To Improve Your Productivity In The Workplace

Benefits of Competency Mapping for Employees:

It helps employees understand organisations’ expectations and enables them to make better decisions and work more productively.
Employees can gain new skills through training and development workshops and utilise them in different projects.
It helps in identifying leaders and managers in teams suitable for technical and managerial functions within the organisation.
With the right job expectations and skill mapping, employee productivity increases and is more aligned towards organisational standards.
It provides a framework for employee recognition.
It provides a pathway for employees to re-skill and up-skill themselves on various technologies.

Challenges in Competency Mapping

Competency mapping can help an organisation at multiple levels, from increasing employee productivity to building a skilled workforce that can execute the tasks as per the benchmark standards. However, there are multiple challenges that IT organisations face while creating and implementing competency models.

Because of the volatile nature of the global IT market, the advent of new technologies, and the diverse and multicultural workforce, it is difficult for HR managers to craft and implement the model that works for all the job functions.
Competency mapping is complex and time-consuming and requires getting into the depth of a job function to ascertain the skills required to perform the task efficiently.
A competency model comprises several layers: professional competencies, functional competencies, company mission and values, leadership skills, and individual attributes. It is challenging to swift through different layers and create a successful competency model.
Understanding an employee’s behaviour and other characteristics is quite subjective and require gathering information through different processes.
At the time of implementing competency models, there can be changes in the job requirements from the management and individual attributes not matching with the required skill set.

It is crucial to understand that there is no one-size-fits-all competency model. HR managers have to focus on certain critical roles at the start of competency mapping to handle the challenges of implementing competency models. Start with the high-performing departments that are critical for the growth of the organisation and then go down to the other levels in the organisation.

Conclusion

The changing landscape of the global IT industry calls for a dynamic and skilled workforce. The decreasing shelf life of skills and the technological momentum requires IT organisations to take calculative steps in reskilling and upskilling the workforce to create a stronghold in the market. Competency mapping provides a breakthrough in aligning the workforce towards the organisational goals and creates a pathway for the involvement of employees in their career development, thereby serving the needs of the burgeoning IT industry.

Want to know how Engagedly can help you with the competency mapping of your employees?

Request a quick demo from our experts!

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Tips To Setting Effective Employee Goals And Objectives

Employee goals and objectives are not just mere numbers for an employee. They are something to work towards, a milestone representing growth and accomplishments that motivate us. Of course, when we achieve these goals, it also benefits the organization.

Essentially, workplace goals provide employees with a purpose and job satisfaction, and for an organization, they also grant results and success. Therefore, workplace goals are integral to an organization. For a manager, here are a few useful tips for you to follow, to set goals for your employees.

Personal Improvement Should Also Be A Focus

One of the main motives behind creating goals for your employees as a manager should be personal improvement. Employee goals which help them improve and gain new skills become a good goal by default. Personal improvement is a part and parcel of an employee’s development. Employees cannot remain static.

Goals Should Be Attained Through Teamwork

One key to setting good employee goals is that they should be slightly unreachable. However, managers should not go to the extreme and set completely unreachable goals. If your goals are causing your employees to pull countless all-nighters or are stressing them out, they are completely missing the point. You don’t want your goals to burn out employees. You should aim for motivation.

Employee goals should ensure that employees do not work as individual contributors, but work with others to ensure the completion of goals. Goals that employees can easily meet are not challenging them enough or even engaging them. Contrarily, a goal that forces an employee to step out of their comfort zone is a goal that is challenging. And even better if the goal in question forces employees to engage with other employees.

Measure the Impact Of Goals

If we only counted goals in terms of numerical progress, then by that logic, it would be very easy to declare a goal as a failure or success. For setting employee goals, one thing you should keep in mind is measurability. It’s good if you can measure a goal in terms of numbers and even better if you can measure the impact of the goal. The impact of a goal is always a better indicator of success than the numerical status.

For example, an employee is given a goal where he needs to convince 50 other employees in the office to use a new software. In terms of numbers, if 50 employees have downloaded that software and used it even once, then the goal is successful. However, if those 50 employees stopped using the software after a period, then has the employee really succeeded at the goal?

