7 Employee Performance Management Strategies That Get Results
Remember the seven dwarves? Those guys worked hard! They were more effective miners than people twice their size. (Except for Sleepy, who brought down team productivity, and Sneezy, who raised everyone’s healthcare premiums).
The Dwarves were entirely self-motivated, with only light supervision from Doc. Few productive teams operate with that amount of autonomy, motivation, and collaborative effort.
In this blog article, we’ll share how performance management has changed over the past few years, why it matters to achieving business objectives, and seven proven strategies for improving performance.
Why employee performance management matters today
Without talented and dedicated people, a business is little more than a great idea. While this seems obvious, companies didn’t always focus on employee performance management to stimulate growth and satisfaction as they do now. Over the last few years, developments in this area have brought this truism home like never before.
Low unemployment rates and a critical need for technological skills have created a war for talent. As a result, businesses recognize that to stay competitive they must find ways to bring out their employees’ best performance by ensuring they feel a sense of belonging and purpose.
Our posts on employee engagement and management trends have been top performers for the last three years, showing that the term consistently resonates with managers, company leaders, and HR professionals. But employee engagement is really a metric to understand the success of your overall employee performance management strategy.
It’s crucial to improved productivity
Companies are always looking for ways to improve employee productivity, and they can learn from high-performing organizations. Companies like Apple, Google, and Netflix are 40% more productive than the average company by using a mix of employee performance management strategies that focus on organizational structure and trust-building.
According to research by Bain & Company, how companies construct their teams has a significant impact on productivity. Apple and Google, for example, dedicate 95% of their top talent to essential business functions instead of spreading top talent across many areas.
“It took 600 Apple engineers fewer than two years to develop, debug, and deploy iOS 10,” Bain’s Michael Mankins told Fast Company. “Contrast that with 10,000 engineers at Microsoft that took more than five years to develop, debut, and ultimately retract Vista. The difference is in the way these companies chose to construct their teams.”
Mankins also pointed out that extending trust to employees improved productivity and supported employee growth and development at top companies. He said organizational rules and processes often prevent people from getting things done or improving in their roles. Netflix avoids a typical process issue — expense management — by trusting its employees. The company has no expense policy. Instead, it trusts employees to act responsibly.
“The company is telling employees, ‘We assume you are not here to rip off the company, and we’re not going to put in place processes that consume human capital, waste time, and zap energy,’” Mankins explains.
Look for more companies to mimic the leaders in productivity by organizing teams to improve output in critical areas and eliminating some bureaucracy by trusting their employees more.
The old ways of managing performance don’t work
In 2017, Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends reported that 70% of companies were in the process of reinventing their HR performance management process. A year later, 76% of companies surveyed have reinvented their performance management to be more continuous.
Organizations realize the old way of doing performance management no longer works (something we frequently cover on this blog). Today’s workforce desires authentic relationships between employees and managers and opportunities for employee development and advancement. This generation has ushered in the disruptive age of continuous performance management.
In the future, expect more organizations to embrace continuous performance management. As Josh Bersin noted in his article, HR Technology in 2018:
“Continuous performance management is possible; it works and can transform your company. We’re not talking about doing away with ratings; rather, we are talking about building a new, ongoing process for goal setting, coaching, evaluation, and feedback.”
Very few software solutions integrate all of the HR technology tools companies need to develop and advance their employees by continually checking in throughout the year. Look for continuous employee performance management solutions that incorporate objective (OKR) setting and management, weekly feedback surveys, 1-on-1 meetings, and quarterly reviews.
Continuous performance management software will make it easier for managers and employees to map out career trajectories collaboratively and provide the coaching and mentoring people need to become their best selves.
Performance management impacts the employee experience
While much attention has been focused on improving employee engagement, organizations are shifting their focus to improving the overall employee experience.
Even though 83% of HR managers agree that employee experience is essential to the organization’s success, not everyone understands what employee experience is. It is more than perks and vacation days, as 15Five co-founder Shane Metcalf noted in his article in HR Technologist.
“The employee experience is the human experience: the thoughts, feelings, emotions, decisions, and overall qualitative experience that anybody has while working at a company. It’s how someone feels, the quality of their relationships and communications, and the level of performance that they are supported in achieving,” Shane said.
Creating a positive employee experience requires long-term commitment and a mindset shift that cascades from the C-suite down. Instead of focusing on getting the most out of employees, leaders consider how they can help employees be their best. This means equipping people to meet their goals, implementing effective employee training and development strategies, and helping employees feel more passionate about their work. It takes into account how to design work culture, technology, and the physical environment.
The employee experience concept is gaining traction and has been shown to improve employee involvement and employer brand commitment. Organizations such as Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Ralph Lauren, Adobe, and Airbnb have made employee experience a crucial part of their employee development strategy. Look for more companies to do the same.
People analytics are critical to decision-making
According to the 2018 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report, 84% of leaders surveyed said analytics was one of the most important trends. As companies try to improve their ability to lead people, they rely on data to provide insights that can help with issues like productivity and employee engagement.
Regardless of how well-meaning a company’s performance intentions, analytics can show what a company’s results really are. This can be a useful mirror, particularly when companies want to tackle diversity and pay equity issues.
HR is investing heavily in the area of people analytics, Deloitte reported, with more than 70% of respondents saying they are currently in the middle of major projects that will help them integrate data into their decision-making. AI and robotics will fuel much of the people analytics, the Deloitte report said. AI will become an HR helpmate, identifying and interacting with recruiting candidates and helping employees explore career options.
