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What Is A Performance Management System?

What is a Performance Management System?

A robust performance management system diligently monitors and records employees’ job performance through the integration of advanced technologies and methodologies. This system guarantees a consistent and accurate assessment, aligning employees with the strategic objectives of the business. By leveraging a combination of cutting-edge tools and strategic approaches, the performance management system facilitates employees in making valuable contributions toward the overall success of the organization.

Performance management comprises various vital HR functions like continuous progress review, real-time feedback, frequent communication, training employees to improve performance, recognizing good work, rewarding improved performance, goal-setting, etc.

A performance management system, a.k.a. HR performance management system, helps HR managers establish clear performance expectations through which employees can easily understand what is expected of their job. It enables managers to instill in their employees the importance of individual accountability for meeting goals and evaluating their own performance.

Also read: Importance of employee performance management system

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Performance Management System for the Modern Workplace
Performance Management Cycle Stages
What Is a Performance Management System?
Performance Management System Components

Performance Management System for the Modern Workplace

The changing technical landscape, irregularities in the global supply chain, the great resignation, and the sudden shift to a hybrid workplace setup are putting forth innumerable challenges to businesses. To remain competitive in the current global market, it is necessary to have a continuous performance management system. Such a system will help in realigning resources towards organizational objectives and also provide warning signs to highlight problems in workforce performance and practices.

Businesses need a flexible, smart, and technically advanced performance management system that forms the foundation of conversations, changes, and progress. That’s why companies such as Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Adobe, Uber, and many others have transformed their performance management systems. They no longer work on an annual performance grading system but on a continuous system that can help employees stay productive and make them accountable for their transformational growth.

Furthermore, more than productivity and efficiency, consumers are now valuing innovation, creativity, and problem-solving. To live up to these expectations, organizations need to continuously improvise their performance management strategies.

Organizations must rethink and redefine their performance management practices as new-age workplaces replace traditional work setups.

Performance Management Cycle Stages

There are 4 stages in a performance management cycle.

The planning phase is where leaders and managers create SMART goals for their teams
Monitoring through check-ins and feedback to track the progress made on goals
Reviewing the overall performance of teams to contemplate what worked favorably and what didn’t
Rating and rewarding involves rating employees based on their performance and rewarding them suitably to motivate them.

Performance Management System Components

An employee performance management system includes multiple components that are essential to creating an engaging and productive work environment. They build on the foundation of performance management by providing a platform to manage, track, and assess employees’ performance. Let us understand the different components of the performance management platform and how they help in employee growth and development.

1. Objectives And Goal Setting

Planning is a crucial component of performance management. Setting challenging goals motivates employees to improve their performance rather than having no goals at all. Goals aren’t just meant to be set for individual employees; they work better if you have departmental goals and align them with your organizational goals. A performance management system that doesn’t allow you to set goals or plan doesn’t contribute to improving organizational productivity.

Performance goals should be set in collaboration, both by the manager and their direct reports. Discussing and setting goals together helps managers and their employees gain a better understanding of their current performance and their future performance abilities.

Also Read: Guide To Setting Employee Goals Through Engagedly

2. Ongoing Communication

The next component of the performance management system is communication. Having an effective performance management system in your organization helps you create a culture of ongoing communication about your team’s goals, training, etc. Having an internal communication tool can simply do all this.

It is always good to follow up on what your direct reports are working on and how they are managing to meet their goals. This keeps them motivated. As a manager, you can help them improve by giving them suggestions about their work without having to wait for the next performance review.

Also Read: Download the ultimate guide to employee engagement survey and templates

3. Performance Review

This is the part where managers give their reviews of the performance of their direct reports. These reviews are generally annual or quarterly. The general review procedure is a self-evaluation done by employees, followed by a thorough review by a manager.

An important aspect of performance reviews that has changed recently is peer evaluation: 360-degree feedback. 360 feedback and peer evaluations allow employees to evaluate their managers and help them understand where they can improve themselves and how. The process of rating one’s manager can be complicated, but once it becomes a practice, the overall team productivity increases.

4. Recognizing Good Performance

Recognizing good performance is as important as identifying bad performance. When employees do not meet business expectations, it is important for them to understand where they are lacking. This helps them do it better the next time.

In the same way, when employees accomplish something or go out of their way to accomplish a goal, as a manager, you should recognize their effort. Most performance management systems come with employee reward programs that allow managers to reward their employees or publicly praise them for their contributions. This may seem small, but it is one of the most crucial components of a high-performance culture.

5. Feedback & Suggestions

A performance review does not end with either “good work” or “needs improvement.” Giving proper feedback and suggestions to improve performance is the next important component of a performance management system.

This component allows you to tell your employees exactly where they need to improve and how to make it possible. Studies state that employees who receive frequent feedback on their performance are more likely to contribute to organizational success. Therefore, it is a good practice to have a feedback process in place to help improve organizational performance.

6. Learning & Development

Learning and development are critically important for the success of any organization. Inculcating a learning culture can motivate employees to reskill and upskill themselves and be a part of a dynamic, skilled, and knowledgeable workforce. Additionally, it helps in retaining employees and creating a brand image.

Integrating a performance management system with multiple individual platforms enhances active learning within the organization. Through interactive features like course design and assignment, managers can assign courses and modules to employees. Furthermore, it can also be used to conduct check-ins to understand the progress made by employees. Either way, L&D should be a continuous process, and managers should encourage employees to learn more and develop their performance potential.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is a performance management system and how is it important?

Ans. Performance management is a system of processes and tools that helps leaders track and analyze the performance of their employees and mentor or coach them to help them work at their highest potential.

Q2. What are the stages of a performance management cycle?

Ans. The different stages of a performance management cycle are as follows:

Planning
Monitoring
Reviewing
Rating

Q3. How does a performance management system help?

Ans. It helps by providing real-time analysis of employees’ performance and helps leaders understand the learning needs of employees. It helps in the achievement of organizational goals by aligning employee activities to the company’s objectives.

Q4. What is the role of the performance management system?

Ans. The role of the system is to align employees’ activities to achieve optimal performance and fulfill the organization’s goals. This is done through constant tracking, analyzing performance, and providing coaching to employees based on the requirements and observations.

Q5. What is PMS in HR?

Ans. PMS in HR is a systematic and objective method for consistently measuring employee performance. This approach empowers companies to monitor progress towards strategic goals, ensuring effective collaboration among employees and departments to achieve desired outcomes.

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Performance Calibration Meetings: Everything You Need To Know

A company’s performance management process should provide every employee with an equal opportunity to excel by offering valuable feedback on their performance. However, when an employee’s performance review is primarily determined by a manager during performance management processes, it can inadvertently introduce bias into reviews, favoring certain employees and placing others at a disadvantage.

