Find tons of enriching performance management resources in this blog category. It is a real-time people strategy platform that helps all aspects of business insights!
Moving from traditional paper-based performance reviews to web based performance appraisal system can feel like a stressful experience. It is mainly because you are moving away from something that you know about to something that is new to you.
Continue reading “How To Shift To A Web Based Performance Appraisal System?”
Your business is full of talented, hard-working employees. But it’s not enough that they can perform well as individuals.
They have to be able to work in efficient, productive teams.
And in some ways, that’s getting harder. Your team might have remote or hybrid members — you could even be in completely different time zones.
With the right tools and techniques, any team can be high-performing. This article gives you the tips you need to improve team performance.
Team performance is related to job performance. Research shows that team members who are highly engaged in their work and motivated by the mission of their organization tend to produce higher quality, more innovative products than those who are disengaged or uninvolved.
The days of everyone coming to the office every day are over for most teams. While many employees only started working from home in 2020 as a safety measure, most don’t want to go back full-time.
Source: hbr.org
That creates a new challenge: teams have to work smoothly and efficiently despite not being in the same room.
Cross-functional teams are made up of people with different skill sets and expertise.
They’re often set up temporarily to work on a specific project. For example, a cross-functional team working on a product launch could include employees from product development, marketing, sales, and finance.
They bring a range of perspectives together, which fosters innovation and creativity, and they allow organizations to tackle more complex projects. But there are downsides.
Ineffective communication and misaligned goals in cross-functional teams can lead to issues in coordination, project management, and project delivery. Implementing team management best practices can help cross-functional teams perform better.
How do you evaluate your team’s performance? We’ll talk about choosing specific metrics of success in a bit, but in general, a high-performing team will have these qualities:
The best teams can meet or exceed the goals that are set for them. They know exactly what’s expected, and they get it done.
High-performing teams don’t waste time. They get a lot done by operating as efficiently as possible.
If a team is inefficient, it doesn’t necessarily mean the team members aren’t working hard enough. Sometimes, a team’s performance is hampered by outdated tools or processes that need to be reevaluated.
The team members of an efficient team are motivated to do their best.
This usually comes from a sense of ownership in the team’s work. Team members feel positive about being a part of the team and are driven to achieve team goals.
Team performance improvements often come from working smarter, not harder. These six strategies can be applied to any team to improve performance.
Teams can’t succeed if they don’t know what success looks like. Your team members should understand their goals and roles, as well as how they’ll be evaluated. Use the below suggestions to set clear expectations in the team.
Use KPIs for measuring the team’s performance
Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are quantifiable measures of performance. They’re the numbers that tell you how you’re doing on your goals.
Your team’s KPIs should include a combination of individual goals and team objectives. For example, a customer service team could track the total number of tickets the team resolved and measure the customer satisfaction ratings of each team member.
Reports and dashboards make KPIs much more useful. Team members should know how to check in on their progress and see how the team is doing.
Roles Within Teams
Each member of the team must have an understanding of their role. Unclear communication about who’s responsible for a task can lead to duplicated or unfinished work.
Work management software that can ensure that there’s no confusion about who’s supposed to do what.
Performance Review Process
In addition to knowing what they’re supposed to do, team members should understand how their achievements will be evaluated. Are there incentives for doing well? What metrics affect the likelihood that they’ll get a raise?
If employees don’t understand how their KPI numbers translate into real-life rewards, they’ll be less motivated to perform well.
Even the best team will fail if it has inefficient processes. So assign the processes according to the team’s calibre to improve the productivity of the entire team.
No one wants to do things the slow way, but it’s really easy for inefficiencies to become standard if you don’t regularly evaluate and optimize the way you do things.
Sometimes, an inefficient process is just how things have always been done. A team member has painstakingly created the same excel report every Monday for years, and no one has taken the time to find a better method.
Sometimes it’s because you have tools that don’t work together. For example, did you know that the average organization uses ten different sales technology tools? Switching between them for different tasks is a big waste of time.
A sales CRM solution can bring all of your customer relationship processes together and automate the repetitive parts of the job.
Talk to your team members about which manual processes are taking up the most time. Are there modifications that could save the invaluable time of the team? Better yet, could the process be automated?
Have you ever had to attend an unproductive meeting that could have been an email?
Of course you have. We all have.
Pointless meetings are one of the biggest time sucks in the workplace. 44% of professionals say that poorly organized meetings are keeping them from doing their real work.
By using a meeting scheduler, you can manage your time and meetings in an effective manner. The tool enables your customers to view available time-slots in your calendar and book meetings accordingly, to avoid any conflicts.
And all that wasted time means wasted money. In fact, 34% of professionals consider unnecessary meetings to be the biggest cost to their organization.
Source: Zippia.com
Team leaders have a responsibility to communicate information efficiently. A meeting isn’t always the best way to go. That meeting could be an email, but we have an even better idea — that meeting could be a conversation on your work management platform.
In a successful team, every team member trusts every other team member to do their part. There’s a group dynamic of openness and honesty.
You can improve transparency at the team level by doing the following:
Provide Visibility Into What the Team Is Doing
Anyone working on a project should have complete information about it. When a team member can only see their own piece of the puzzle, decision-making and problem-solving are impacted.
Project management software can ensure that everyone on the team knows what other team members are doing.
That level of visibility also holds team members accountable. Knowing that your coworkers can see how much you’re contributing to the project is motivational.
Offer Insights Through Reports and Dashboards
Ideally, team members should have visibility of each other’s tasks.
Using a solution with sophisticated reporting and dashboard software gives the whole team insights into progress and performance.
Encourage Feedback
Encourage everyone on the team to speak their mind. If they have feedback about the way the team is managed or how a process is done, be open to hearing it.
Team leaders should also give constructive feedback to direct reports. That improves team performance while letting team members know that you’ll be honest with them.
Everyone loves to be rewarded for their hard work. Whether it’s a monetary bonus or simple recognition, team members are motivated by incentives.
Most businesses only reward individual achievements.
No matter how many talented individuals you have on a work team, the team will only be successful if those individuals work well together. As per Deloitte, only 28% of organizations give performance rewards based on team metrics. 39% use individual metrics, and 55% use individual performance reviews.
Choose a team goal that everyone can work on together and let the team know that there’ll be a reward if they meet it.
It’s easy to talk about things like improving accountability or streamlining processes.
But if you don’t have the right team software solutions, it’s impossible to actually do it.
For example, you might feel strongly about the importance of team communication, but some of that communication is going to get lost in disorganized email inboxes if you don’t have a better tool to manage your emails.
Communication
Have a question about a task’s status?
Don’t send an email or use a separate messaging app. That’s how you end up with five different disjointed conversations around the same issue.
Communication happens where the work happens. A good communication platform is especially important if you have hybrid or virtual teams or if team members come from a variety of departments. Moreover, good communication during meetings is equally as important. To facilitate this, you could use a meeting note app
Transparency
A good project management platform provides visibility into what everyone on the team is doing. Project information, deadlines, files, and conversations are all easy to find.
Reports and dashboards let team members visualize the group’s progress and achievements. This kind of visibility also makes reporting to stakeholders on project statuses simpler.
Process Automation
You don’t have to be a tech wiz to automate workflows.Save time by automating mundane tasks like status updates and email notifications. Or get fancy with multi-step automation recipes that streamline entire workflows.
By following the six tips above, any team can improve performance without adding extra work.
Remember that team development is an ongoing process. Meet with your team regularly to openly discuss any frustrations they have or inefficiencies they’ve discovered.
One of the biggest things you can do to improve team performance is to use the right tools. Discuss with your team the tools that can add more value to their work and help solve challenges. However, you may want the assistance of a third party with such a new pair of eyes to understand what more you may add to your team, so be sure to look out for staff augmentation services that can help you boost your overall productivity.
Do you want to know how Engagedly can help you with Real-Time Performance Management? Book a live demo with us.
Performance management is evolving. From the traditional approach of annual performance reviews that caused disengagement and loss of productivity to a strategic and systematic process of continuous planning and monitoring, performance management has come a long way.
Earlier, it was viewed as a system where managers would assess the performance of their employees annually based on some specific parameters. The system had a series of flaws that would lead to inaccurate measurement of performance and eventual disengagement and dissatisfaction among employees.
As per the Gartner Performance Management Benchmarking Survey, 81% of HR leaders are planning to make changes to their performance management system.
On the flip side, the modern approach to performance management is highly focused on the development and growth of employees. It is a continuous and ongoing set of processes that helps to identify, examine, measure, and improve the performance of employees. Other than focusing on employees’ personal and professional development, it provides great insights into the untapped potential of employees and identifies the blindspots that are a hurdle to organizational development.
There are a multitude of reasons why companies like Accenture, Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and GE have ditched their traditional command-and-control management systems for people-focused and growth-oriented performance management. Organizations that are highly invested in the performance of their workforce have higher ROI, lower employee turnover, are more innovative, and are better at problem-solving. They are able to sail through turbulent times without compromising on their work quality.
This article will talk at length about the intricacies of performance management and will unpack details about the following:
Performance management is crucial for the success of any business. It helps align the resources in the right direction and ensures higher growth potential. It encompasses a set of processes that continuously measure employees’ performance and build a communication channel between managers and employees to accomplish the strategic objectives of the organization.
Performance management plays an important role in every industry. It helps create an environment where employees are motivated to be better at their jobs by offering them regular feedback and resources to improve their skills.