Align Them to Organization Goals

We cannot tie all goals to team goals and the organization, that is true. However, when setting a goal for an employee, it is important to remember that as much as possible, a goal should contribute to the overall team and organization goals. If employee goals are not directly contributing to the team’s or the organization’s success, it should at least account for their personal development. If the goal is not even helping the employee improve professionally, then the goal shouldn’t exist in the first place.

Keep Employee Goals Flexible

Ideally, you should be able to modify employee goals in the long run. Because, in the process of achieving a goal, the employee and manager might suddenly find that the objective of the goal needs to change. Or that they might need to add other objectives to the goal.

Make Employees Set Their Goals Themselves

Harvard Business Review, in their report, found that 14% of people who set their goals are 10 times more successful than their counterparts.

Last but not the least, this is one of the most important factors to consider when creating a goal. Does your goal match with what the employee has in mind? If it does, great, you can go ahead and set that goal. If it does not, you’ve got to find a way to meet in the middle with the employee. A goal that is set for an employee without an employee’s input is one that is doomed. If employees are not invested in a goal or even motivated by it, then they will not be able to pursue it.

Measure Their Overall Impact

This is one other thing you need to take into consideration. How does the goal you set for your employee affect you? Does it tie into any personal goals you have? And if it does, how do you measure the goal? How much is the employee contributing towards the goal? These are a few of the questions you should ask when creating goals for employees.

Want to know how Engagedly can make your goal-setting process simpler? Request for a demo!

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How To Cope With A Negative Performance Review?

According to a survey by Zenger and Folkman, “Negative (redirecting) feedback, if delivered appropriately, is effective at improving performance.”

The outcome of a performance review will not always be up to your expectation, it can be positive or negative. Hearing that you didn’t perform well, or you were not up to the mark, can be overwhelming and scary. But it can happen and even the best of all performers can stumble. Even our best efforts aren’t fruitful at times. It will be a totally different scenario if you are not putting in efforts but still expecting to have a good performance review. In this case, evaluate your priorities and introspect to understand why things are not how you expected them to be.

In this article, we will highlight what to do after a negative performance review.

Don’t Overthink

Of course, this is easier said than done, but it is the first thing we need to keep in mind. After an instance of negative feedback, it can be very easy to spiral into negative thinking. It’s not long before this spiral can become a loop of self-recrimination.

However, this is not the correct way to approach negative feedback. Carefully re-evaluate. It helps to look back at work over the course of a certain period. Ask your manager for examples. Perhaps there are certain points you can refute. And perhaps there are certain points you can accept. Either way, do not assume it is all on your shoulders and that you are a terrible employee. Instead of overthinking, reflect deeply.

Also Read: Creating A Performance Based Structure In Your Organization

Take Time To Process It

Ask for some time to process the meeting. Be sure to set up a follow-up meeting. Your manager will not mind. Remember, they too may have been in the same place you once were. Handling a negative performance review in a sensible fashion while not being immediately reactionary is a valuable skill to have. It indicates maturity and thoughtfulness. This is not to say that you should listen to everything and refute nothing. Use rational thought to guide your words. In other words, pick the battles you want to fight. There’s no necessity to fight everything or accept everything unless of course, yours is an outlier of a situation that involves a bad manager and worse review practices.

Try Not To Get Overwhelmed

Once again, this is easier said than done. Obviously, negative reviews are a difficult pill to swallow (especially if you are dealing with one for the first time after years of having been a consistent performer).

However, all the trite phrases and proverbs you’ve heard your elders tell you over the years are finally going to make sense now, much to your chagrin. Failure will help you appreciate all your successes better. Failure teaches you how both sides of the equation are. It can install a sense of caution, temper aggression and even plant our feet firmly on the ground. Contrary to popular belief, failure is not a permanent blemish on your career. You can bounce back from 99% of the errors you have made.