To address and eliminate unintentional bias, one effective methodology to adopt is the performance calibration meeting. In this article, we will delve into the intricacies of performance review calibration, exploring the concept in detail and unpacking the following:

What is Performance Review Calibration?
Importance of Performance Calibration Meeting
Who Should Participate in Performance Calibration Meetings?
Preparing for Performance Calibration Meeting
Step-wise Procedure to Calibrate Performance Ratings
Procedure for Kicking-off Performance Calibration Meeting
Benefits of Performance Calibration Process

What is a Performance Calibration Meeting?

A performance review calibration meeting is a process in which managers discuss the ratings of their direct reports with other managers. The purpose of these calibrations is to make employee evaluations more consistent throughout the organization.

By using this procedure, managers can reduce bias in the performance review process and ensure employees’ performance reports are created according to a common set of performance calibration criteria.

Ideally, all managers discuss their ratings before sharing their performance reviews with employees, so they can make any adjustments if necessary. Thus, performance calibration can help managers to ensure that they apply the same standards to all employees and objectively evaluate employees on uniform parameters.

Importance of Calibration Meeting

So far, we have understood that calibration meetings are conducted by managers to set standards for reviewing their employees, create a process to differentiate top performers and review employee ratings proposed by managers.

Employees highly value fairness. In one study, 85 percent of employees felt their performance review was unfair and hence, considered quitting their jobs!

Let us take an example to understand the importance of performance calibration ratings. Some managers are inclined to give all their employees a rating of 5 since they did everything in their job description. Alternatively, a stricter manager might give their top performers a rating of 3 if they meet the same performance criteria. The strict manager may come up with a reason such as the top performers only managed to meet the set requirements for their role, not exceed them.

In other words, managers likely want a fair review process, but they can miss the mark if their review process isn’t compared with others.

The more vagueness there is in the performance review process, the greater is the chance for bias and inaccurate feedback. The process of performance calibration ratings is a great way to remove any form of ambiguity. Thus, a company should prioritize performance calibration meetings since they can help to ensure that review standards are fair, equitable, and balanced across an organization.

Talent calibration meetings also allow managers to identify top performers throughout their organizations and honor these standout employees.

In addition to providing employees with a learning opportunity, these meetings also assist managers in improving their ability to observe employee performance and set performance standards. By having checkpoints before sharing performance reviews with employees, self-doubting managers will gain confidence in their reviews.

Also read: Re-evaluate Your Performance Management Practices

Who Should Participate in Performance Calibration Meetings?

Your organization’s size and structure will determine who will be part of the performance calibration meeting.

Performance appraisal meetings generally involve managers who will complete the performance appraisals along with HR personnel. The HR professionals would provide guidance wherever required. Additionally, having a representative from each department can help oversee the process.

In larger companies, involving all managers together at the same time may not be possible. In such situations, it is best to create subgroups within your company so meetings can be managed efficiently, without any form of chaos.

Preparing for Performance Calibration Meeting

A manager or supervisor should prepare performance review appraisals in advance and submit their drafts to senior leaders and/or HR leadership for review. At performance calibration meetings, they should be prepared to get their ratings reviewed or discussed with their peers and managers.

HR facilitators must facilitate the compilation of essential and historical data for the business. This data would include average ratings based on key factors; trends in performance, and the identification of exceptional performers.

Step-wise Procedure to Calibrate Performance Ratings

When managers have gathered to calibrate their performance ratings, what does the process look like? To give you a better perspective, we have shared detailed step-wise procedures for performance calibration meetings. For performance calibration to be successful, there are four key steps:

Evaluation

In order to calibrate ratings, you must understand what the ratings are. Performance calibration meetings should not be viewed by managers as a group activity session of rating employees’ performance. Rather, they must complete the reviews themselves before the meeting and present their findings.

It helps managers if they are given prior training or refresher courses on how to evaluate their employees’ performance, based on the performance calibration process.

Calibration

In a performance calibration meeting, managers should discuss the performance appraisals with some tangible examples and reasoning to support their views.

When managers share drafts of their performance reviews, their peers may have some suggestions for certain points. It is possible that other managers may feel that a rating for a particular employee is too high or too low, causing some additional discussion.

As a result, the manager may realize their overall rating is not based on performance, but rather on arbitrary decisions. This way performance calibration meeting may help a manager to modify the rating after the discussion.

Another factor to consider when calibrating your system is the comparison of current data with historical data for individual departments and for the entire company. By doing so, a manager can better understand an employee’s performance in your organization as a whole.

Avoid forceful implementation:

You should not force or even try to retain a consistent distribution of ratings – quarterly, annually, or departmentally. It is quite common for employees to observe some variation in their performance with time. As a manager, you should always remember that consistent performance measurement is the key, not employees’ consistent outcomes.

Calibration can be carried out once all the information has been collected. The managers should adjust employee evaluations as deemed appropriate to align with a company’s objectives.

Feedback:

Once necessary adjustments have been made, managers can communicate their performance reviews with their employees and engage in direct discussions about those reviews.

At this point, managers should have more confidence in the validity of their reviews. Similarly, employees should feel the same about the evaluation process.

Also read: How to provide constructive feedback to your employees?

Procedure for Kicking-off Performance Calibration Meeting

To get you started with the Performance Calibration meeting, here are the procedures:

Establish a positive tone: Thank participants for attending the Performance Calibration meeting. Make sure participants understand the significance of the meeting and encourage full engagement by stressing the importance of performance calibration.

Ensure confidentiality: Make sure that the meeting’s content, as well as any outcomes, remain confidential.

Examine rating scales: Before discussing employees’ ratings, take time to review your organization’s scale and system, used to measure performance.

Comparison of performance distribution: You can compare the pattern of performance to the hoped-for performance distribution (decided by managers) or by comparing it to the previous period.

Employee’s performance ratings: In the next section, discuss each employee’s performance ratings. Managers should explain their ratings and explain the rationale for them.

Obtaining opinions: Attendees should be given an opportunity to voice their opinions if they feel an employee’s assessment is biased or if they want to add something to the review.

Adjust ratings as needed: If managers need to change any ratings, they can do so during the meeting.

Express gratitude: Express thankfulness to participants for their time and dedication for making sure employees receive honest and unbiased feedback.

Benefits of Performance Calibration Process

Identifying top performers:

Performance appraisals are designed to distinguish top performers from average or subpar performers and to reward and retain high performers.

Organization benefits:

For HR and senior management of the company, managers’ performance calibration ratings on employees’ objectives, competencies, and other factors help to set benchmark or traits of a top performer. Furthermore, the ratings can be used not only to determine a pay raise but also to make a decision on promotion and development plans. Thus, with the benchmarks set, organizations can benefit from performance calibration massively as performance becomes quantifiable.

Performance ratings are more accurate:

By calibrating performance ratings, managers are able to provide more accurate evaluations. Calibration problems can chase high performers away if they are not rewarded for their performance. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure performance ratings are accurate and reliable. The performance calibration process ensures that all employees are rated on the same standards.

Accountability and transparency:

Managers are held jointly accountable for the performance assessment ratings created for all employees. Managers can gain new insight into employees’ performance by discussing their performance collectively. Discussions among peers could bring transparency in regards to the way managers tend to give ratings – which can be generously or sternly.