Furthermore, it is a periodic and systematic process that helps align individual goals to organizational goals, and therefore key decisions like appraisals, promotions, and bonuses are linked to it.
All the major parameters of organizational and individual success are linked to performance management in the following ways:
It is critically important to note that performance management is not a one-size-fits-all approach for every organization.
Even though it is a corporate tool that helps solve challenges related to productivity, performance, retention, and engagement, every organization needs to redesign or customize performance management as per their business requirements to get optimum results.
Another common misconception about performance management is relating it to traditional performance appraisals that were limited in scope, as they did not include clear goal setting and frequent feedback mechanisms.
The changing global business environment, the rapidly evolving technical landscape, changing customer preferences, challenges with global supply chain management, and employees’ expectations from employers are the chief factors that will define the success of an organization in the coming years.
The below image provides a clear understanding of changing employees’ expectations and values at work in the post-pandemic world.
Source: Economic Times
The recent developments in the market, The Great Resignation, and IT automation are adding to the predicaments of human resource managers. Finding the right talent and retaining potential employees is getting tougher every day. On top of that, organizations are still reeling under the economic stress of the pandemic.
The following image highlights some of the challenges that HR leaders need to be prepared for.
Source: home.KPMG (New challenges perceived by HR leaders, 2021)
The situation does not seem to get easier anytime soon. So, how do organizations manage their most valuable resources in turbulent times? This is where performance management becomes indispensable to an organization’s sustainability and growth.
By leveraging different components of performance management, organizations can not only retain their employees but also be prepared for unprecedented changes in their business. Furthermore, they can create a differentiated brand position for themselves and attract new talent easily.
To remain competitive in the current business environment, it is imperative to focus on building a systematic, goal-centered, and employee-centric performance management system.
Performance management is responsible for the creation of a growth-driven, engaging, and productive environment. A well-thought-out, innovative, and strategically laid-out performance management system can boost performance and lead to the development of a dynamic and highly skilled workforce. In order for performance management to bring effective results, organizations need to incorporate its components into every process and ensure compliance.
The different components of performance management goal setting, ongoing communication through frequent feedback, performance reviews, rewarding good performance, creating improvement plans, and learning and development help to make it a vital tool for organizational development.
Performance management is a multi-faceted tool that helps in the overall development of employees and, thereby, achieves organizational objectives. By working at the individual and team level, performance management helps in identifying blindspots in employee productivity and development that are a barrier to the achievement of company goals. Furthermore, it supports management in reducing employee turnover, getting higher ROI, enhancing employee engagement and productivity, and building a more diverse and inclusive culture.
Source: Profit.co
The benefits of performance management are not just limited to the organization, but spread across all the stakeholders. It plays a crucial role in increasing the organizational efficiency by:
Performance management is a vast process. It requires collaboration from multiple levels to be successful. It is an integrated approach that touches both vertical and horizontal segments of the organization. To ensure the success of performance management, human resource leaders must adhere to some fundamental principles that serve as supporting pillars to the overall process.
The process is founded on the following principles of performance management:
Without incorporating its basic tenets, performance management will not be fruitful in the long run.
Following the disruptions caused by the pandemic, many HR processes, including performance management, have started to gravitate toward becoming strategic business contributors to the organization. The concept of performance management has been redefined by the leaders, and it now encompasses the series of changes brought in by the radical developments in the business environment.
Performance management has metamorphosed into a real-time goal setting and employee development tool that overlooks different aspects of employee and organizational performance. As organizations are now juggling between remote and hybrid work setups, it is important for them to keep a tab on the overall performance of their employees.
Human resource managers must incorporate certain best practices to enhance the performance of their remote and hybrid teams. These include:
A survey by Deloitte highlights that only 8% of organizations derive high value from their performance management processes, while 58% find it ineffective in delivering results.
Despite numerous developments in the field of HR management and strategies, there are certain problems that are a huge barrier to implementing effective performance management in organizations. If left unchecked, these problems can cascade into the system and result in conflicts among employees and leaders, low performance, underachievement of organizational goals, and low customer retention and acquisition. On the employee front, ineffective performance management can lead to demotivation, disengagement, lack of trust, and high turnover.
Some of the major problems with performance management:
A performance management system is a collaborative approach between employees and management to frequently review the performance of employees and provide them with constructive feedback.
It entails planning, monitoring, and reviewing the performance to achieve short and long-term organizational goals and also provide a growth trajectory to employees for their overall development.
To ensure higher performance and achievement of objectives, organizations develop a series of activities that help employees understand their strengths and weaknesses and offer them learning opportunities to nurture their skills.
But what’s the purpose?
It’s multifold and it touches upon individual, team, and organizational productivity, goal goal-setting methodologies. Further, it helps in creating frequent check-ins and feedback processes, learning and development, and rewarding employees for exemplary performance.
A performance management system acts as a guiding light that helps organizations stay committed to their mission and vision by constantly monitoring the performance of employees and offering support wherever required so as to not stray from the optimal path.
There are different types of performance management systems available at the disposal of organizations. Some of the most commonly used ones are:
Based on the business requirements, organizational culture, and goals, organizations can select the ones that help them achieve better results. However, many organizations are now making a shift to OKRs and 360 degrees because of the numerous benefits they offer.
Whether you are running a startup with a handful of employees or a multinational organization, it is always difficult to align everyone’s vision to achieve overarching goals. Every organization wants to achieve more through continuous improvement, but without a proper framework to support it, it can be extremely challenging to make a mark.
Having a performance management framework to create alignment between organizational and employee goals is the starting point of mastering the art of performance management. When done right, performance management harbingers great results for an organization.
The following points should be taken into consideration while getting started with performance management.
The growing need for innovation, creativity, problem solving, and adaptability is transforming workplaces. Employees’ expectations have changed over the years, and so has the way organizations operate.
The current demands of digitization and agility have led to a fast adaptation of automated performance management systems that can reduce the manual workload of HR managers and optimize the processes.
Real-time performance management systems are taking over from the traditional ones. They help HR managers:
The below image provides an overview of real-time dashboards visible to leaders and managers. With their help, managers are able to keep track of the progress of organizational goals.
By doing away with redundant tasks, HR leaders can focus on important issues and help create a better learning environment for employees.
The Deloitte Global Human Capital Report provides great insights about companies that have redesigned their performance management systems:
Google, Kelly Services, IBM, Cargill, and Juniper are some of the companies that have redefined their performance management systems. They are leveraging technology to create a continuous performance management system. It helps support processes such as feedback management, check-ins, creating better job descriptions, performance reviews, and even learning and development. These companies are now more focused on employee development and engagement rather than annual performance reviews that would give inaccurate results.
Performance management is at the heart of every organization. It helps in creating a formidable performance-driven culture that supports higher productivity, engagement, and optimal utilization of resources. Effective performance management systems are one of the key distinguishing parameters of high-performing organizations. By utilizing the various components of performance management effectively, organizations can create a skilled workforce that is ready to take challenges head-on.
Did you know your employees could do a lot more for your business than they actually do? Well, if you didn’t know, the answer is yes. However, you have an important part to play as an employer. Maximizing employee ability doesn’t just happen. You need to motivate your employees to give their best at work. When you fail to do this, employees can easily feel unvalued, which decreases their engagement and ultimately their performance. What’s worse, this can have a detrimental effect on the company’s bottom line.
So, how can you ensure that your employees’ potential is maximized for improved performance? Here, we tip you on 5 things that you can offer your team.
Providing training and development opportunities for employees boosts their potential in several ways. For starters, it bridges the skills gaps. This means that employees gain additional skills to perform their work better and even take on other roles effectively. In addition, it increases motivation and engagement. Employees are more likely to invest in an organization that invests in their career development. Moreover, employees give their best at work when they are highly engaged.
Think of ways to help your employees improve their skills. Assigning projects for experiential learning and offering mentorship programs go a long way. In addition, you can sponsor employees to take up various courses such as PMP certification training, CIPM certification, financial analyst training, sales certification, and SHRM certification, among others.
You may have a highly skilled workforce in place, but if you are not acknowledging their good work, you are impeding their ability to work at full potential. For employees to see that their capabilities matter in the organization, they need to feel and see that it matters to you as well. And, the best way to show them is by recognizing their efforts.
You may be shying away from this, thinking that it is expensive. However, most employees aren’t after glamorous and expensive rewards. A shout-out during the morning meeting, a pat on the back, or a genuine thank-you letter can go a long way. If the budget allows occasional gifts such as lunch vouchers, travel tickets, and things like these, can be a good potential booster.
Not everyone is wired to work an 8 to 5 job. Some people are highly productive early in the morning, others in the afternoon, and others late at night. Insisting on having such individuals at their desks the whole day isn’t only demoralizing, but also inhibits their potential. You can consider offering flexible hours for roles that don’t need the employee to be present full time.
Flexible working hours give employees an opportunity to improve their work-life balance. This results in happy and satisfied employees who are willing to work at their best. In addition, employees’ productivity and quality of work go up when they work during the hours that they feel most productive.
Giving feedback to your employees is one of the most effective tools for managing employee performance. It helps employees see areas of strength and motivates them to do better. Giving balanced feedback, which means including areas of weaknesses, helps employees improve on those areas.
However, for employee feedback to be effective in increasing potential, it has to be balanced as mentioned. In addition, make it two-way. Have the employees gauge their performance before offering your feedback. Also, ensure that it is objective and timely.