The tag might follow you for a while, but subsequent good work will not only help the tag fade, but it will also help showcase your determination and hard work, and who knows, even an example of a success story to be admired for the years to come.

Take out the learning points

There’s a difference between maintaining a positive and upbeat attitude and willful ignorance. Do not make the mistake of being foolish and ignoring a negative performance review. At best, you really might be shrugging off minor mistakes or criticisms. At the worst, you might be ignoring blaring warning signs.
A negative performance review can be considered a reckoning. Use it to reflect upon where you currently are at. A negative review can help you ascertain quite a few outcomes.

Maybe you aren’t a good fit for the job. That’s alright. You can consider a change.
Maybe this new role isn’t your cup of tea. No harm in going back to your old role.
Maybe you and your manager have very different working styles. There’s no way to reconcile this except by making your peace or choosing to move on.
Maybe you overloaded your plate. You can always re-negotiate your responsibilities.

It is important to remember that all these instances are plausible and they are probably not the first time your manager has run up against them. There is no weakness in admitting that things aren’t working out for you the way you expected them to. Sharing this view with your manager could help both of you have an insightful conversation about what your next move is.

It is not about personal failure

Many hard things are easier said than done. A negative performance review is not a direct reflection of who you are. But it is a mirror of some of your abilities. The moment it becomes a personal failure, that’s when it stops becoming a necessary aspect of work and becomes an obstacle that you cannot overcome.
We wouldn’t say that everyone should experience negative reviews. However, it is important to see the other side of things. The fear of failure can oftentimes be a paralyzing thing. It is worth noting how you deal with failure. There’s no bigger lesson than learning how to overcome failure. And some people who are well acquainted with this lesson will have no problem moving on from failure. For others, it might take some work, but it can be done.

Absorb and Assimilate

Before you say anything or react to the review, listen to your manager and make a concentrated effort to understand what they are saying. If your manager hasn’t given, you cause to doubt them and their opinions before, then there’s probably a grain of truth to what they are saying.

Ask for support when required

This is the best thing you can do after receiving a negative performance review. Asking for help to get better shows your manager you care. It might be difficult to ask for help, but asking for help is not a weakness, but rather you admitting that things aren’t so hot right now and you need some guidance to get through this.

Discuss an improvement plan with your manager. They probably have a few ideas as to how to help. Everyone knows that it is not possible for any employee to be superhumanly good. And neither should anybody aim to be one either. That way lies the specter of burnout.

Also Read: Employee Burnout: What you need to know about it

Instead, ask for help, put the review at the back of your mind, and keep going on. The past is not something you can change. But the future is something you certainly can control.

Want to know how Engagedly can help you with performance reviews?

Request a live demo from our experts!

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HR’s Guide To Select The Right Goal Setting Software

We are almost towards the end of 2021, and the past two years have been nothing but difficult for everyone. Thoughts about upcoming holidays and celebrations are definitely exciting, but we also need to prepare for the upcoming year and a fresh quarter. This means, new goals and targets!

Goal setting is important to keep your employees focussed and motivated. With offices still working remotely or in hybrid mode, investing in a goal setting software will help you manage the goal setting cycle of all your employees effectively.

Here are 5 features you shouldn’t miss while selecting a goal setting software for your organization.

Easy Assignment

Assigning goals is one of the most basic functionality to look for in a goal setting software. It should allow managers to assign a goal to their direct reports without directly involving themselves into the goal. This functionality also allows managers to keep track of the progress that their direct reports make.

Assignment makes it easy for managers to assign goals to their direct reports without having to set up a formal meeting to do so.

Alignment

Goal alignment is another important feature which you should look for in the software. It not only allows employees to align their goals with business or department goals, but also helps them understand the bigger picture. For example, if an organization’s goal is to increase revenue by $1 million, then aligning goals shows an employee how exactly they are contributing to this specific goal.

Most softwares helps employees see how their progress on individual goals is contributing to organizational/ department goals.

Cascading or Sharing

Goal sharing/ cascading goals means that employees of different or same levels are allowed to share goals and it will be the responsibility of all the users working on it. The ability to cascade goals means sharing goals from one level of the organization to the next. For example, a manager can cascade their goals down to their direct reports.