As companies collect more and better data on turnover, team interaction, wellbeing, and employee feedback, managers can make more informed decisions and improve the overall employee experience.
Focus on individualized employee support
Personalization has become a crucial part of creating a delightful customer experience, and organizations will use the same approach in their performance management efforts. A one-size-fits-all management approach can’t bring out the best in employees because every employee is different.
Workforces are more diverse than ever, with teams consisting of people from various generations, backgrounds, cultures, and locations, with the increasing prevalence of remote work arrangements.
Relying on individual data and feedback conversations provides managers the tools for tailoring their performance management system, curating employee development strategies, and customizing other aspects of work for each employee.
For example, Eric Lesser and Maria-Paz Barrientos of IBM write about how personalizing the work environment can make a difference in their article in Workforce:
“Some employees are fine working in open, collaborative spaces; others are distracted. Giving employees options where they work, depending on the task, can affect short-term productivity and longer-term engagement.”
Taking a personalized approach to motivation can help employees meet their performance goals, which in turn will boost team performance.
A streamlined approach to learning and employee development
According to Gallup, 87% of Millennials cite access to professional development and career growth opportunities as the most critical factor in a job. Look for companies to respond to this need by providing more employee training and development opportunities — but not the traditional kind.
Organizations are moving toward micro-learning, which is short, informal, self-directed, and mobile-optimized content on single topics. These can be brief videos, webinars, podcasts, or even games that provide learning materials in an easy-to-absorb format.
When you allow employees to do what they do best, it makes your team more innovative and productive. Employee training software also puts staff in control of their development so they can add to their skillset with on-demand content.
Rethink job roles to increase employee growth and development
Research shows that 60% of employees want the ability to do what they do best, regardless of their role. They are driven by purpose and managers who actively promote their development. What does this mean?
It could signal the end of traditional job roles.
Many companies are moving to “job crafting,” which describes building job roles around an employee’s strengths and interests. Tom Haak, founder and director of The HR Trend Institute, describes how it works in his article, The End of Static Jobs:
“When there is an assignment, there is a process to look at the capabilities (qualitative and quantitative) required for this specific assignment. The wishes, needs, and capabilities of people connected to the organization are known or captured as part of the process… Teams are not built of people with specific fixed jobs, but of people who have specific skills that are needed to deliver the assignment.”
Of course, this shift will rely on organizations using two of the employee performance management trends mentioned earlier — (#4 people analytics and #5 individualized support) — to understand employees’ specific capabilities and desires.
7 ways to make an impact on employee performance
We’ve talked a lot about why a focus on unlocking employee performance is so critical to business. Now, let’s dig into how to make it happen in practice. Below are seven principles that are guaranteed to have an impact.
- Ask questions
Asking questions sparks self-reflection and drives action. This process allows managers to know where employees are winning and where they are struggling.
Here are a couple of great questions to ask your employees:
- What do you need in order to have an incredible Q1? Are you clear what success looks like for your role this quarter?
- Is there something you’d want to do more autonomously or less autonomously? How so?
- Build trusting relationships
According to SHRM’s Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement Report, 2 of the 5 most critical factors that contributed to employee satisfaction were (1) communication between employees and senior management, and (2) the relationship between employees and their direct supervisors. Trust is the cornerstone of any successful relationship.
- Coach your team
Great managers believe that all people have an innate capacity for learning and growth. That’s why they have shifted away from being controlling bosses to being supportive coaches. Employees who are given guidance and support become self-motivated, bring higher energy into the office, and are more loyal to the business.
- Hold people accountable
Without knowing the rules people won’t know how to play. Everyone on the team should understand and agree on all of the goals and expectations for any given project. Having a clear agreement on what must be done and by when eliminates the possibility of miscommunication that erodes trust and destroys relationships.
Learn how to keep your top talent and call forth their best week after week.
- Recognize employee performance
We all want to be acknowledged for our good work, but nobody likes to brag about their efforts. Let employees know that you see their progress on specific projects and their growth in general. It boosts morale and encourages more of the same. And if you want to take it a step further, here are 121 ways to reward employees for a job well done.
- Have effective meetings
Whether you are gathering together the entire team or having a one-on-one meeting, gathering information beforehand is critical. Meeting time should be spent on providing feedback and making decisions on information you already have.
- Check-in more often
We have been talking a lot lately about the need to transform annual performance reviews. Whether you decide to get rid of them altogether or merely augment the process, one thing is clear: having conversations about performance only once or twice a year doesn’t work. Managers cannot accurately grade performance, and they certainly cannot improve it.
What’s ahead for performance management?
The key distinction for performance management strategy in the coming years is a focus on the whole employee. This ranges from physical, emotional, and mental well-being to facilitating personal and professional development.
Continuous performance management will be the focus as more companies embrace a more agile and data-driven approach to helping their people succeed. People analytics tools and other HR technology that supports performance management will help managers be more involved in every aspect of the employee lifecycle.
As more organizations integrate employee performance management trends and adopt HR best practices of ongoing conversations, employee recognition, and reforming their annual performance review process, managers will build authentic work relationships and nurture employee development and growth.
Ultimately, organizations won’t just produce positive business outcomes; by helping their employees realize their best selves, they will have a more positive impact on customers, managers, investors, and the world at large.
Unlock high performance with 15Five
Learn how your team can share real-time feedback, manage goals, recognize employees, and more with 15Five’s human-centered platform. You can also check out our Slideshare for more on building a high-performance culture.