The work environment has a lot to do with how employees perform. Individuals work better in a positive culture that promotes psychological safety, wellbeing, teamwork, mutual respect, compassion, and healthy work relationships. Such an environment boosts morale and increases engagement, which inspires employees to work at their best. To create a positive culture, start encouraging social connections, show empathy and compassion, and be an approachable leader among other steps that make a happy and satisfying work environment.
Unlocking your employees’ full potential is paramount in increasing profits and achieving company growth. In addition, it increases engagement, which is important in reducing employee turnover and building a positive brand. You can enhance employee potential by nurturing your team’s skills, capabilities, and efforts as well as offering incentives that communicate to them that they are a valuable part of the organization. The above tips give you ways that you can do exactly that.
Do you want to know how Engagedly can help you enhance your employees’ potential? Book a live demo with us.
This article is written by Daisy Benson
Daisy is an industrial and organizational psychologist who researches to identify solutions to problems that improve the well-being and performance of organizations and their employees. Daisy is also a freelance writer and often writes articles for credible blogs.
The performance management system is a process that many companies have been using over some decades now. It has undergone many changes so that managers can get a better understanding of the employees’ productivity and achievements. However, recently, forward-thinking companies have redirected their perspectives and have adopted the Agile Performance Management process. It is reliable and is considered as a best practice for grading the performance of employees and gaining an insight into their contribution toward a company’s progress.
The need for Agile Performance Management arose as workplaces no longer wanted to follow a hierarchical top-down structure and wanted to adopt an open and collaborative work environment wherein employees, managers, and higher management can join forces to achieve the set objectives.
Another reason for the adoption of this process being, employees preferred to develop their own individual objectives, aligned with the company’s objectives. They didn’t prefer the idea of working as per the objective checklist handed over to them.
If you’re one of those companies looking out for gaining an understanding of the Agile Performance Management process, and it’s working and benefits, then this blog post would help you.
Agile Performance Management was created for a new era that is more communicative, efficient, and social. It focuses more on frequent employee performance discussions throughout the year as compared to conventional reviews, which are conducted annually or bi-annually.
The unique feature of this is that it incorporates the concept of frequent performance discussions–on a quarterly or mid-yearly basis. This helps in addressing various problems faced by the employees and how they can be guided to overcome the challenges and be aligned with a company objectives.
Another great aspect of Agile Performance Management is that it is based on the process of achieving an objective rather than solely focusing on annual performance ratings and outcomes.
This approach of frequent discussions with the employees and helping them to overcome their barriers helps to cultivate a robust and meaningful relationship among employees and managers.
Given below are some factors that differentiate an Agile Performance Management system from a traditional performance management process.
Improves the existing process: Agile Performance Management system scores over a traditional system because of its ability to improve the existing process and help employees to overcome the challenges related to their work.
Frequent discussion to solve problems: Unlike a conventional system that focuses on annual appraisal and midyear review, Agile Performance Management happens quarterly or bi-yearly. As a result, it immediately helps to identify different employees’ issues in a short span and fix them. It saves time and employees can focus on the work, rather than sulking and getting bogged down by existing problems.
Employees usually use the review processes to express their opinions and concerns. Using a traditional performance management system, addressing the concerns of the employees may or may not be only possible during an annual performance review. Till then, employees will have to wait to share their problems with their managers or higher management.
Systematic and meaningful: Another concerning area of a traditional performance management system is that a lot has to be understood in a few sessions that happen once a year. To elaborate, managers have to identify employees’ capability to meet the company’s objectives; employees’ effectiveness in aligning themselves with the company’s goals; their behavior or competencies; their personal development, and their career aspiration – everything in one to two conversations. To achieve these agendas in a single meeting or a string of meetings in two days may not be possible, rendering pressure on the employees and turning the whole activity to be a ‘tick-box’ exercise.
Agile performance management allows the discussions to take place periodically and eliminates rushed discussions that are meaningless.
Flexibility: Since the traditional performance management process is based on fixed outcomes or rigid grading systems, without in-depth analysis, conducted annually, the management may not get a proper understanding of employees’ performance; challenges, and their efforts to meet the objectives.
Compared to this, the Agile Performance Management system focuses on near-term goals, most commonly, monthly or quarterly goals, which ensure that all potential hindrances are eliminated during the manager-employee conversation and employees stay abreast with the shifting priorities of the business.
Interestingly, employees derive larger benefits because of this system as it focuses on employees’ development, and quicker feedback implementation. A completely opposite process takes place in the case of a traditional performance management system, as there is a time gap between the performance review and feedback process.
Almost every employee in the current era does not favor annual performance reviews. Because of the annual performance review, employees’ stress level may increase substantially and companies may witness employee turnover. In fact, companies observed a high percentage of voluntary attrition after annual reviews. Reversely, once they adopted agile performance management, they witnessed a 30 percent decrease in voluntary turnover.
95 percent of managers are discontented with their conventional performance management systems, citing their inaccuracy for performance evaluations.
IBM’s Smarter Workforce Institute (SMW) research shows that most workers “react favorably” to the adaptability and openness of Agile Performance Management.
Deloitte’s research indicates that organizations that maintain a collaborative atmosphere are profitable and twice as likely to outperform their competitors.
We advocate the following strategies to set off your Agile Performance Management process to a successful start:
Getting employees to trust the new performance review system: The management should build trust among employees regarding the new performance management process, before replacing the traditional performance management process. For the same, the management should discuss the large scope of the Agile Performance Management System and the wide range of benefits it offers.
Besides, the employees should be made to understand the need for the company to make a transition from the conventional performance management process to Agile Performance Management System. Transparency and frequent discussion to solve the problems of the employees should be emphasized while discussing the benefits of this Process.
Training: Employees cannot be expected to understand the Agile Performance Management system in a day or two, as it requires a total change in the thinking and behavior of the employees. It would be preposterous if a company expects the employees to shift to the new system without any form of training. This is one of the reasons why adequate training should be provided to the managers and the employees while shifting from a traditional performance management system to their Agile performance management process. The training should be comprehensive and should answer all the queries and concerns of the participants.
A company’s primary goals should be communicated to the workforce in a detailed and non-hurried manner, an essential step not to be overlooked.
The managers and employees should set quarterly goals and how they would achieve those goals as per the Agile Performance Management system. The goal should be set in such a way that every required step is well defined. The discussion should involve the elaborate techniques to measure the outcomes. Thus, aligned with the goals, employees will have to meet a set target every month.
Managers will play an important role in helping the employees to meet the set target every month. Managers will provide feedback to the employees as when they feel it is necessary. All these action plans ensure the goals set out are relevant, realistic, attainable, and thoroughly understood by employees. If required, the managers can suggest ways such as upgrading existing skills in order to enhance employees’ knowledge and skill set.
Explaining opportunities and career development: Employees will happily accept the Agile Performance Management system if it is going to be beneficial for them and provide new opportunities for career development.
Assessing adoption of this system: Conduct a regular assessment of the new system to understand how well this system has been accepted by the employees. In case there is low adoption, find out the reasons behind it and address the concerns of the employees so that they will embrace it at the earliest.
An Agile Performance Management strategy involves employees in a continuous, year-round process of personal growth. Employees actively take part in developing their abilities in ways that positively affect themselves and the organization.
Meanwhile, a company preserves or enhances its employee capabilities as business requirements evolve. By using the Agile workforce management system, businesses may have employees working toward common goals and boosting productivity. The Agile Performance Management System results in less turnover, increased employee engagement, and higher earnings.
Transitioning to an Agile Performance Management system yields substantial advantages on several fronts.
At the one-on-one level, Agile Performance Management enhances everyday performance and enables managers to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the employees in real-time. Developing a routine of regular check-ins enables employees to communicate problems and work impediments to their managers, who serve as coaches to assist them in overcoming obstacles. The managers can also provide team members with feedback and instructions aimed at achieving continual improvement.
Reevaluating organizational goals: This system focuses on a frequent reporting and feedback loop process to promote organizational goal awareness. As a result, executives and employees are made aware of OKRs regularly and, over time, everyone knows their goals, resulting in greater employee engagement and productivity.
At the team level, Agile Performance Management provides team leaders with a more accurate perspective of the team’s capabilities. This makes it possible for the team to shift gears when business objectives change.
Facilitates enhanced team collaboration: With the Agile system in place, managers may concentrate on guiding and instructing employees to complete work on schedule and within budget. Team members become more dependable contributors, which strengthens the team as a whole.
Performance data:
Agile performance management generates significant amounts of performance data at the enterprise level, enabling Human Resources to monitor organizational capabilities. These data help to identify a benchmark of the workforce’s strengths and shortcomings. In fact, they serve as a crucial starting point for building talent strategies and advancing company objectives.
Agile Performance Management takes a company’s productivity to an altogether different level, as employees become self-aware of the required commitments and witness personal development.
Implementing this process necessitates a shift from the old annual reporting approach to a more comprehensive, engaging, and quicker Agile culture. Employing this process incorrectly might pour cold water on the entire effort.
Thus, it makes sense to make use of digitized HR software such as Engagedly solution to ensure the Agile Performance Management process is implemented properly, with no hassles.