Cascading goals are an important feature because they help employees align their own goals with the organization’s objectives and see how their own work can support an organization’s broader objectives.

Also Read: 5 Tech-Powered Innovations To Implement In The Onboarding Process

Ability To Add Objectives And Key Results

OKRs are one of the most popular and effective ways of setting goals and tracking them.

OBJECTIVES are something that you want to achieve, and KEY RESULTS are a measurable way to keep track of how close you are to achieving your objective. OKRs work on all levels, be it corporate, departmental or individual goals. Using OKRs promotes collaboration and helps you drive employee engagement in your organization.

Look for a goal setting software that allows you to set Objectives and Key Results for employees because key results break the goal down into more than one measurable area that allows users to achieve a goal, chunk by chunk, part by part.

Track and Monitor

One of the vital parts of employee goal setting is tracking their progress and actively helping them with their goals. So, choose a software that allows you to track employees’ progress on goals effectively. It should send out notifications to managers or the one who assigns goals when one checks in or comments on the goals.

Also Read: The Impact of Continuous Feedback On Employee Performance

The ability to comment on goals allows both managers and employees to have a discussion about the goal and the progress that is being made. Commenting is an easy way to foster communication without having to formalize it.

Want to know more about Engagedly’s goal setting software? Request a demo today.

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Dealing With Workplace Stress[Infographic]

According to a recent study by Wrike, 94% of employees experience stress at work!

Continue reading “Dealing With Workplace Stress[Infographic]”

Performance Appraisal Software: Why Do You Need It?

Time has changed, and this question is no longer debatable anymore. Today’s corporate world, 80% of which is functioning virtually, has long since embraced performance appraisal software and has understood the significance of having one in place. In fact, since the pandemic hit, you’ll know that there’s a steady change taking place regarding employee performance management and employee engagement. The performance review process is, not so quietly, being replaced by employee performance appraisal software.

This is not a death knell of the performance review process. The process will continue to exist. But it signals that nobody has patience for the old ways of carrying out a performance review process anymore. To be honest, the process has long been due for a change.

Beginning of Performance Management:

The concept of the performance management began the in the early 1900s. Several sources have mentioned several names, so it is hard to pinpoint who exactly came up with the idea. But one thing all the sources agreed upon was the fact that performance management seems to have come into being sometimes during the early 1900s. But it wasn’t until the 1950s that the concept of performance management really picked up. Employers began to understand that in order for employees to perform well or to be motivated to perform well, they needed encouragement and motivation.

Since then, performance review cycled through many iterations, including Jack Welch’s rank and yank system at General Electric and Google’s prolific use of goals and objectives to motivate employees.

Also read: Why do you need a Real Time Performance Management Software

In present times, however, there are a lot of conflicting ideas about what makes up performance management. Many companies which were once pioneers in the performance review process, such as General Electric, Enron, IBM, Motorola, and others, have either done away with the processes that brought them recognition or have themselves dissolved. The current trend is, of course, to get the review process off papers and take it online. In the past few years, so a good deal of software applications have appeared in the market. Is it any better than the traditional performance process? Definitely!

Here are three ways in which employee performance appraisal software can improve the performance review process and drive employee engagement:

Easily To Use and Navigate:

The problem with traditional performance reviews is that so many of them heavily rely on paper. It becomes a cumbersome task to take all of that paper and merge it into a review. With software, on the other hand, all you need to do is input your review. Most performance review software applications will even collate all your performance reviews into one handy document.

Provide Continuous Feedback:

Performance review applications make it easier for employees and managers to give continuous feedback. Feedback works best when it is given and received at regular intervals and is real time.

Continuous feedback isn’t something that is just reserved for a certain breed of employees. Constructive feedback is for everyone. It can help struggling employees improve, it can help good employees become better, and it might even help struggling employees figure out if they are suited for different job roles.