Establishment of a new supportive organizational culture:

Performance calibration is a necessary activity for organizations that have undergone a merger or acquisition. There will need to be an alignment of cultures and performance benchmarks. Merging multiple performance principals through the performance calibration meeting can facilitate the establishment of a new reliable and encouraging organizational culture.

Brings clarity:

During a performance review calibration meeting, if a manager shares and clarifies the rationale for the performance appraisal ratings, it would serve as an example for other managers too.

Consequently, others managers too will be equipped with supporting reasons for the employees’ ratings, next time a Performance Calibration meeting occurs, eliminating any form of bias. This enables the management team to better understand and reinforce the key performance indicators.

Increases the feelings of equitable treatment:

It is important that employees believe their managers are evaluating them fairly, since compensation, promotion, and succession decisions are based on performance evaluations. Also, organizations may face challenges such as low productivity or a high attrition rate when employees feel they are treated unfairly. Thus, when the performance ratings are accurate and clarified, employees are more likely to perceive the performance appraisal process as acceptable.

Conclusion

Performance Calibration is an indispensable aspect of any performance appraisal cycle. It not only ensures that employees’ performance evaluations are unprejudiced and genuine but also makes the working culture conducive for having a successful workforce.

Therefore, if your company tracks and measures an employee’s performance manually, you can boost it through an automated evaluation system with Performance Review Calibration measures incorporated within it. This can be achieved through Engagedly’s performance review system, with the parameters of Performance Calibration embedded within it.

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Engagedly Developing Culture in the Remote Workforce

COVID-19 and the subsequent restrictions have forced a lot of companies to take their entire workforce almost entirely online – focussing much more on work from home than coming to the office and spending their day in a cubicle. In the absence of a personal touch and most business being conducted through Zoom, it becomes slightly difficult to build a developed business culture for a remote workforce, but not impossible. In this article, we discuss several performance management tools that can help you do so.

Performance Management – Why Do We Need It?

For teams that did not work from home or remotely in the past, the sudden shift to a WFH culture can be quite overwhelming. Different people react differently to such changes: while some employees might actually thrive in this environment and become more productive because of the lack of distractions (you’re not bumping into someone every 15 minutes at the water cooler), others might find themselves burnt out.

Working from home also brings with it a lack of personal connection – for those whose jobs revolve around interacting with people, productivity might take a hit. Additionally, people often feel the need to overcompensate for how long they’re working – they’re so desperate to be seen as someone who’s not slacking off that it often leads to them overworking and suffering from fatigue.

Employee Engagement – Things That Work

Organizations have taken to adopting a variety of mechanisms to ensure that even in the virtual world, their workforce can still enjoy a high level of engagement. One such idea is the Swedish custom of Fika – daily meetings where people take 15-20 minutes out of their day to sit with the rest of the team and drink coffee while talking about anything outside of work. It could be Netflix shows that they might have seen to their vacation plans – it allows them to destress for a while before getting back to work.

Another idea is the use of virtual pubs across different time zones – this can be a wonderful place for employees to hangout and interact with different team members. Additionally, it can allow for the humanization of management in the eyes of the employees, leading to more close-knit and collaborative teams within the organization.

Working across Time Zones – Find the Rhythm

Most organizations work across a variety of different time zones, and in such cases, finding the right organizational rhythm can be quite challenging – especially when working from home. Different cultures can have their personal lives structured differently – maybe a single parent can’t take meetings during lunch because they have to feed their family, or maybe their sleep cycle has changed.

In such cases, communication becomes the key – and it can ensure that no one is overworking. By letting others in the team know what time slots employees are and aren’t available in, they can ensure that meetings can be set according to their convenience. This responsibility also falls on the shoulders of the managers, who have to ensure that meetings are being held in a way that does not interfere with the personal work rhythms of the employees.

Collaborative Tools and Performance Management

Because of the shift towards remote working, organizations have also seen an increase in their demand for tools that can allow them to manage everything more effectively. For example, most companies use Slack for their internal messaging needs, often relying on platforms like Zoom or WebEx for meeting needs. A particularly interesting step that organizations sometimes take is having a “camera-in” policy in their meetings. Under this, unless an employee has a specific reason for not wanting their camera on, they are encouraged to turn their camera on in meetings, which allows for greater personalization.

Besides this, other tools can also be used. For example, organizations can use tools like Trello, Asana, or some other Monday alternative for their project management., and GSuite products like GDocs and Sheets for sharing documents across the firm.

Also read: Performance Management Tools And Techniques To Drive Employee Engagement

The Future of WFH – Balancing Tech With Employee Engagement

It is hard to say when organizations will confidently choose to go back to working from office, and how employees would react to that. A school of thought is that the WFH culture would become much more prominent, leading to a healthy balance of technology and human interactions.

What some firms have already done is allow employees to work from home almost the entire week, and have one day where they have to come into the office. However, this day is then reserved for tasks that are best done in person, such as white boarding or brainstorming. Such organizations then see the future of the office as being more of a social environment than a place where people sit and work in isolation.

Employee Recognition in the WFH Culture

Employee recognition is a major part of how organizations ensure that their workforce is motivated and feels valued – and it can significantly impact employee morale. In the WFH era, employee recognition also becomes more challenging, since you cannot really have conferences where you recognize impressive achievements made by employees.

Therefore, a better solution has to be found. One thing that has been done recently is to make it more of a personal event for the employees than a professional one – for example, hiring an Animal Farm to take the office around a farm (virtually) and show them all the different animals, and then using this opportunity to applaud and recognize employees in front of their families and friends instead of simply their peers.

Want to know how Engagedly can help enhance your remote workforce? Book a live demo with us.

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The Complete Overview Of Performance Management In The Modern Workplace

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:

What Is Performance Management?
Why Is Performance Management Important?
What Are The Key Components of Performance Management?
What Are The Benefits Of Effective Performance Management?
Principles Of Performance Management
Performance Management Best Practices
Problems With Performance Management
What Is A Performance Management System?
Types Of Performance Management Systems
How To Get Started With Performance Management?
Technology And Performance Management

What Is Performance Management?

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:

Helps in setting goals that are inclined to organizational objectives
Provides regular feedback to team members
Acts as a medium of communication to discuss issues, opportunities, threats, and progress of projects
Offers learning and development opportunities, and reward and recognition based on individual performance
Creates performance standards for employees

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.

Why Is Performance Management Important?

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.

What Are The Key Components of Performance Management?

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.

What Are The Benefits Of Effective Performance Management?