Engagedly solution helps managers to track their employees’ progress and milestone achievements and facilitates the exchange of real-time feedback, in line with this process. Also, incorporating Agile training for transitioning to a more dynamic performance management process is pivotal. To guarantee its seamless execution and leverage its benefits effectively, integrating digitized HR software like Engagedly is imperative. This solution empowers managers to navigate the evolving landscape, ensuring streamlined progress tracking, milestone accomplishments, and real-time feedback exchange, thus amplifying the success of Agile Performance Management.
Want to know how Engagedly can help you mange your hybrid employees better? Request us for a demo.
There are many companies which have successfully adopted OKRs and modified them based on their organizational needs and industry trends. Here’s a list of few companies that adopted OKRs successfully.
Continue reading “Top Companies That Adopted Objectives And Key Results (OKRs)”
Goals are necessary for any business that wishes to thrive or succeed. And while most organizations do this already, measuring and tracking the progress of these goals is as important as setting them. Considering this truth, companies have come up with ways to measure performance, namely KPIs and OKRs. They are the two most widely used and misunderstood frameworks in the business world. This article will explore the following:
KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator, which helps measure the health of a company. They are measurable numbers that show or point to how effective your strategy is as it moves towards a set target. KPIs can also highlight problems in a business strategy. They help steer management to decide to continue at their current pace, quicken the pace or, if not meeting targets, improve.
Companies can set a KPI daily, weekly, quarterly, or yearly, depending on what indicators the organization wants to measure and how often they choose to measure it. We can set KPIs for individuals, teams, departments, or the entire organization.
KPI talks about business-as-usual metrics. In simple terms, it means what employees should be doing as per their job descriptions to achieve organizational targets. The below KPI examples will make it more clear.
OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. It’s a strategic framework that helps companies improve their performance. The process entails setting objectives in any area of your business you want to improve, then writing key results to reach those objectives.
It is a collaborative methodology that provides a match between the objectives that organizations want to achieve and the key results that help measure their progress. By tying objectives to small and measurable key results, the framework enhances visibility and provides actionable insights into every employee’s contribution and performance.
Unlike other goal-setting frameworks, OKRs are clearly defined, making it easier for managers and employees to track progress. By breaking down objectives into small key results, managers can create milestones that help accomplish challenging goals.
Attract 50 B2B new customers
Increase Community Engagement
Improve Customer Satisfaction Index in Q4 by 30%
The whole concept of OKR is to identify an area that needs improvement, create a goal, which is the Objective, and then state how you should meet that goal, which is the Key Result. The goal is to get from point A (where you are now) to point B (where you want to be) by the end of the quarter or year. It’s strategic in its approach because it’s holistic compared to the KPI.
Let’s understand the differences between OKRs and KPIs through an analogy.
A parent wishing to know their child’s performance at school can do that by checking the child’s grades. Grades on individual subjects can act as a KPI. We can assume the target for each subject is to get a pass.
Imagine now that the student failed one or more of these subjects or didn’t meet the expected target set by their parents. A parent can use OKR by taking the subject of math as an example and then creating an objective to get good at mathematics and subsequently working on creating strategic key results.
The aim is to improve the student’s performance in math. The parent can then set different KPIs for various tests to measure the effectiveness of the OKR strategy.
Check out the below differences between OKRs and KPIs to get an even clearer understanding.
| KPI | OKR |
| Key Performance Indicator | Objective and Key Results |
| Business-as-usual metrics to highlight performance | Goal-setting methodology that drives higher employee performance |
| Used for performance measurement | Used for performance improvements, enhancement, and engagement |
| Top-down approach only | Mix of top-down and bottom-up approaches |
| A certain level of performance | Strategic improvements in performance through specific initiatives |
| Ongoing process, usually revised quarterly or yearly | Periodically, as and when objectives and key results need adjustment |
Understanding OKR and KPI framework allows you to appreciate them for what they do individually and how they can work together if implemented well. It’s possible to use both together instead of pitting OKR vs. KPI, missing out on both. This section will show examples of how both can work together.
KPIs bring management attention to underperforming areas. The reason companies have KPIs in the first place is to make sure activities are going on smoothly, so when a company misses its targets twice or twice in a row, it needs management intervention. OKRs are perfect for such a case. Identify a clear objective to aim for before brainstorming on the key results you need to achieve the goal.
OKR and KPI complement each other. We will use the grades analogy from earlier to showcase the relationship.
In our example, a parent wants to know how well their child is doing at school and uses their grades to measure them. We assume the target is a pass in all their subjects. This example was to demonstrate an example of a KPI.
We then said if the student failed math, we needed to do something about it. So, the parent would use the OKR framework in this situation. In our example, the objective was for the student to improve in math, and then we drew up key results to achieve this goal.
The key results are to enable the child to be better at math. While the KPI brought our attention to the problem of not getting a pass mark, the objective is to make sure the child doesn’t have a problem with math again. The parent can set a new KPI for the child based on the new objective. The KPI for the next test can be 70%, and the one after that can be 80%, and the one after that can be 90%.
A well-implemented OKR can give birth to new KPIs, and these KPIs will ensure that the key results are effective and produce the desired result.
If the child doesn’t meet the first target of 70% in the first test, let’s say a 67% or so, then the parent can look into it to see if it is a process issue or if they should readjust the next test KPI, which was an 80%, to a 75%.
The example above is a simple illustration of viewing the interrelationship between KPIs and OKRs. Failing any target will lead to the business looking at that area to improve on it. The OKR framework is a suitable tool to use to achieve this goal.
Another scenario where both can work together is if a company wants to step up their current performance because they believe they can do more, and then using the OKR framework can be helpful. After this, KPIs can be derived from the framework to monitor performance. On rare occasions, some companies’ key results are also their KPIs. Although it’s not always the best practice, it’s still possible and unusual.
While setting up your KPI or OKR frameworks, there are some do’s and don’t you should know, and in this section, we will look at some of them.
KPIs need to be clear to prevent personal interpretations. KPIs should also be specific; for example, increase customers by 25% in Q4.
This tip is in its name key, meaning that the indicators your company tracks are critical for the sustainability and profitability of your business. Work on creating between 12 and 25 KPIs for the entire company. The idea is the smaller you track, the better.
When targets are unreasonable, it discourages your employees, and if they are too easy, there is little sense of achievement. The secret is to make them challenging as well as reasonable.
You should set KPIs and reset them because they are subject to yearly review and not set and forget them. It’s important that the KPIs stay updated with changing business objectives to reflect the organizational performance.
Technology has made it easier for us to monitor and track KPIs. Using good software like Engagedly can help you easily keep tabs on the KPIs set for departments and the company.
The objectives of OKR are aspirational. There are objectives that one can look forward to accomplishing in the long run.
It’s advisable to have a maximum of three objectives and three key results in order to focus on them and maximize your results. Paying attention to many objectives at once can be counterproductive for the company, and it may also point to the objective not being broad enough.
In conclusion, the OKR vs. KPI war is one that will continue to rage well into the future as different companies and their managements will have varying opinions. The crucial point to note is that both are adequate tools when properly implemented, and if used together, they will make the management job a lot easier.
“Caroline, you have failed to meet the deadlines way too many times this quarter, We expect more dedication from you this quarter.” How many of us are ready to face negative reviews about our work like this? Not all employees are usually open to negative performance review. Sometimes, it is demotivating to listen to negative performance reviews and employees also tend to get defensive at times.
Continue reading “The Dos and Don’ts of Giving Negative Performance Reviews”
Unlike the modern organizational culture, we consider performance management to be a forward-looking solution that is based on retrospection. With an evolving work culture, the need for continuous feedback is now felt across offices and technology has brought forward such tools which are highly advanced and need based. Now managers can anticipate problems based on the performance cycle, and initiate course corrections to bring the action plan back on track.
A performance management cycle is a round the year phenomenon and includes planning, monitoring and evaluating employee’s performance. It works in such a way that meets the overall goal of an organization. Here, the success of an employee is aligned with the success of an organization.
The performance management cycle helps employees improve skills and achieve goals. An effective cycle focuses on employee performance and tries to make necessary changes for his growth in a workplace.
The management expert, Peter Drucker, designed one of the earliest performance management models. As per his sayings, whatever you can measure, can be managed and whatever you can manage, can be accomplished. Individual and organizational goals should be aligned together. The continuous process includes the following parameters to achieve the targets smoothly.
Planning is the first step of the performance management cycle and includes three elements:
Defining stage
Here, the management and HR team have to define jobs, include description and determine targets. Besides, it needs to list objectives, and have clear metrics on how to access and achieve the goals. The point is to make sure goals are lucid and are followed by clear performance standards.
Giving feedbacks
Once management completes the defining stage, employees should get the opportunity to give input for the materials. As they are the ones to perform the job, they should have in-depth insight of skills, goals and competencies to help the company achieve milestones easily.
Approval stage
In this, both management and employees should agree on roles, goals, and achieving objectives. This is how it is possible to make the first step in the process of collaboration, making the employees understand their engagement in goal setting.
Plan meetings
Try to plan for it in a timely and regular manner, wherein the next step for the management cycle would start. Monitoring and training are important and here, routine meetings can help employees assess their position.
Provide training and coaching
Meetings should focus on training and give solutions through mentoring, rather than measures that result in uninspiring performance.
Accountability should be positive and engage employees to be honest to speak on what they are struggling with and what changes can be beneficial. This is where management training plans can help employees effectively.