Also read: 6 Reasons To Invest In A Performance Appraisal Software

Add-On Customisable Features:

Most employee performance appraisal software applications come with a whole host of features that help aid the performance review process. Engagedly for instance, also has the OKR module which allows you to add and monitor goals and objectives for employees, 360 multirater feedback module, a continuous feedback model, all of which can be utilized during the performance review so that managers have a broad and comprehensive overview of how their employees are doing. Additionally, these features also make tracking an employee’s performance a lot easier.

Do you want to know how Engagedly can help you with seamless Performance Evaluation? Then request for a live demo.

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The 5 Essential Qualities Of A Great Manager

Becoming an excellent manager is not just about delegating tasks to your direct reports and telling them what to do, it is more than that. It is a series of actions which you perform and not just the years of experience. The actions may not have an instantaneous effect, but over a period, it affects the team.

Here are five qualities that will help you manage your team better.

The Ability To Make Decisions

Managers don’t work alone, they manage a team and are people leaders in the making. So, as a people’s leader, one of the most important tasks of an effective manager is to make independent decisions. If you showcase yourself as someone who cannot decide or refuses to decide, or, even worse, is ambivalent about everything, you will come across as an indecisive person to your team. This will lead your team members to lose faith in you as a manager and it affects the entire team.

Share Feedback

Employee feedback when given on time not only helps your employees feel appreciated, but also improves employee engagement. Lack of feedback makes your employees feel disengaged and underappreciated, and they ultimately end up leaving the organization. Additionally, timely feedback helps them know when they are doing right or wrong. Feedback helps your team work effectively and efficiently. Frequent feedback sessions like these help improve your bond with your reports.

Train Them, But Don’t Spoon-feed

One of the most common mistakes which many newbie managers make is they end up spoon-feeding their direct reports. Don’t end up doing their task, or do not offer to do it for them because you don’t like it. As a manager, you are not only supposed to manage your team, but also understand and teach them when they are not able to perform. Doing their work once or twice is okay, but if you do it every time you don’t like their work, they won’t be able to learn. Moreover, you end up having no time to complete your own work.

Employees feel discouraged as they feel their work is undervalued and unimportant, and they would not get a chance to improve. They might also become overdependent on you as they know you will fix the work and they need not worry about the issues.

Share Credit When Due

According to research by O.C. Tanner, 79% of employees quit their jobs when they don’t feel appreciated.

We all like getting recognition, but it should not be at the cost of others’ light. It’s a very common mistake that alienates team members instantly, as if you have the plague or something contagious. When your employees do something for you, make sure you acknowledge their contribution or their work. Similarly, when mistakes happen, step up and accept the blame instead of pointing fingers at specific people. As a manager, you are a leader in training. If you do not allow yourself to develop wholly, you will never be able to reach the higher ranks.

Don’t Avoid Difficult Conversations

We all know that difficult conversations put us in an uneasy spot. But avoiding them only makes the problem worse. As a manager, you need to understand that sometimes, certain conversations must be had, no matter how averse you are to being confrontational. And here’s the thing. A difficult conversation need not be confrontational. All you need is some tact and empathy and of course, the willingness to listen.

Want to know how Engagedly can help you become a better manager? Request a demo today from our experts.

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Tools That Enhance Workplace Productivity

We are all responsible for creating and maintaining a positive work environment and interpersonal relationship between employees. The main responsibility of it, though, falls on the Human Resource department. The HR of any organization has many key responsibilities – starting from the recruitment process, education and training, to off-boarding/termination of employees.

Recent studies have shown that almost 85% of the global labor force is actively disengaging from their work. Productivity and earnings have been affected to a great extent because of it.

Also Read: The Ultimate Guide To Effective Employee Surveys

There is a way to avoid such a situation. Wondering how? By implementing creative ways to engage your workforce in order to boost productivity. The tools stated below have the potential to increase engagement among employees and help your organization achieve set goals. Let’s go through them together.

Communication Apps

An organization’s success depends on effective internal communication. A business that lacks communication suffers decreased motivation and loses sight of its purpose. As a consequence, productivity plummets to an all-time low. If you are wondering how you can enhance communication among your employees and enhance productivity and engagement levels, say thank you to productivity tools. This whole process becomes more streamlined and simplified by bringing in exactly what your workforce needs.