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:

Creating an open channel of communication between managers and employees
Building trust, integrity, and loyalty in employees
Aligning individual goals with organizational objectives
Providing the right resources to employees for growth and development
Helping in goal setting and making employees accountable for their progress in the organization
Offering visibility to employees for their efforts and ensuring that employees understand the impact of their efforts on organizational success
Reducing conflicts between team members
Offering a platform for self-assessment, learning, performance review, and discussions
Providing open feedback to employees on their skills, competencies, progress, and future development
Checking the readiness of employees to undertake more responsible positions
Creating personalized development plans for employees
Motivating low-performing employees through coaching and mentoring

Principles Of Performance Management

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:

Transparency
Clear and open communication
Feedback
Goal clarity
Interdepartmental cooperation
Focus on learning

Without incorporating its basic tenets, performance management will not be fruitful in the long run.

Performance Management Best Practices

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:

Using OKR methodology (Objectives And Key Results) for goal setting, tracking, analyzing, and improving performance
Redesigning employee KPIs and goals as per the work setup
Setting SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based) goals for employees
Offering continuous feedback to improve performance
Weekly and monthly check-ins to keep track of progress made on goals
Understanding employee concerns and offering them support
Using performance management tools to simplify the processes

What Are The Problems With Performance Management?

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:

Unclear vision and goals
Disengagement between employees and leadership
Lack of trust between employees and employers
Undefined performance management processes
Lack of metrics and tools to measure performance
Irrelevant job descriptions
Lack of commitment in leadership

What Is A Performance Management System?

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.

Types Of Performance Management Systems

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:

Balanced scorecard
Management by objectives
Objectives and key results
360-degree assessment
The graphic rating scales

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.

How To Get Started With Performance Management?

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.

Meticulously analyze the industry and business environment
List your most important organizational goals
Ruminate over the problems you would like to resolve with the help of performance management
Take management’s support in understanding the intricacies of performance management
Analyze the previously available data, if any, to understand what processes did not work well and what improvements can be made
If required, seek external support from leading performance management experts

Technology And 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:

formulate strategies,
provide more visibility,
innovate,
customize,
streamline processes, and
provide a framework for collaboration between employees and management.

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:

96% of organizations found improvements in employee engagement levels
83% say that the quality of conversations has improved between managers and employees
96% found the process to be simpler than before

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.

Key Takeaways

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.

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Key Features Of An Ideal Performance Management System

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”

Why These 8 Top Companies Redefined Their Performance Management Systems

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”

Getting Started With Real Time Performance Management

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?

What is Real Time Performance Management?

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.

Management Support

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

Communicate Effectively

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

Employee Training

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

Real Time Performance Management Software

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

Follow-Up

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

7 Years, 9 Lives (Almost!) and Series A

7 years ago, we met in an office in a nondescript location in Bangalore, India. In an apartment converted into a small office, we discussed Engagedly, a new platform for the digital generation to feel more connected and fulfilled at work. Our aspirations were strong, and the opportunity was present. Disengagement levels were high across all workforce, regardless of the geography.

A Series Funding and Engagedly

Our previous attempt to build an employee social platform, Team Yogi, had failed, but we drew important lessons. So we went back to the drawing board to look at all aspects of employee interaction that drives engagement. It took us a year to build the platform with the tagline “Level up your Workforce“. The startup journey takes a lot longer, and the effort is a lot harder than what you read in the press. An estimated 90% of tech startups fail in staying afloat!

Also read: Engagedly Inc. Announces Investment Led By Aquiline Credit Opportunities

In the last 7 years, we went through several scares, feeling like lost children in the woods, but what kept us going was our belief in our Team Engagedly and our customers, who believed that this startup could help their organizations get better. It took us a year and over 100+ demos to get our first real customer. I used to tell myself, if a dog came to my door, I would at first give it a demo, then try to find its owner!

Fast forward, we grew to over 400 customers in 30+ countries and 100+ team members with no institutional investment, only by keeping our heads down and focusing on our customers.

Believe!

Last week we closed our Series A with Aquiline, a large growth-capital firm based out of NY, who believed in ours and Team Engagedly’s vision to execute; to build a better workplace.

A big thanks to our Team Engagedly who could have worked anywhere, with well funded or big brand companies, and our customers, who could have taken the safe route, but they all believed in our vision.

Success is hardly a straight line! So Team Engagedly, strap on your seat belts. We are just getting warmed up!

SC, JB, PK

Founding Team at Engagedly

Want to know about Engagedly’s performance management software? Request for a live demo!

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8 Attributes of an Effective Performance Management Software

The current trends show a shift in the thinking of managers and how they evaluate employee performances. The rise of the culture of ongoing feedback, 360 degree feedback, and regular employee engagement have resulted in a review of existing performance management processes. This change has also affected the design and function of performance management software. The mental shift has revamped what any company should look for in an effective employee performance management solution.

This article will help define employee management software and discuss its importance to companies. We also discuss attributes to watch out for when purchasing it.

What is a Performance Management Software?

A performance management software is a tool that helps companies enforce their performance systems more effectively. Companies do this by setting and monitoring goals, giving feedback, and streamlining other performance management processes. It aims to analyze and evaluate employees’ performances over a period.

Also read: Top 10 Performance Management Software to use in 2022

The primary aim of a performance management tool is to simplify and speed up the performance management system of a company. And because it speeds up the process, the performance evaluation solution must be the right fit for the company’s existing performance management systems.

Why Does a Business Need Performance Management Software?

A business needs performance evaluation software for various reasons. Some of them are:

Employee engagement
Saves time
Motivates employees
It is the future

Let’s know about the reasons in details.

● Employee Engagement

A performance management tool helps in improving employee engagement in more ways than one.

Goal-setting keeps them focus and on track.
Feedback and recognition help them reinforce what they do.
Advanced analytics and reports help them understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Using a performance software solution is one of the many ways managers can improve how engaged their employees are.

● Saves Time

Manually monitoring, providing feedback, and conducting follow-ups are time-consuming and ineffective in the 21st century. A company adopting and using performance management solutions will save time and help improve the company’s productivity – which improves profits.

● It Helps to Motivate Employees

Its human nature to dwell on the mistakes or shortcomings of others and not praise or give due recognition after achieving their goals or performing other feats for the company. This behavior can easily lead to an unhappy and unmotivated workforce. The performance solution recognizes achievements faster and gives due credit for reaching their goals on time – creating a happy and motivated workforce.

● The Future

The last point here is performance management tool is the future of evaluating employees. Zion market research expects the industry to grow by 13% in the next seven years and earn $5.63 billion by 2026.

Attributes of an Effective Performance Management Software

When a company wants to purchase performance evaluation software, there are some essential features to look out for. We look at eight of them in this section.

The 8 attributes of an effective performance management software are:

Ability to set goals
Provide reports and analytics
Tailored and continuous feedback
360 degree feedback software
Self assessment
Process a simple interface
Allow for effective communication
Recognition

1. Ability to Set Goals

A study by Harvard Business covering some group of students over ten years found that students who had clear written goals were on average earning ten times those who didn’t have a one or commit it on paper. The study teaches the importance of setting goals.

A good performance management solution allows for its users to customize their goals. Adding, updating, and setting a deadline date should be possible. The application should also permit supervisors and peers to monitor the set goals and the progress. Possessing this feature will allow managers to monitor their teams, especially if a large unit. It also helps motivate the employees.