Revisit objectives
As the process continues, management needs to revisit objectives to check on improvement and adjustments required. Management should focus on opportunities for employees.
The step reviews overall performance, and how the employees are rewarded in a meaningful manner.
Performance review
At the end of the annual performance cycle, this review is an integral part which is known as appraisal. Typically, these are once a year thing where an employee’s performance is evaluated over a span of a year.
Management checks records to evaluate the progress of an individual from the previous performance year. However, the monthly check-ins will help employees with problem solving, adjust goals and focus on future tasks. This step is included in the cycle that looks back to assess one’s behavior and potency for coming years.
Review management process
Here, both employees and management should look at how the management cycle is working and identify the areas of improvement. Asking some questions constructs an effective review mechanism:
Review goal completion
Of course, one important question to ask is whether employees can reach their goals. How well did the team perform to achieve the targets throughout the year? Consider all types of achievements as it helps identify areas where improvement is required.
Give effective feedback
A key part of reviewing is to provide effective feedback and receive the same. Management should focus on actionable feedback so that employees know where to improve their performance in future.
Employees should be encouraged to give feedback on the process and how it can be better.
Plan rewards and recognition
It is a key step to keep employees motivated. This doesn’t have to be monetary, although this is a better incentive in most cases. Other rewards could be company recognition, responsibility for new projects, time off, and assigning leadership opportunities.
Set stage for upcoming performance management cycle
The last step gives one last chance to employees and management to review the feedback on the entire year’s process. As feedback is the key to the organization to plan for the next year’s cycle and make it effective.
So, with this, you can have a clear conception on what is performance management process and how it impacts business’s success.
Do you wish to improve the management cycle of your workplace? Here are some vital questions to bring things back on track.
A performance management process can hinder or help the workforce. Before you include a new performance management software, try to analyze what’s working and what’s not. Besides, try to find what employees want from the performance management program. As you discuss with employees, be ready to be surprised when you discover how many were looking forward to an improved process. Subsequently, bring in changes in the organization and improvements as per researched based findings.
Even when employers want employees to be happy, the latter may seek motivation and recognition of work. A management cycle should deliver value to your employees, and companies can flourish in an increasingly motivated workforce.
However, to boost motivation, performance management should be frequent along with ongoing conversation on how to achieve goals, how it impacts progress, and how it affects employee’s personal development. Motivation is related to a future focused approach, creating developmental scopes. So, managers must engage with employees on career growth that should be the focus of the organization for its success.
Are managers using tools to handle performance management cycles?
Managers are crucial in the management program with engagement, motivation, and development plans. This should ensure that they have proper training to motivate employees and get useful feedback. They should coach employees appropriately in the continuous process.
Before introducing talent management, managers should have adequate training so that employees are comfortable being part of one such program. Use correct technology to support the performance management. It should help managers and HR to introduce and get effective results from continuous processes.
The reasons behind an effective performance cycle are many, but more often, it focuses on employee productivity as its primary reason. A valuable cycle would include development, execution, and monitoring of effective performance plans. Focus on setting one’s goal and arrange for continuous coaching and it will help to improve employee’s performance automatically. It helps them reach goals easily that directly contribute to the company’s growth.
To ensure success of the management process, and whether it is continuously evolving, try to include the best practices:
The strategy should include how frequently employee evaluation is required. Try to find the type of evaluation analysis trackers that suit the company best and how meetings and surveys can help. An effective approach for feedback conversation can help deploy the best evaluation system. Set the workflow right, include actionable inputs for steady improvements.
Continuous monitoring should have effective communication to help discuss employee issues. If communication is transparent, negative feedback or matters of poor performance can be addressed. A culture of communication is widely accepted among people of all hierarchies. Managers should develop a culture of openness, expect honest feedback, allowing employees to remain honest and managers can use the information for required changes.
Transparent communication strategy should include:
Sounds like monitoring every move of an employee? Certainly not! It is real-time tracking of employee’s progress and outcomes. It necessitates keeping an eye on employee’s sentiment through open discussion and how managers can help employees deal with it better.
Having a robust performance management software is beneficial in over one way and employers should be well trained to help teams use it. You can try to use the latest streamlined tool that enhances alignment, engagement and communication with employees. Some other benefits go as below:
For ease of goal setting and tracking progress, a performance management platform is of great use. The right software elevates the employees and helps them reach the business goals. It helps get real-time results and boost goal alignment and is accountable for overall growth of workforce.
As mentioned earlier, rewarding is an integral part of the performance management cycle and recognition motivates an individual. A beneficial platform helps in peer-to-peer recognition, making an employee feel valued.
No matter what feedback framework or frequency a business follows, it should be continuous to protect high performing and potential candidates. An effective feedback strategy can drive individual, group, and organizational growth correctly.
Even though reviewing outcomes is tough, try to make it insightful. With constant reviewing, it is easy to identify top performers in the workforce. Uncover the growth perceptions among employees and create performance strategies for the success of both employees and business.
Once leaders are aware of best performing management practices and tools, you should know how to leverage it for the good of employees and organizations. With this, employee productivity and business growth skyrockets. Support individuals and teams with performance strategies that help them reach their potential and to push the business outcomes.
Employee performance management is one of the most important management tools that influence employee growth and organizational development significantly.
Continue reading “Key Features Of An Ideal Performance Management System”
Many organizations are now understanding the importance of shifting from traditional performance reviews to more continuous and flexible performance management processes.
Continue reading “Why These 8 Top Companies Redefined Their Performance Management Systems”
One on one meeting questions are a great way to encourage frequent and straight-forward conversations between managers and their teams. One-on-ones can be simply defined as a scheduled time for managers to check-in with their direct reports. These meetings can be key in building team relationships and trust.
Continue reading “One-On-One Questions For Managers and Employees”
A performance management system is one of the most important aspects of an organization. HR managers are usually the ones who carry out the performance management process in an organization.
Most organizations already have a performance management system, but if you are planning to implement a performance management system in your organization or to improve the existing one, here’s a list of common reasons for the failure of the performance management system that you might need to avoid.
Continue reading “6 Most Common Reasons Why Performance Management System Fail”
Employee check ins are a great way for managers to gain a clear understanding about their employees. They provide an opportunity for managers and team members to ruminate over the important issues and discuss any questions, concerns, or ideas they have.
Continue reading “Tips To Create A Culture Of Frequent Employee Check-ins”
Setting employee goals and objectives is a common practice among organizations worldwide. To get the most out of your employees, you must give them goals they can work towards. This not only keeps them motivated but also maintains high performance levels.
Here are the 5 Examples of Professional Goals For Work 2025.
As the corporate world continues to become more competitive, creativity keeps on gaining more significance among employers. Creativity can impact how well your employees can implement their tasks. Because it contributes to the development of the company, organizations are increasingly showing interest in cultivating employees’ creative thinking. And you don’t want to fall behind. So this year, creativity should top the list of your employees’ goals and objectives.
Though creativity is not something that can be taught, few proven practices can make your employees think out of the box. Interestingly, some of the practices are as simple as walking, learning a new instrument, and even just sitting at a place doing nothing at all.
Here is what employees need to do:
Make sure your employees develop these habits by the end of this quarter.
Remember, everyone is creative in their own ways. So, putting some effort into nurturing your employees’ creativity will eventually pay off.
Every organization has employees of different age groups, backgrounds, and ideas. That means every employee’s way of working is different. To ensure everyone in a team is collaborative and a team player, organizations must include people management skills in their employees’ individual goals and objectives.
People management skills include strong communication, the ability to motivate others, patience, problem-solving, positivity, and honesty.
Some examples of practicing people management skills are:
By improving people management skills in your employees, you build effective future leaders within the workforce.
Negotiation skill is vital for every individual in a business. It helps in reaching common ground in case of any confrontation and improves relationships in the workplace. Negotiation is also important for career growth.
Some of the characteristics of negotiation skills are- knowledge of the subject matter, listening skills, ability to express thought verbally, general intelligence and judgment, and patience.
Developing negotiation skills in employees must be a priority for 2023
To develop this skill, your employees need to:
Coursera provides negotiation skills training “Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills”. In this course, your employees will learn about and practice the 4 steps of negotiation: Prepare (how to plan negotiation strategy), Negotiate (how to use key tactics for success), Close (how to create a contract), and Perform & Evaluate (the end game). Coursera also provides a Course Certificate on the successful completion of the course.
Decision-making is a critical skill for anyone in an authorized position. So having a workforce that can make quick yet good decisions is something that makes an organization stand out. That’s why your employee goals and objectives list for 2025 should have decision-making in it.
Though it is a difficult skill to develop, if your employees actively involve themselves in the process, they can achieve significant long-term results.
What your employees need to do to improve decision-making skills:
Udemy offers an excellent course named “Decision Making: Mistakes, in Probability and Statistics,” which can improve your employees’ decision-making skills. This course is specially built for leaders and managers.
This course offers learnings on- common mistakes made in probability for everyday judgments and decisions, the psychological biases and fallacies that make us conclude wrongly, and how to use probability effectively during decision-making.
Emotional intelligence is one’s capability to recognize, manage, and use their own emotions in positive ways to empathize with others and overcome challenges. It helps you build stronger relationships at work and achieve your career goals. As a result, emotional intelligence becomes a critical skill for collaboration and working effectively in a team.
The skills involved in emotional intelligence are- self-awareness, motivation, social skills, and empathy.