For example, apps like Slack and Confluence are great for improving communication.

With Slack, you can easily organize your groups, subgroups, departments, or the entire company through various channels. Achieve two-way communication with ease while keeping necessary information organized, stored, and at an easily accessible location.

Confluence is an app intended for bigger organizations in order to receive important information at lightning speed. It’s a versatile application that helps you organize a company’s policy, video tutorials, and transfer crucial messages.

Video Calling Applications

Video calling apps have become widely popular, especially post pandemic. Companies of every industry have used them for meetings, at one point or the other. Given their increased necessity in today’s world, no one wants bad connections, broken links, and unnecessary interruptions.

To make sure everything goes in order, you can employ certain tools. This will ensure engaging meeting spaces that can be an effective way to boost team productivity.

Zoom and Google Hangouts are leading apps for video conferencing. They are free for use and their main purpose is to make video calls, send messages, and join a conversation within a group or just with one person.

Mentimeter has also proven to be very effective when it comes to video calling. It is a software that employees can use to join video calls via their smartphones. They are able to send messages, vote, answer questions, or generally contribute to a presentation.

If you are looking to host larger-scale meetings which involve presentations, there are a large number of webinar software options to choose from.

Project Management

The aim of any project is to be a successful one, so it needs to be managed in the right way. Successful project management eliminates ambiguity among employees, respects deadlines, and each project is completed effectively and accurately.

Tools like Trello, Asana, and Hive can help you accomplish those projects with ease. For instance, during your workday, you may be thinking to yourself, ‘How am I going to rewrite my essay quickly and efficiently?’ You will have all the necessary tools for completing the project from start to finish with these apps. Trello has proven to be a great option for the ones who are just starting the project journeys, while Hive will give you the needed analytics reports for tracking the team’s productivity better.

Management of Remote Teams

When we are talking about project management, it is easy to do it with the help of productivity tools. But, the projects are not the only things to be managed. After the pandemic hit, we now know better than that. Many companies have turned to remote work and the work of HR has completely changed. Remote teams had to be managed without adequate support systems and infrastructure. This means that the HR team needs to take care of the employees’ well-being; balance flexibility; reward teams and individuals for their accomplishments; maintain relationships with each employee, and aim to make a genuinely happier work from home environment.

Teamwork and collaboration

Efficiency increases when teams are provided with productivity tools that facilitate cross-functional collaboration.

This is very important, especially for companies that have departments that work in silos, have remote workers, and employees from multiple locations. This is where collaborative tools can benefit your organization through improved collaboration capabilities.

You have probably heard of Google Drive, as it’s one of the first choices for many companies. This storage-based service will allow you to upload all important documents for free on your secure cloud storage.

Documents, slides, and Google sheets are available, which means you can upload files, pictures, videos, and audio. The documents can be shared and edited by the people who have access to them. This is especially useful for organizations that have a large or growing amount of files that need to be shared with other people, regardless of their location.

Similar to this service, that gives us the same options as Google Drive, is Microsoft’s OneDrive. The only difference is that this software allows you to view and edit files offline, which can be very beneficial at times.

Tools for time management

There are a lot of popular apps like customer data platforms, for tracking the behaviour of your customers. When it comes to employees, that platform is your HR worker. In addition, the time tracking will provide you with valuable insight into your employees’ work. You can know track each task and find out which areas are lacking productivity.

Toggl is a great and simple-to-use time tracking tool. With just a click, you can track the time you spent on each task. You are available to see reports about each project and task you did over the past week. If you forget to start your time, a little bot will send you an alert each time.

RescueTime is another useful tracking tool. You can monitor the apps and websites employees are using during their work time. Besides that, you can even check at which hour the employees are the most or least productive, as well as their days and the weeks.

Virtual Recruiting

Pandemic has triggered a lot of changes in company policies. When it comes to hiring, the whole process of recruiting has become virtual. From planning, selecting, managing, to hiring, everything has become virtual.