It should be flexible, allowing the company to assign goals and objectives in line with the company’s goals.

2. Provide Reports and Analytics

An organization has a lot of data to process in a limited amount of time. This is true when the data is necessary to make vital decisions.

A good performance management software will summarise all of this data and make a concise report on the activities of individual employees. The software should be able to display employee’s progress in the form of charts and graphs. Doing this makes the information easily digestible.

3. Tailored and Continuous Feedback

The cry for feedback from employees has only gotten louder every passing year.

A Study analysed by HR Drive found that business leaders expect managers to give daily feedback, which is 170% higher than in 2018. The study also showed that the number of employees who want a formal monthly performance conversation is 89%. The significant change means management needs an employee performance management solution tailored to the employee needs and supportive of continuous feedback.

This feature should give the manager or supervisor the option to send a direct message straight to an employee using the data provided by the software. The manager should also have the ability to comment on the progress of a project, the employee meeting their set goals, or missing out on the deadline. The aim is to have an application that supports feedback and growth within the company.

4. 360Degree Feedback Software

Alongside regular feedback, there is also the growing trend of a 360degree feedback system. Most employees who go in for their review feel a sense of unfairness, as managers can be subjective in their judgement. 360 degree feedback helps to amend this by getting feedback from other managers /superiors, clients, and peers, making the review more objective.

A performance management tool should allow for this feature, making users anonymous when filling out a 360 feedback form. Some very comprehensive applications create a graph with the information gathered and show the company’s average grade.

The primary purpose of this feature is to know areas they can make improvements and give recognition to an employee’s strong points. They should not make it into a competition, as even though it can be beneficial – if taken too far can be counterproductive to an organization.

5. Self-Assessment

Assessing yourself is a tough task. The Dunning-Kruger-effect study shows we tend to either downplay our skills or overestimate them. In summary, we are not good judges of ourselves. This problem goes even deeper because we aren’t the best judges of others either, as bias will always affect our judgement. Therefore, it’s necessary to have a data-driven focused approach, and that is what a good performance application will offer.

The application should show the employees their stats on various KPIs. These stats give the employee a good image of where they are now and need to be. The employee can even suggest ways to improve their performance to their supervisors and the tool can act as a reality check for any employee since it only relies on data. It can also help spur individuals to grow and keep them accountable to themselves.

6. Possess a Simple Interface

A simple interface for a new software application is necessary to understand how it works and to adapt. The interface must be user-friendly to facilitate the implementation and learning phase. The entire organization will use it, and so it should have user-friendly dashboards that allow individuals to access information conveniently. A simple interface and an easily navigable dashboard make users adapt quickly and learn to maximize the application functions.

7. Allow For Effective Communication

Effective communication is the core of any successful company. Employees need information communicated to them to improve their KPI and stay in tune with the organizational goal. The management needs the information conveyed to them in a timely fashion to make strategic decisions.

An excellent performance management tool should possess good communication options. The ability to send group messages, direct messages, and make group announcements should be present. It should also have the ability to create groups and set meeting schedules and reminders. Posting externally to other social apps like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter should be possible soon.

8. Recognition System

Recognition is a vital part of any employee’s life. It is what they crave, what helps them keep growing and improving, and what keeps them focused. Recognition is such a critical part of performance management, a recent study by achievers shows there is a 44% chance of losing employees if you don’t recognize them. So, it is not a debatable feature to have in performance management software.

The solution should have features that highlight and reward employees who outperform their KPIs and meet their targets regularly. This feature will help employees stay encouraged concerning meeting their goals.

Also read: Employee Rewards And Recognition For An Engaged Workforce

Some Additional Points To Keep In Mind

While the characteristics above are some of the essential attributes to note, there are more we would like to highlight:

Scalability

The software application scalability is necessary because it ensures the company and software application can grow together. No company wants an application that performs but isn’t scalable because they will need to change it in the long term.

Cloud-Based

A cloud-based performance evaluation tool gives users the ability to access real-time information outside the office and working hours. It can also mean the application has a mobile version.

Before Buying a Performance Management Tool

After identifying the attributes needed in the performance management tool, it’s ideal to practice the following activities. Doing this will help avoid wasting funds and time on a software solution that doesn’t meet the company’s needs.

Cull-up and enquire about the features
Request for a free demo and trial
Read reviews on software listing sites
Seek consultations

Call-up And Enquire About the Features

Before investing in a new software program, it’s best to uncover what the product can do. They should be happy to walk you through the system and their features

Request for a Free Demo and Trial

Ask for a demo version or a free trial and run a pilot process if possible. Most companies should be happy to allow you to test their software application for a specific period. It will help you select the one most suitable for your organization.

Also read: Have you set effective OKRs for your Customer Support Team

Read Reviews On Software Listing Sites

Visiting third-party websites and reading reviews from other customers is a great idea. Most of the employee management software applications available are present on software listing sites that have given customers the leeway to express their distinct experiences with the tool.

Seek Consultations

Consulting a team of experts can also help to simplify the process. The consultants can come in, look at the organization’s process and then recommend the performance software that will suit the organization’s needs.

In conclusion, purchasing performance management software will only help your organization be more productive and have more engaged employees.

Want to know about Engagedly’s performance management software? Request for a live demo!

Request A Demo

10 Characteristics of the Most Effective Performance Management System

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

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

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

Problems With the Traditional Performance Management System

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

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

Traditional Performance Management is Time Consuming

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

Also Read: 10 Best employee feedback tools to track performance

Ratings do not Reflect the Real Performance of Employees

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

The Process is Laborious and Expensive

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

The Process Cannot Accurately Measure Performance

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

Characteristics of Performance Management System

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

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

Fair and Accurate

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

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

The System Must be Efficient

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

Continuous, Flexible, and Intuitive

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

The System Must Focus on Employee Development

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

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

Aligned Towards Organizational Goals

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

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

Aligned With Organizational Culture and Values

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

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

The System Must Help With Goal Setting and Tracking

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

Integrates All Aspects of Employee Development

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

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

Customization, Security, and Integration

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

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

Supports Learning Culture in Organization

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

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

Providing every employee with the opportunity to actively participate in their learning process

Rewarding and promoting continuous learning

Providing resources and tools for employee learning and development

Encourage social learning within your organization.

Providing coaching and mentoring sessions to employees

Measuring the success of learning activities and reviewing the culture at intervals

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

Explore the complete range of features of performance management systems, schedule a demo with Engagedly.

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How Performance Management Software Helps in Employee Development

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

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

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

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

What Is Employee Development?

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

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

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

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

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

Also Read: 10 best employee feedback tools to track performance

Why Is Employee Development Important?