To improve emotional intelligence, your employees:
Many organizations are now switching to performance management software to automate and enhance setting up of employee goals and objectives. These tools provide real-time data on goals achievement and further help to increase employee accountability and transparency in the system.
There are currently more than 157 million employees in the American workforce. Whether you employ a handful of people or hundreds of them, your employees are a vital resource for your company.
This is why bringing new recruits into your business can help to give it a new lease on life. However, very few people in America now join a company and stay for the long haul. In fact, the average employee will only stay with a company for 4.1 years.
If you are going to hold on to your star employees, your HR teams need to take good care of them, and this starts from the moment you hire them. Good onboarding practices help ensure a smooth introduction of new employees while making them feel welcome.
So, what are the best ways to onboard your staff? Read on to find out ten great onboarding ideas that are used by some of the most successful companies in America!
Employee onboarding is essentially another name given to the process of welcoming new staff to your business after the hiring process. This involves introducing them to:
However, the onboarding strategy is also about integrating new employees into the company. So it should help them to understand the company ethos and feel like part of the company.
Successful onboarding benefits both your business and your new employees.
By making your employees feel supported and at home quickly, you improve employee satisfaction. This helps to build their loyalty to your company from day one and lowers your employee turnover. After all, accepting job offers doesn’t mean that your employees are bonded to your company for life!
As a result, you will hold on to great employees and potential employees will be drawn to your positive work environment. So this also helps you to attract high-quality applicants in the future.
On top of this, employees that have been properly onboarded will find it easier to settle into work quickly. Your business will immediately benefit from this process.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at ten great onboarding examples to inspire your HR team.
Buddy systems are a popular onboarding strategy. This involves using HR onboarding software to allocate an existing employee as a mentor to new staff.
During the employee boarding process, each staff member will receive training for their role. Onboarding buddies can provide valuable support for this training and also act as a point of contact for any questions.
It is a good idea to allocate mentors working in similar areas who will be able to understand your new employees. This helps them to feel more at home and reach out when they need to.
Speaking of training, onboarding courses are an essential part of any onboarding boot camp. Even if this delays getting your new recruits to their desks, it will pay off over time.
Netpeak, for example, is a company with more than 500 employees in its books. This company puts all of its new recruits through a two-part course before they start work.
This helps them to understand:
This is an efficient way of bringing your new employees up to speed on all the important aspects of your company culture.
When it comes to hiring managers and new employees, the employee onboarding process helps them to settle into a company quickly. Great onboarding also encourages company loyalty, so your employees will stick around. Employee onboarding software, like HR Cloud, can help your HR teams perfect your employee onboarding program. Learn more about them here.
To learn about the company, your new employees need to understand more than the basic rule book. Because of this, staff-led talks about the employee experience at a company are popular with HR teams.
For example, Netpeak also includes a series of talks in their onboarding process, known as Netpeak Pulse. These TED-Talk-style of events give current employees an opportunity to present themselves in a more personal way.
These talks can cover a whole range of interests and experiences, including:
This is a great way of showing new recruits that your company cares about them as individuals. This fosters a supportive and inclusive environment that helps your new staff do a great job.
Team-building days can be a great icebreaker for new employees and give the team an opportunity to get to know one another away from the office.
Taking the focus off work can also help new employees to relax around their coworkers. This also improves communication skills and boosts productivity for your existing teams.
Some great team-building onboarding activities include escape rooms, laser tag, and scavenger hunts. Or if you want something more focused, why not opt for a crafting activity or team quiz?
Planning social events for your new recruits also helps them build relationships before they sit down at their desks.
You might want to plan welcome drinks for all of your new employees. Or you put together a social fair for organizations within your company. If your company has any sports teams or minority group representatives, a fair is a great way to introduce them.
It can help to introduce employees to their mentors before these events. That way, if your new recruits are shy, they already have a familiar face in the room.
Often, employees will have to work out a notice period before they come and join your company. However, you can start welcoming them remotely before their training starts.
Sending an employee welcome kit over is a great way of showing them that you care and are excited to work with them. This is a must-have on your onboarding checklist!
In fact, this is something that global marketing giant Ogilvy and Mather have done for their 10,000+ employees over the years. And they must be doing something right!
A welcome kit can include information about the company, tips on how to find you on social media, and a heartfelt message. But you can also throw in a few treats for them to enjoy, such as a bottle of wine and some nice snacks!
Large company social events are a great way to familiarize employees with your ethos.
However, the most important relationships they will form are with their individual team. After all, these are the people that they will see on a daily basis.
Team dinners or drinks are a must have for any onboarding process. You can do these before an employee starts.
However, it is also nice to organize a dinner towards the end of your employee’s first month. This is something they’ll really be able to enjoy once their feet are on the ground.
No matter what services or products your company provides, your new employees should have a chance to sample them.
This helps them to engage really with what they are going to be promoting and working on. It can also spark ideas about new ways to sell or improve new products, which could be invaluable for your company.
So make sure you set aside time for this when new employees join your teams.
Speaking of coming up with new ideas, Netflix uses a great onboarding technique to encourage new recruits.
In most businesses, employees feel that they have to work their way up through the ranks before they even get a seat at the ideas table. However, Netflix offers new recruits opportunities to speak up about their ideas and put them into action.
With a little supervision, this can help you get the best out of your employees from the start. It will also make your employees feel like their ideas are really valued.
Having a great onboarding strategy in place for the first few months is a great thing for your company. However, if this suddenly drops away it can leave relatively new employees feeling disappointed.
Because of this, it is important to have a strategy in place to continue the things that they enjoy from effective onboarding programs. This might include:
All of this will ensure that your staff continues to feel support even after their official onboarding period is over.
Want to know how to effectively manage your employees post onboarding? Request us for a demo.
This article is written by the marketing team at HR Cloud. HR Cloud is dedicated to providing powerful solutions for your HR teams and creating an exceptional employee experience. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, onboarding, and to save you valuable time!
As per a study by Gallup, in 2017 only 20% employees reported that they are satisfied with the way organizations manage their performance.
Until recently, half-yearly and annual performance reviews were the only processes that were predominant methods to manage employee performance globally. But over the years, organizations have realized that it is ineffective and have many flaws. Moreover, a onetime performance review proved to be a burden on the HRs and managers conducting it.
Organizations like Adobe, GE, Deloitte, IBM, Gap, and many others have already ditched the concept of annual performance reviews; and are slowly shifting or have shifted to a more modern and effective method of managing employee performance, known as real time performance management. Considering the current situation, where employees have been working from home for months now, it can be very common for them to be disengaged. Real Time Performance Management will help keep them engaged and motivated at all times. It is the responsibility of the head of people to initiate the practice. So if you have not done so yet, now is the time.
In this article, we will guide you on how to get started with real time performance management in your organization. And if you are already practicing it, you will get an idea on how to do it differently. But before we get into the details of how to implement it, let us look at ‘What is Real Time Performance Management?‘.
Also Read: How Engagedly Can Help You Enhance Employee Engagement?
Real time performance management is a management strategy that measures employees’ performance in real-time. It helps employees and managers communicate frequently about their performance standards and goals. It also helps in fixing performance issues on the go and ensure business agility.
Employees get to set actionable goals, improve their performance, remain engaged at work, and achieve organization goals. Read on to know how you can implement it successfully in your organization.
To implement any new process in an organization, the management and senior leadership must support the same. So the first step in implementing real time business performance management system is to get management and leadership support. Highlight to the management why the transition is necessary and its benefits to employees and the organization. Make use of facts and data on how implementing the system has helped other organizations. Once management gives the nod, it would be easy to get other employees on board.
Also Read: 5 Best Tips To Reduce Employee Turnover
Effective communication is an integral element to ensure that a business runs smoothly. Make frequent use of the company website, newsletters, meetings, and videos to communicate about it and its importance. Highlight to your employees why it is valuable for them and how it is different from an annual or half-yearly review. This will ensure that everyone is aware of the process by the time it is implemented.
Also Read: The Ultimate Guide To 30 60 90 Day Performance Reviews
Planning and communicating to implement real time performance management is the first step of the process. It can only be effective when people are aware of how to practice it correctly. Proper training should be given to the managers and team leaders on all the aspects of the system. Once trained, they should be equipped to handle real time goal management, share timely positive and constructive feedback, and manage one-on-one discussions. Moreover, they should also be able to recognize and reward their employees in real-time.
It is recommended to spend a considerable amount of time training managers and team leaders so that they get used to the process and use it effectively.
Also Read: 5 Best Practices For Effective One On One Meetings
In the current scenario, where everyone is working remotely, it is necessary to have a software or tool to manage all the aspects of performance management.
Tools like Engagedly offer the flexibility to share real time feedback, set dynamic goals and OKRs, conduct 360 degree reviews, and also reward and recognize your employees in real time. Moreover, real time performance management software makes the goals more visible and transparent for the organization. It makes easier for each stakeholder to track the progress.
Also Read: 6 Must Have Features Of A Performance Management Software
Once real time performance management is in practice, request your employees to share their feedback about the process. This will help you identify how well your employees are adapting to the process and work on concerns, if any. This will also help the employees know that the organization values them and is open to their feedback to improve the process. In this way, it will not feel imposed as employees themselves will be a part of the change.
Also Read: Use OKRs In Startups To Measure Success
High performance teams are engaged, dedicated, and produce extraordinary results. They help organizations sail through tough times and turn challenges into opportunities. Creating a high performance team requires changing the organizational culture and offer exemplary support to employees.