Also Read: Remote Onboarding : Essentials To Know

The experience that a prospective employee had in their job interview has a great influence on their satisfaction level as well as on the whole company’s reputation. The ones who have had a positive experience will most likely accept the position, thereby becoming your company’s referral.

Summary

Running a business during a pandemic has surely brought about some changes in brand strategies, company policies, and staff support procedures. Since most things are now done in the digital environment, including our communication, there are necessary tools to keep workers engaged, while aiming for the highest performance.

Productivity tools mentioned above can facilitate one’s work and solve key problems. Although, you should avoid complicated and unnecessary tools that can just disrupt workflows and lower productivity levels.

Tools like the ones mentioned above are user-friendly and straightforward. However, you can always experiment, and try to find the ones that suit you and your employees the best.

Introduce them to your workers, allow them time to integrate, and be open to feedback. Only by doing so, can you nurture collaboration and achieve the desired productivity.

Want to know how Engagedly can help your employees perform better? Request a demo today.

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Guest blog contribution by Nina Petrov

Nina Petrov is a content marketing specialist, passionate about graphic design, content marketing, and the new generation of green and social businesses. She starts the day scrolling her digest on new digital trends while sipping a cup of coffee with milk and sugar. Her white little bunny tends to reply to your emails when she is on vacation.

Why Your Business Needs A Performance Management Software

The corporate world has completely changed in comparison to what it was two years ago. Organizations adapted themselves to new methods of working and employees became completely remote due to the pandemic. In the current scenario, while many organizations are shifting to a hybrid model of work, remote work is here to stay.

This makes it essential for organizations to shift to performance management software from the traditional paper- based processes. While traditional performance management processes were not easy to follow, with the arrival of the pandemic it has become completely impossible.

Performance management has evolved at a quick pace over the last few decades. Earlier, annual performance reviews were the indisputable norm. It was a dreadful affair for both the managers and the employees. But now it is not just a yearly process, it has become flexible, continuous and more comprehensive. This helps employees to stay engaged and on the right track.

Also Read: 7 Proven Ways To Be A Better Leader In The Workplace

Traditional performance processes work fine when organizations are small or have a very simple review process. But once organizations get bigger and job roles get more complex, there’s a need for software to enhance the process, or rather, to ease the process.

Benefits of performance management software for your organization?

Helps Understand Goals Better

A recent study by Gallup indicates that about 50% of employees do not know what is expected of them at their workplace.

Imagine a situation wherein a remote employee is expected to put in his or her 100% effort but is not sure where this is headed or what’s the end result of this. Do you think she or he will be able to put in that much effort? Performance management software enables the company to have clear-cut goals and makes them visible to every employee. Every employee gets to see how their effort can help the company achieve higher-level goals.

When they see how they can make an impact at the individual level, it makes them want to strive harder. Managers can easily keep a track of their team performances remotely and can provide feedback accordingly.

Simplifies The Performance Management Process

One of performance management software’s biggest advantages is that it can be extremely easy to use, depending on the choice of software. All the things required for a review cycle are in one place, most of the processes are automated, and once the review information has been added, such as start dates, review templates, etc., there’s not much else an HR manager has to do, except oversee the entire process.

Even better, HR managers don’t have to frequently remind employees to complete their reviews. Most software has built-in reminders that will prod employees to complete the review process. The software takes the burden off HR’s shoulders and instead allows them to focus on the outcome of performance reviews, rather than the whole process of it.

Performance Management Software Stores Historical Data

With a performance management software in place, you can access data anytime and it helps to make quick and efficient decisions. They provide old and new data in one place, for you to compare and understand patterns and identify any gaps or bottlenecks. It becomes easy to track the performance level.

Integrates All Aspects Of Employee Development

Performance management software does not focus solely on the review process alone. Rather, they offer other features as well, such as the ability to share feedback, goals and objectives, an LMS, etc. All these features are often integrated so that when the review process is going on, users can view an employee’s complete profile, such as the feedback they have received, the goals they could complete, to what extent they could complete their goals, or even what new skills they have learned.