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

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

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

Attracting New Talent

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

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

Reskilling and Upskilling Current Employees

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

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

Improve Employee Engagement

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

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

Succession Planning

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

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

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

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

Reducing Employee Turnover

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

Aligning Business Strategy With Organizational Goals

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

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

Diversity and Inclusion

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

Utilizing Performance Management Software for Employee Development

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

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

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

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

Rewards and Recognition

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

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

Also Read: Performance management tools for employee engagement

Setting SMART Goals

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

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

360 Degree Feedback

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

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

Learning Management System

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

Want to know how Engagedly can help you manage your tasks better? Request for a live demo.

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What is Continuous Performance Management (CPM)?

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

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

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

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

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

How Does Continuous Performance Management Work in the Workplace Setting?

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

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

Having an agile management system in place

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

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

An opt-in approach rather than opt-out

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

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

Rewarding high performers who give great feedback

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

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

Also Read: 5 Employee Appreciation Ideas For Your Remote Team

Keeping scorecards up-to-date

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

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

Overcoming challenges

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

Why Organizations Should Implement Continuous Performance Management

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

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

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

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

Benefits of Continuous Performance Management

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

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

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

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

Challenges of Continuous Performance Management

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

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

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

Also Read: The Importance Of Peer Feedback At Workplace

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

The Future for Continuous Performance Management in the Workplace

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

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

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

Also Read: What Is A Performance Management System?

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

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

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Employee Engagement Tips to Avoid Burnout

Many companies have recently adopted a hybrid model. This allows employees to work from the office and as well as from their homes. But, in the past year, most of the employees have worked remotely, and they will need to adjust back to working in an office. During the global lockdown, many employees got used to working from home and having more flexibility. Managers and employers need to take measures to minimize employee stress as they return to the workplace. Follow these tips to increase employee engagement across your entire company.

WHAT IS EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT?

Employee engagement is the motivation and emotional dedication an employee has to its employer and company goals. Employees need to understand the company as a whole, the purpose of the goals and where they fit into the big picture. Burnout happens when employees lose the motivation they need to keep working. Combating employee burnout is a constant struggle managers must fight, but it is necessary now more than ever. Forbes shared that 61% of employees report being burned out on the job, while 31% also report high levels of stress in the workplace. With employees entering the workplace once again, here are some tips to increase employee engagement and avoid burnout.

TRAIN YOUR LEADERS

A good organization provides training to employees at every level of the organization to make sure they are always improving. You can’t prevent employee burnout if your managers don’t know how to identify it. Train your c-suite employees how to recognize early signs and symptoms of burnout before it’s too late and you lose the employee. Communicate with your leaders the benefits of regular check-ins with every team member and how to make sure the team is functioning well. Educate and train your managers on tactics to best minimize stress and anxiety in the workplace. Provide workshops on skills like time management for every new employee during the onboarding process. Train all employees to actively create a work environment that fosters collaboration and open feedback.

Also Read: The Top 8 Leadership Skills You Need In 2021

Teach your managers strategies to keep employees efficient. A key element of employee engagement is employees must have a support system. Make sure each team member has all the tools and technology they need to perform at the highest level. Managers need to really think about what tools are necessary and helpful to each different job. Consider if you are overloading your employees with too many tools and too much technology. Trying to make their job easier with too many different softwares can actually add stress. Stress and anxiety can ultimately lead to employee disengagement.

IMPLEMENT GAMIFICATION

One of the most successful employee engagement trends of the past decade has been gamification. Applying game elements to the workplace, such as a point system, competition, and prizes will make work fun. This will increase employee engagement and motivation towards company goals. In a 2018 survey, 81% of the respondents say gamification provided a sense of purpose and belonging in the workplace. These objective measurements can help managers see exactly how employees are performing compared to their peers. Gamification drives desired behaviors to all levels of the organization and keeps employees in line with the larger company goals. Competition in gamification gives employees intrinsic motivation to directly combat employee burnout.

Gamification provides managers with employee performance data and goal benchmarks. Managers can quickly recognize and fix productivity issues on an individual team member level. But if a manager decides to implement gamification, they must do it right. If employees feel the gamification has been made unfairly or are not using accurate measurements for their position, this will decrease employee engagement. Too much competition in the workplace can create an unhealthy atmosphere to work. Make sure your gamification is well planned and fair to avoid unnecessary cut throat competition.

Engagedly’s real time performance management software has multiple gamification features integrated into their application. Managers can praise team members, and team members can publicly praise each other. Intuitive point system for certain gamified activities. For certain behaviours, system and custom badges can be awarded. Engagedly helps in promoting a culture of reward and recognition throughout the organization.

COMMUNICATION IS KEY

Many employees experiencing burnout claim a major cause is that they are not being heard by their managers. Increasing employee engagement is a constant struggle, and if there isn’t a constant flow of communication, then the team cannot function effectively. Managers should have regularly scheduled check-ins with their team, at a group and individual level. Remind employees of benefits they might not know about when working for your company. The most important step managers can take to increase employee engagement is to always communicate gratitude. Say thank you constantly! It is harder for employees to experience burnout when they feel valued and appreciated for their contributions. Thanking employees for their work and sharing how they directly contributed to the overall success of a company is critical.

Also Read: 6 Step Guide to Conduct Effective Stay Interviews

Large companies with many employees should plan and implement campaigns for employees. Consistently send out tips and tools your employees can use to combat stress. Make sure employees are aware of any perks or support which company offers them. Try to encourage feedback at all levels of company communication to see what is and isn’t helpful. If employees feel unheard and forgotten, employee engagement will suffer.

CREATE INTENTIONAL DOWNTIME

It is unrealistic for employers to expect employees to work at full capacity 100% of the time. This is an example of when more is less. To achieve our highest level of productivity, our brain needs breaks. Giving employees a short break throughout the day to relax and do whatever they want will make them feel calmer and more focused. While it may sound childish, consider setting a short free reading time each day. Harvard Business Review shares that only six minutes of reading can reduce stress by 68%. Promoting your employees to read and educate themselves will create a smarter workforce. Giving employees a dedicated time for leisure will combat procrastination in the workplace. It is worth giving up a small amount of time to cooldown. This will ultimately increase employee engagement during the rest of the workday.

Want to know how Engagedly can help improve and measure employee engagement? Then request for a live demo!

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Employee Recognition & Rewards: 4 Common Mistakes to Avoid For Remote Employees

When some or all of your team is working remotely, proper communication is critical. Managers need to keep remote workforces engaged and happy now more than ever. Having a plan to recognize and reward your outstanding employees makes sure they feel satisfied doing their job.

It takes more effort to be vocal about your praises or concerns in a remote setting than in a traditional face-to-face workspace . Whether your team is working from home temporarily or is from international time zones, managers must regularly acknowledge and recognize their work. OC Tanner conducted research that found 97% of employees who quit their jobs listed lack of appreciation as a major reason.

Here are some common mistakes to avoid in order to keep your employees happy!

Also Read: 5 Benefits of Investing in Employee Recognition Software

WAITING FOR REPORTING SESSION

DON’T WAIT until the next report to recognize employees when they do something outstanding. Call it out immediately. Avoid saving compliments to soften the blow of criticism, as keeping them separate is a better strategy. Be direct and specific about what you liked or how they helped. Not only will this help in making them feel recognized, it will reinforce these behaviors.