According to Harvard Business Review, there are three psychological needs that are essential for creating a high-performance team:
But how can one differentiate between a results-and-performance oriented team and one that is not?
Members of a high performance team have high levels of enthusiasm. They are enthusiastic about all aspects of a project, right to the littlest detail, and they are genuinely invested in seeing projects through to the end. Enthusiasm in all forms is infectious and can spread pretty quickly.
High performance team members are dedicated to their jobs. When given projects or work assignments, they see them through the end and make-sure that all aspects of their assignment/project are correct, down to the smallest detail. They also pay great attention to detail and will not skip parts of a project in order to reach a completion date quicker.
Members of performance-oriented teams have the freedom to decide about projects, capabilities, and colleagues, etc, which are well within reason, of course. This freedom to make necessary decisions without having to dog a superior for permission allows high-performance teams to produce extraordinary results.
In high performance teams with ingrained group cohesiveness, team members get along with each other extremely well. They provide help whenever they can and in case of any problem/issue, they can step in immediately to pick up slack because they are well-primed on what their team-members are doing most of the time.
And finally, the most important characteristic of all. In a team that always performs above and beyond the mark, you find that all the members of the team possess a united vision about the company and its values. They are aware of a company’s values, share the company’s values and actively work towards upholding those values!
Remember, a high-performance team will not just possess one of these characteristics. Rather, they possess all of these characteristics and maybe more, though those may be specific to the field they are working in!
Do you agree with our list of high performance team characteristics? And do you have more characteristics to share?
A successful organization relies heavily on the dedication and efficiency of its workforce. Employee performances help steer the organization on a path of success and growth. Hence, monitoring and reviewing the performance of employees is essential.
Unfortunately, an annual performance review process is often seen as a dreaded activity by both; managers and employees. This makes us wonder why such an essential activity can be perceived as an ordeal. The answer lies in the way traditional performance appraisal processes are conducted.
The modern workplace is in crucial need of change in these methods. The performance evaluation processes should be able to provide the employees with information, motivation, feedback, and clear instruction about how they can improve productivity and contribute to the organizational goal.
Employee performance review has immense potential for increasing employee engagement, reducing turnover, and creating a robust and motivated workforce. However, this requires addressing the present issues with the performance review system.
Also, failure to conduct the performance appraisal efficiently can lead to lower employee morale, high employee turnover, and overall dissatisfaction in the workforce.
According to Gallup study, only 14% of employees feel motivated by the employee performance review in the organization.
As shocking as these numbers are, it represents a significant loophole in the current performance review system. To make the company performance review process effective, you need to take cautious steps to enhance the system.
Performance review is not a onetime function, but an ongoing process. Employees require feedback and inputs from their superiors much more frequently.
Annual performance reviews measure employee performance at a particular point in time. The year-long performance of the workforce does not receive adequate attention in the annual appraisal. Hence, it is not a true indicator of productivity and efficiency.
Frequent inputs allow the individuals to understand the parts of the process that are deriving desired results. Also, it helps in the early identification of any discrepancies. It helps to address them on time.
Managers can have bi-annually or quarterly employee performance reviews, which can be accompanied by frequent rounding sessions. Weekly or even daily rounding for outcomes can help improve performance.
Frequent performance reviews can provide the following major advantages.
Performance reviews serve as a useful medium for evaluating and improve employee performance. However, often it turns into a one-sided conversation where the managers vent out about the mistakes made by the employees.
This conversation does not bring any positive improvements. The mistakes have already been committed in the past, and they are well beyond the control of any individual. A more productive conversation should be focused on ways and means to improve performance in the future.
The managers should try to establish an environment where employees can freely communicate the issues or challenges faced by them and suggest ways that can help in tackling these issues and improve performance.
Asking specific questions to employees will help in improving communication and employee engagement. Managers will find it easier to identify means to develop the skills of the team members. Also, you can enquire about what resources they think can help contribute to their success.
The benefits of having a productive conversation with employees are:
The performance review system often has criteria like communication skills, professionalism, or being a team player. As important as these attributes are for employee success, they are not clearly definable or quantifiable.
While it is easy to identify and condemn unprofessional behaviour, rewarding or rating professional conduct can be difficult. The interpretation of these attributes depends on the subjective judgment of a manager.
To make the company performance review process more effective, it is essential to set objective standards for measuring employee productivity. These measures should be clearly defined and communicated to the employees.
Also, the review process should be driven by data and not the perception of managers. Setting objective standards enables employees to tie their efforts to the desired outcomes. It also makes the evaluation process easier for managers.
A few benefits that necessitate setting objective criteria for the review process are:
Technology has created an unprecedented impact on how an organization conducts business, interacts with customers, and manages its daily operation. However, some companies are still relying on age-old paper-based systems for performance evaluation. These conventional methods are prone to manual errors and inefficiencies.
Hence, to enhance the company performance review process, you need to take advantage of the latest technologies. A company can employ performance review software to manage, supervise, and improve the productivity of its employees, teams, and departments.
Most performance review software enable you to set targets and track progress in real-time. The goals for individuals, teams, and departments are clearly defined, and they all align to contribute to organizational goals.
It also helps in establishing communication between managers and team members where they can exchange feedback to improve performance and productivity.
Some of the benefits of using technology for performance review are:
The organizational roles and responsibilities often force employees to dedicate their personal time to their work. They do not receive any overtime pay for such work. Although most employees are driven by their career goals, they may not be willing to allocate their extra hours for performance review.
If the managers do not allocate specific time for performance appraisal, the employees may feel overburdened. Also, this may make the whole process seem like a tedious task that the employees want to escape at all costs.
To avoid such a situation, managers need to free up their time to make room for the review process. If you want your employees to understand the importance of the performance evaluation system, you need to lead by example.
When managers put aside other tasks to free up time for the evaluation process, the employees are more likely to take the process seriously.
The benefits of dedicating specific time for performance review are:
According to the Council of Employee Benefits, a company with a workforce of 10, 000 employees undertake a performance review expenditure of around $35 million. However, 95% of HR leaders feel that these expenditures hardly bring the desired results.
Every challenge in business provides an equal opportunity for progress. Hence, there is a scope for improvement in the performance review system to make it more effective.
Changing the way a company conducts its performance review may seem like a daunting task. However, to fuel organizational growth and success, the managers need to develop the skills of team members in every department.
The modern performance review process should replace the outdated method of evaluation and aid in improving employee experience. It should foster two-way conversations that are focused on future growth and success.
Also, the annual reviews should be replaceable by a more frequent, transparent, and collaborative evaluation system. The metrics for evaluation should be objective and clearly defined.
The evaluation method should be driven by technology and information. Hence, there should not be any room for bias against any individual or group.
Learn how Engagedly can help you improve your performance review process by requesting us for a demo!
Measuring employee’s performance is an inevitable part of assessing business health. Since employees are a business’ most valuable asset, it is imperative to ensure that individuals and teams achieve their full potential with adequate support and development opportunities. It is the key performance indicators (KPIs) that work as useful metrics to benchmark the progress. Put in the best KPIs in the business evaluation system to check employees’ effectiveness and level of productivity.
KPIs make everyone accountable for their performance. The KPI system helps employees measure their impact on business work, daily activities and how they affect the foundation of the role. Such a program contributes to the long-term success of the organization. KPI for performance evaluation would set the team and individual on the right track.
KPI is a way to quantify employee performance in an organization. The metrics are used to track employee productivity and to manage the team based on the requirements at work. It is critical to monitor and assess performance in a timely manner, but finding details about one’s duties proves to be a challenge.
This demands the use of the latest methods for developing KPIs for employees. Successful leaders should plan and adopt effective evaluation techniques for suitable results. Therefore, a lot of companies deploy KPI systems for performance reviews based on valuable insights. If you measure the value of employees with profit margins, it will give inaccurate and ambiguous results on productivity and performance.
Performance evaluation includes both qualitative and quantitative elements to get an appropriate outcome and includes more than just one’s past performance. However, one can get qualified data only by using KPIs to motivate a team. Once you find a person’s potency, you can assign tasks accordingly for the most effective results. The performance review will help in better understanding what motivates an employee and identifying weak points.
Using performance evaluation, pricing policy, project management, team management, and other elements allows identification of problems early on. However, KPIs help evaluate payroll operations when salaries of employees reflect the performance potential of an individual.
KPIs alone cannot be used to evaluate an individual’s performance. Performance appraisals are based on both qualitative and quantitative feedback from managers, which is more than just productivity. An employee’s worth cannot be solely determined based on KPIs, and it extends beyond that.
Employee KPIs are high-level markers that show the level of employee productivity. It allows businesses to identify their potential and assign tasks to individuals or groups. This would help one focus on operational issues, having smooth workflow and resource availability.
Performance reviews are difficult to maintain regularly and take a lot of time. One of the primary benefits of deploying a people enabled platform is its flexibility and focus on user experience. Some of these are:
With better user experience, you have to encourage clients to set goals for work completion. Analyze how organizations can benefit from this performance management program.
Switching from the traditional paper-based review method to the latest user-enabled platform saves time for HR to process and report results. Meanwhile, managers and employees can participate in the review and use the platform easily. As a result, long-term goals can be achieved and in a timely fashion.
