The intention of performance management is to be an ongoing, strategic process of aligning an organization’s goals and employees’ contributions through reviewing employee performance, supporting professional growth, and improving outcomes. However, if you ask employees, managers, and HR teams you might hear a less than glowing description of their experience of performance management.
It’s not achieving the basic goals of improving workplace performance, providing meaningful recognition, or increasing employee retention.
Despite the best efforts of HR teams in various organizations, it is all too often that employees and supervisors alike find common ground in despising performance evaluations.
This problem is driven by a substantial disconnect between the intention of the evaluation and its impact in practice. HR professionals want the best for their people. They want to help them grow and thrive. Yet, the current tools and resources inhibit that vision.
It might sound something like this:
Uninspiring: In a study of more than 60 million employees, Gallup uncovered that only 2 in 10 employees strongly agree that their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work1. Beyond that, it has been shown to actually undermine the motivation of high performers.
Resource Draining: An estimated $2.4-$35 million annually is wasted on lost time spent on traditional, ineffective approaches to performance evaluations for a companies with 10,000 employees.
Inaccurate: Over 75% of managers, employees, and heads of HR report feeling that PM results are ineffective and/or inaccurate.
Infrequent: Nearly half of employees report they receive feedback from their manager a few times a year or less and their performance is reviewed annually or less frequently.
Awkward: Employees and managers alike often describe performance review interactions as awkward or stiff. The formality of the process feels high stakes for everyone. Despite their best intentions, most managers do not have the training and support to facilitate honest, productive, compassionate conversations and it shows.
Frequent feedback: Only providing feedback during annual reviews are way too infrequent to create a culture of continuous growth or enhance role clarity. Managers should be providing feedback in some form on performance weekly or more. Sound time consuming? It doesn’t have to be. Weekly check ins can be short, informal and paperwork free if you want – this proactive approach will save you time in the long run. Head to our blog post here to learn more about giving effective feedback.
Future-oriented: Feedback should focus on recent experiences and future opportunities for improvement, not a laundry list of ancient history. Discuss the career growth your employee is interested in and how you can support them in moving towards that.
Strengths-based: People thrive when they can leverage their strengths. Invest in knowing, growing, and recognizing your employees existing strengths.
Purpose-driven: Take the time to help your employees explore connections between their tasks and their larger sense of meaning in the world. Look for opportunities to shift roles and tasks to where your employee’s strengths and purpose reside. Did you know we are developing an assessment to help people identify where they find meaning at work? Check it out here!
People are complex. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that people development is complex. However, a frequent, future-oriented, strengths-based, purpose-driven approach keeps the human in human resources. Performance management is overdue for a makeover, don’t you think?
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