If a customer praises an employee or their work, pass it along immediately. Daily micro-recognitions can help create a work culture of support. If leaders hold a habit of immediate praise, it will spread to all levels of the organization and make a welcoming work environment. Familiarize your employees with peer-to-peer recognition so as to help achieve positive 360 degree feedback.

NOT BEING GENUINE

Employee recognition should be consistent, but not automated. A short and genuine “Thank You” email or text will be more impactful than an automated, cookie-cutter recognition email. If your praise feels forced or hollow, they won’t feel value in their work. A common mistake many managers make is they have generic rewards. Instead, employee rewards and recognition should be tailored appropriately.

Also Read: How to Support Mental Health of Your Remote Team

When you praise someone, specifically point out how they have improved. It’s also a good idea to praise them for personal achievements outside of work too. Without office small talk to mention personal praises, it is worth having a way to informally keep in touch with employees achievements. Congratulate your employees for buying their first home. Congratulate them on earning their MBA. Throw a virtual baby shower.

WHAT ARE VIRTUAL REWARDS?

Many managers don’t know how to reward their employees virtually. It was so easy in-person. You could just give them a gift card, or buy them lunch. While some of the traditional reward and recognition practices are not possible any more. But, you can still do a lot of those things with remote employees. You can email restaurant gift cards or movie ticket passes as small rewards for a good job. An Amazon digital gift card is a safe gift for anyone.

Lets not forget about Employee Appreciation day. Have a themed dress up day, or change your zoom background. Take advantage of the virtual setting and play games with everyone! Make a Kahoot with creative icebreakers for fun team bonding. Instead of a catered lunch, use a delivery service like Doordash, Grubhub, or Postmates to deliver a meal from a restaurant nearby straight to your employees home.

MEASURING ONLY PERFORMANCE

Many managers associate giving an employee reward and recognition when they hit a goal or milestone. There are a lot more behaviors that deserve recognition, such as effort, honesty, dependability, ambition, innovation, professionalism, or problem-solving skills. These qualities aren’t as easy to measure as tracking performance towards a specific goal. Especially in the remote workspace, managers need to take extra effort to recognize when an employee shows these values.

One important employee measurement to consider besides performance is time management. Time management can help you see what positions are overloaded or are underutilized. Goals for different team members will need to be adjusted based on who is and isn’t making deadlines. To be the most effective, tools like Asana, Trello, or Basecamp.

Talk to employees about more than just their results, but ask them about their overall process. Did they run into any problems? If they worked with other team members for a project, get feedback about how they worked together. It will take more investigation, but making sure virtual workers are recognized and rewarded for more than just hitting goals will make them feel more valued.

Want to know how Engagedly can make your remote employee recognition programs easy? Request for a demo from our experts.

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Performance Management Software: Why Invest in it in 2024

We are all aware today that we can’t gauge, monitor, and measure work efficiently with the present performance management systems. Measuring employee performance is one of the crucial objectives for every organization and it directly affects their successes. As a result, on the global front, organizations are doing away with the traditional way of managing performance and are adopting the modern approach by using social performance management through credible performance management software. It is not only comprehensive but also consistent and balanced when compared to the traditional annual or half-yearly reviews.

Also Read: How Performance Management Changed in 2021

An effective performance management software can help you increase employee engagement, boost motivation, and facilitate two-way communication. Not only this, it helps in better management of employees and also increases the efficiency and accuracy of employee performance reviews.

While there are multiple reasons why you should invest in a good performance management software, we have some important ones listed out for you here:

Instant Feedback

You know how important feedback is to driving employee engagement and retention. But for it to be effective, it needs to be shared often and on the spot, be it positive or constructive. Performance management software makes sharing and receiving feedback a lot easier for both employees and managers. It allows for consistent and ongoing sharing of feedback on a real-time basis. Instead of waiting for the performance reviews, managers get to share feedback with their employees anytime and from anywhere. Similarly, it gives employees the flexibility to ask for feedback whenever required. Timely feedback helps good employees become better, and the ones who are not up to the mark, get a chance to improve.

As rightly iterated by Ken Blanchard (American Author) that, ‘Feedback is the breakfast of champions.’

Hence, performance management software not only facilitates two-way dialogue but also improves collaboration, which in turn improves employee engagement and retention.

Also Read: How Important Is Feedback In Today’s World?

Rewards and Recognition

Acknowledgement and recognition goes a long way for employees. Just like feedback, employees feel the constant need to be recognized for their work. Receiving timely acknowledgement boosts employee’s confidence, and they get validation for their work. A good way to keep your employees motivated and engaged continuously is to celebrate their wins with them.

Most of the performance management software in the market have a built-in employee recognition and rewards module, which allows you to recognize and reward your employees instantly for their work. For example, using tools like Engagedly, you can publicly praise or award points to your employees.

Also Read: Employee Rewards and Recognition For An Engaged Workforce

Goals and OKRs

Without some goals to achieve, where would we all be? Goal management is an integral process of all organizations. It helps employees to remain focussed on a common goal and in measuring the overall progress of the organization.

A performance management software enables employees and the organization to set clear, SMART, and dynamic goals for themselves. In addition to this, it allows you to cascade your goals and also align them with the organization’s goals. This helps every individual work towards some common goals and have the bigger picture in mind.

Multi-rater

Millennial employees care for feedback a lot more than their predecessors. They not only look for feedback from their managers but peers as well.

The multi-rater feedback has already picked up pace in terms of popularity and is a common module of most performance management software. In this process, employees receive feedback from multiple audiences, which includes managers, peers, subordinates, vendors, and customers. Employees get an overall and balanced perspective of their performance. Moreover, it bridges the gap between what an employee perceives and what others think about the employee. It also allows employees to share feedback about their managers anonymously without the fear of getting subjugated.

We can say that multi-rater feedback not only helps in the self-awareness of the employees but also promotes an open culture in the organization.

Also Read: Know What Features To Look For In A 360 Feedback Software

Reduced bias and Transparency

Today many organizations are choosing to inculcate the transparency factor. And in the core of it all, is a good and efficient performance management tool.

Performance management software offers a great deal of visibility to everyone in the organization. Every stakeholder has a clear view of the progress of goals, feedback, and ongoing projects. Moreover, as performance management software logs in data consistently, it reduces the chance of any biases or favoritism towards an employee. This leads to creating a sense of trust and open culture in the organization.

Also Read: 8 Key Features To Look For In A Performance Management Tool

Reporting and Analytics

In today’s data-driven world where everything is predicted and explained in numbers and stats, where would we be without analytics?

Performance management software provides detailed insights about an employee’s performance in the form of graphs and charts. It helps employees to make decisions about their skills and developmental needs. Additionally, it helps managers and organizations to make compensation and promotion-related decisions during the time of annual or half-yearly performance reviews. Not only this, it also saves the employer’s time during the time of reviews as all the information regarding employee’s performance is already there in the performance management tool.