Performance management software paints a broad picture of an employee’s performance. It helps everyone make informed decisions during the review process.

Gives Better Insights And Analytics

Performance management software can provide a very illuminating look at an employee’s performance. This is not just related to ratings and feedback they have received over the past years. Rather, many performance management software also offer performance analytics that track employee performance in graphical chart format, calculate leadership potential, etc. This way, you can also track how well an employee is performing remotely compared to when she or he was present in office.

These employee insights can help others make informed review decisions when reviewing performance. And they can also help managers make compensation decisions or even promotion decisions.

Better Visibility and Control Of The Process

Conducting the review process through performance management software offers HR managers much greater control over the entire process. They can control when the cycle starts and when it ends, how many employees should participate in the cycle, etc. HR managers can also restrict review visibility, call back reviews etc, thereby also maintaining a fair and just review process.

As a manager, you have a ton of other responsibilities, other than just tracking your employees’ performance. So if you wish to be more efficient and handle things with ease, a performance management software is your best option.

Want to know more about real-time performance management software? Request us for a quick demo!

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Also read: 8 Simple Tips To Demonstrate Leadership In The Workplace

What is talent management software?

How does talent management software work?

Need for talent management software

1. Shared data

2. Retaining the top talent

Also read: Employee Retention Strategy – How To Retain Top Talent?

3. Improved employee experience

4. Modern employee development

How to choose talent management software?

1. Needs of your organization

2. Find a vendor suitable for you.

3. Request for a demo

Also read: Have you set effective OKRs for your customer success team?

Benefits of talent management for the organization

1. Deeper employee engagement

2. Minimize attrition

3. Better succession planning

Benefits of talent management for employees

1. Better onboarding experience

2. More opportunities for training and reskilling

Also read: How To Build A Successful Upskilling And Reskilling Program

3. Career Advancement

4. Improved performance management

5. Employee experience

Final thoughts

Also Read: What is a performance management system?

Problems With the Traditional Performance Management System

Traditional Performance Management is Time Consuming

Also Read: 10 Best employee feedback tools to track performance

Ratings do not Reflect the Real Performance of Employees

The Process is Laborious and Expensive

Also Read: Impact of employee engagement on productivity

The Process Cannot Accurately Measure Performance

Characteristics of Performance Management System

Also Read: 10 Best tools for employee goal setting

Fair and Accurate

The System Must be Efficient

Continuous, Flexible, and Intuitive

Also Read: 5 Features too look for in an OKR software

The System Must Focus on Employee Development

Aligned Towards Organizational Goals

Also Read: Reasons why goals setting is important

Aligned With Organizational Culture and Values

The System Must Help With Goal Setting and Tracking

Also Read: Benefits of 360 degree feedback

Integrates All Aspects of Employee Development

Customization, Security, and Integration

Also Read: Common leadership challenges at workplace

Supports Learning Culture in Organization

Why are employee performance management systems so popular?

Decentralized Work Environment

Also Read: The Complete Guide To Working From Home

Increasing Automation in Workplace

Organizational Benefits of using performance management systems

Detailed Information

Objective Feedback

Also Read: 10 Best Employee Feedback Tools To Track Performance

Employee engagement and morale

Growth and Consistency

Reducing Firing Risk

Talent Retention and Development

Also Read: Want To Know Why Your Employees Leave? Here’s Why

Disadvantages of not using employee performance management

Lack of objectivity

Mismanagement and lack of communication

Also Read: 10 Ways To Improve Communication At The Workplace

Poor planning and Task Management

Training gap

Poor Morale and Retention

Also Read: Employee Retention Strategy – How To Retain Top Talent?

Lack of effective compensation methods

Conclusion

Also read: What Is A Performance Management System?

What is a Performance Review?

Importance of Conducting Performance Reviews for Managers

Strengthen Employee Engagement

Also read: Goal Setting Software Guide For CIOs

Helps to Identify Leadership Problems

Improves Work Environment