As managers share real-time feedback with their employees or teams, it helps clarify expectations, share advice and celebrate achievements. Not all employees manage to get feedback once a week, though real-time feedback can help them improve at a greater scale.
It is not just a manager feedback that boosts engagement. Managers can help teams develop new habits. Management should set a feedback goal for better results. If giving continuous feedback is new to your company, set a goal to share feedback with at least one member of the team and slowly improve it. With this, track how often you give feedback and how it affects individuals and motivates the entire team.
A performance management tool can facilitate the feedback experience. It helps management learn how to give feedback to achieve the most effective results. Measure the effectiveness of feedback, and include surveys on how employees found it valuable and helpful. Set a goal and work to improve the quality of feedback based on the positive response.
If you wish to enhance employee engagement, focus on measuring feedback and plan for quarterly surveys. Prepare a set of questions and invite both positive and negative responses. Use the survey data to make the company a better place to work and help employees perform better.
Are you unsure whether the company has deployed the appropriate KPI? Being a team leader, it is a common instinct to find out how the team is performing. Here, a positive KPI is enough as an indicator to show that you are sailing in the right direction. To pick the right KPIs to track performance and goals, you need to make sure they are related to the performance metrics.
The performance metrics should be easy to evaluate and quantify. If you tell someone, ‘to be more positive’, it can be difficult to quantify. Instead, try setting goals based on KPIs that can be easily measured and objectively.
One should be careful when deciding on KPIs, as they should align with business objectives. If an objective is to offer customer satisfaction, KPI should also measure how much time it takes to resolve a problem raised by a customer.
The level of realistic impact for measuring KPIs mostly depends on the way a service is offered at the employee’s end. The solution depends on several factors, including how a problem can be resolved by a single person or whether it requires several steps.
Not every employee should have the same metrics to measure the KPI, as it differs from one employee to another. When deciding on KPI for a team, it should be aligned with the role of each employee of the team.
To build an efficient KPI system, change the way of tracking elements and improve them. Try to create quarterly reports to track employees’ progress towards goals. It helps understand whether performance is declining, improved, or stabilized. Employees experiencing stagnant performance should seek new challenges and contribute effectively to business growth.
Organizations should carefully choose KPIs to measure activity in the critical business areas. A satisfactory KPI for performance review should be built on customer surveys using the right data. The satisfaction score will help you decide how much to contribute to achieve the benchmark. No matter what the nature of KPIs are, they should be measurable, achievable, specific, relevant and time bound so that they give correct results. Measure metrics that are aligned with a business’ strategy and vision and help it reach its goals.
If you want meaningful KPIs for performance reviews, keep the team motivated with the help of incentives and training. It is important to measure employee recognition and rewards based on KPIs.
For instance, if your goal is to attract new customers, KPI should be set to measure how many new customers you gain in a week. Based on this, build a performance system to reward employees effectively.
If you are using formal performance measures for managing performance, it should be accompanied by tips on effective leadership and inspiration for a team. Thus, KPIs can be used to measure any area of performance and should align with the strategic direction of the company.
Besides performance, managers must set objectives and targets that can be achieved by each individual and team. But how to measure performance and understand how much effort one puts into achieving goals? This is where performance management can help and understand who is working harder and who is not. Does the work to achieve the level that the organization requires maintaining? Key performance indicators help measure these by quantifying the performance level of an individual and a team. Check the goals and based the evaluation on the KPIs to get effective answers on each and work on the weak organizational areas.
The key elements of employee measurement for business success are:
No matter which industry you work in, managers look for competency in the right places. This is when managers will look at whether employees can meet goals, effectively contribute their part in a team, and apply critical thinking to ensure successful business operations. Although there are many key indicators, critical business operations should be the primary focus.
Colleagues who are working in a team actively participate and brainstorm ideas for the group. Taking part in different team projects, sharing ideas among team members and deciding on approaches often contribute to the success of the project.
An employee should know appropriate, accurate and professional communication in business and one should communicate, keeping in mind:
No matter what your role is, you directly or indirectly help customers and, in any critical situation, employers will reach out to you for answers. Here, one should ensure they can handle the problem and not delay it, give timely responses to the customer, and offer adequate solutions to customers as required.
Track performance metrics, set goals, reduce turnover, and try to improve performance. By establishing these, it helps the team clearly understand where they stand and what it will take to reach the goals. Having clearly defined business goals will help set KPIs for thorough employee performance reviews.
Want to know how Engagedly can help you manage your employees better? Request a live demo from our experts!
To help your business identify the signs that point to a much-needed performance management system, we asked business owners and HR professionals this question for their best insights. From employees repeatedly asking for reviews to high staff turnover, there are several signs that indicate a business would benefit from a performance management system.
Here are 9 signs your business needs a performance management system:
When a pattern of employees asking for feedback emerges, then it may be time to implement a performance management system. Most modern workers value professional development and want to improve. Many employers fear employees being unreceptive to constructive criticism, yet overlook employees’ eagerness to receive input on performance. Team members should not need to chase down managers and beg for an evaluation. There should be a regular review process in place. Otherwise, employees may feel uncertain about their work or their future within the company.
Also, contrary to common assumptions, hearing nothing but “you’re doing a good job and we’re happy” can frustrate ambitious employees who want to improve and would benefit from their manager’s advice and guidance. A performance management system can help leaders deliver feedback at regular intervals. It can also provide insights to better structure those conversations.
Michael Alexis, TeamBuilding
Nothing indicates a lack of performance management more than numerous missed deadlines do. It is important as a company leader to monitor the turnaround time on each individual project and compare this data over time. More missed deadlines are an indicator of an opportunity to introduce a performance management system to boost your team’s performance. A performance management system helps in tracking projects and their deadlines easily.
Harriet Chan, CocoFinder
One of the most beautiful things to see in organizations is how they comprise multiple units, yet they collaborate together seamlessly. However, this can be nearly impossible to achieve without the proper coordination. Hence, this is where a performance management system can bring a structured framework.
When it comes to employee development, learning basic organizational skills really doesn’t cut it anymore. Instead, expand those techniques to include working with others across the company, and implementing everything you’ve learned from your traditional office environment, or from your remote working space anywhere across the globe.
Lauren Kleinman, The Quality Edit
A performance management system does exactly that – it manages your overall team performance. And one sure sign that your company is in need of this system is when attendance begins to drop. In a business environment where employee retention is at an all-time low, monitoring your employees’ attendance may be more important than ever.
If an employee begins to miss a lot of days, be sure to schedule a meeting with them, or perhaps a quick call. If they’re not happily engaged and actually enjoy coming into work, then you need to understand why – and quickly find a way to change the scenario.
Lindsay McCormick, Bite
A performance management system is a tool. Similar to a hammer, it won’t do you any good if you don’t know where you want to drive your nail in and to what avail.
Here are a couple of questions you might wanna ask yourself:
– Could you define a single metric per role, which would serve as KPI?
– Are role responsibilities aligned between employees and management?
– How do you recognize performance?
– Do you have your processes documented?
– Do you have a continuous process review process?
– How does performance matter on a daily basis? How experienceable is performance in your daily operations?
– What are the consequences for the individual, the team/department if performance is high or low?
– How many different performance systems do you currently have?
– How transparent are your goal-setting and review processes?
Go for a performance management system if you can answer these questions, but please don’t expect the tool to answer them for you.
Reinhard Guggenberger, Soaring Fox
Performance management systems are all about efficiency. One sign that your business could benefit from a new system is if you are constantly asking your team questions regarding goal or task status. Calling meetings just to gauge the status of your team’s work can really put a wedge in overall workflow and affect productivity. Project management systems relieve the need to call mundane meetings and make progress updates accessible to leaders at all times.
Peter Robert, Expert Computer Solutions
When some business owners think about performance management systems, they usually think of a big brother type oversight system that’s all about maintaining and optimizing efficiency. However, performance management systems can have a more empathetic use case. Instead of trying to optimize efficiency towards certain workflows, performance management systems can help business owners track and maintain workforce trends that are best for select teams.
It’s impossible to improve business efficiency without knowing what’s actually working for your team members. As a business leader, you’re sometimes removed from what actually works for your employees, and what processes work in live business settings. Performance management programs can track what your employees are doing in real time. So you can actually follow the trends that work for them and make relevant suggestions, encouraging employee buy-in.
Kyle Risley, Lift Vault
When the targets and goals of a company are being missed consistently, you know it’s time to implement a performance management system. HR teams and corporate leaders may not have the metrics they need to identify why company targets are missed in the absence of a performance management system. A performance management system can help close the gap in plan execution by detecting issue areas and ensuring that everyone is on track.
Sudipta Gupta, WebTopic
If your business is experiencing a higher than expected employee turnover rate, this is a certain sign that a performance management system is required. Regularly losing staff to competitors is a costly issue. It can be detrimental to those employees who remain within the business, possibly leading to further resignations.
The reasons for large numbers of resignations can be varied, but normally they will be related to either insufficient compensation for the work performed, unsuitable work conditions, poor communication or leadership within the business, or a company culture which does not promote or encourage diversity and inclusion.
A properly executed performance management system will help identify the reasons for your failure to retain staff, offering solutions which will provide greater satisfaction to the employees and reverse the trend.
James Crawford, DealDrop
Want to know about Engagedly’s Performance Management System? Request for a demo with us.
We created this article in association with Terkel. It is a community-driven knowledge platform that creates content based on expert insights.