Given all the above benefits that you can draw with efficient performance management software, would you want to wait any longer? We guess not!

Are you planning to invest in performance management software? Then request for a live demo.

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Performance Management: Post COVID Changes To Get Used To

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new. – Socrates

Remote work is not the only aspect of change in the past year. COVID-19 has made sure that everything that was once normal is not so anymore. So we at Engagedly sought to understand these changes (esp. with performance management), how they are impacting us today and whether these changes are permanent.

We surveyed to understand the situation better and bring to you information that will help you improve employee engagement and learning.

In the previous edition, People Development Goes Virtual and More Feedback Focused, we discussed how the pandemic has impacted learning and development, and feedback. In this edition, we will discuss the comprehensive overview.

The Performance Management Survey:

We asked leaders from 5 key industries to report the degree of change for different performance management processes. They were to report whether or not each of the performance management processes was occurring more or less frequently during COVID-19.

They responded on a five-point scale (1= significantly less frequent and 5 = significantly more frequent).

What did we find?

Overall, 20% of respondents were very satisfied with the changes they experienced related to performance management and people development processes. These are the leaders that reported being very satisfied (5, on a 1-5 point likert scale measuring satisfaction) with the changes to performance management and people processes that they experienced due to COVID-19.

Taking a deeper look into those who were very satisfied with the changes provides some additional insights to guide future initiatives.

Also read: Performance Management Gone Virtual and More Progressive

When asked, “What specific process change(s) to people development had the biggest impact on your satisfaction?” There were a few key themes that surfaced:

Improved training technologies/processes
More frequent and accessible trainings for employees
Breadth of training offered

When asked, “What specific process change(s) to performance had the biggest impact on your satisfaction?” Here were a few key themes that surfaced:

Incentivizing/recognizing employees for good/improved performance and adherence to new policies
Checking in more frequently with employees about performance and asking them how they were doing personally as well (well-being)
Optimization of systems and technology
Transitioning back to the in-person work environment and work schedules Investments in technologies
Supporting the more flexible work environment and coordinating the work of the team(s)

Also read: Know How to Make Employee Feedback Work

We are still amidst the fog of COVID and its remote work environment when it comes to most of the workplaces in the US. It still remains to be seen if these changes are widespread permanence or if they will be more industry-specific. While we do anticipate that there will be some retrenchment to the old way of managing Performance and Learning & Development but it seems quite likely that we will not go back to pre-February 2020 days.

When looking at the data and insights we can always learn a lot from those that are doing well, or have had a favorable experience. Though our natural tendency is to fix the broken parts, sometimes a fix is as easy as replicating or copying where things are working well. These lessons can come easily from both internal and external sources. All we need to do is be mindful of this fact, and stay curious.

Want to view the detailed report? Click here.

Want to know how Engagedly can help you with implementing continuous feedback? Then request for a live demo

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Six Tips for Choosing the Right Performance Management Software

What are the components of a good performance management system? This is a good question to ask yourself before you embark on the hunt for performance management software.

Continue reading “Six Tips for Choosing the Right Performance Management Software”

Organizations That Redefined Their Performance Management Systems

Many organizations are now understanding the importance of shifting from traditional performance reviews to more continuous and flexible performance management processes.

Continue reading “Organizations That Redefined Their Performance Management Systems”

What Should I Look For In My Performance Management Software?

Traditional performance review methods are deeply flawed. And if you recognize that, more power to you. However, before you blindly pick out performance management software on the basis of the fact that anything is better than traditional performance review methods, here are few things you need to think about.

Continue reading “What Should I Look For In My Performance Management Software?”

7 Myths Uncovered About Performance Management

During my research on performance reviews & management, I came across many articles, blogs, and a lot of opinion pieces. These articles mostly spoke about how it fosters a genuine partnership between line managers and their employees resulting in overall organizational success.

But, after some time, I noticed something. Many people more often than not conflate performance management with appraisals. Here is the thing, performance reviews are not only about appraisals, they are also about, you know performance.

Continue reading “7 Myths Uncovered About Performance Management”

Performance Management – Are You Doing It Right?

Business leaders are often seen talking about employee engagement, performance reviews, and management. Organizations constantly strive to standardize their administrative processes and tools to improve their overall efficiency. But why is it important to have a performance management system?

Continue reading “Performance Management – Are You Doing It Right?”

What is a Performance Management System?

Also read: Importance of employee performance management system

Quick Links:

Performance Management System for the Modern Workplace

Performance Management Cycle Stages

Performance Management System Components

1. Objectives And Goal Setting

Also Read: Guide To Setting Employee Goals Through Engagedly

2. Ongoing Communication

Also Read: Download the ultimate guide to employee engagement survey and templates

3. Performance Review

4. Recognizing Good Performance

5. Feedback & Suggestions

Also Read: How Important Is Feedback In Today’s World?

6. Learning & Development

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is a performance management system and how is it important?

Q2. What are the stages of a performance management cycle?

Q3. How does a performance management system help?

Q4. What is the role of the performance management system?

Q5. What is PMS in HR?

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What is a Performance Calibration Meeting?

Importance of Calibration Meeting

Who Should Participate in Performance Calibration Meetings?

Preparing for Performance Calibration Meeting

Step-wise Procedure to Calibrate Performance Ratings

Evaluation

Calibration

Avoid forceful implementation:

Feedback:

Procedure for Kicking-off Performance Calibration Meeting

Benefits of Performance Calibration Process

Identifying top performers:

Organization benefits:

Performance ratings are more accurate:

Accountability and transparency:

Establishment of a new supportive organizational culture:

Brings clarity:

Increases the feelings of equitable treatment:

Conclusion

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Performance Management – Why Do We Need It?

Also read: How to promote employee wellbeing at workplace?

Employee Engagement – Things That Work

Working across Time Zones – Find the Rhythm

Collaborative Tools and Performance Management

Also read: Performance Management Tools And Techniques To Drive Employee Engagement

The Future of WFH – Balancing Tech With Employee Engagement

Employee Recognition in the WFH Culture

What Is Performance Management?

Why Is Performance Management Important?

What Are The Key Components of Performance Management?

What Are The Benefits Of Effective Performance Management?

Principles Of Performance Management

Performance Management Best Practices

What Are The Problems With Performance Management?

What Is A Performance Management System?

Types Of Performance Management Systems

How To Get Started With Performance Management?

Technology And Performance Management?

Key Takeaways

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What is Real Time Performance Management?

Management Support

Communicate Effectively

Employee Training

Real Time Performance Management Software

Follow-Up

What is a Performance Management Software?

Also read: Top 10 Performance Management Software to use in 2022

Why Does a Business Need Performance Management Software?

● Employee Engagement

Also read: Do These 8 Things To Improve Employee Engagement

● Saves Time

● It Helps to Motivate Employees

● The Future

Attributes of an Effective Performance Management Software

1. Ability to Set Goals

Also read: 7 Reasons Why Goal Setting Is Important