Ultimate Guide to Objective and Key results – OKR Meaning and Examples
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To manage employee performance, the traditional practice revolved around holding a performance review once each year. During these reviews, employees received evaluations from their managers in the form of numeric scores. This setup was unduly time-consuming and required a legion of effort on the part of the leaders and managers. No wonder it was deemed to be extrinsic, meaningless, and a waste of time plus effort. Organizational leaders left, right, and center are briskly equipping their organization with a performance management tool that drives employee engagement for guiding their organization towards its objectives. How? Stay hooked until the end to know how you can do the same for your organization.
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As per a survey, about 95% of the managers report being unhappy with the traditional performance management framework. When it comes to the employees, 51% of them believed that annual reviews are inaccurate and 53% suggested that it fails to motivate them, let alone boost their engagement. Most of these organizations have been using the same systems for more than 60 years now, but alas! The need for today’s workforce has changed rapidly. Now it’s imperative for organizations to align their strategies and focus on employee engagement if they aspire to achieve their goals and cultivate success. Such is the need for adopting a performance management software that will assist you to replace the lack of strategic focus among your employees and improve their engagement through transparency, feedback, and recognition.
If your organization has a culture where employees feel disengaged and teams are misaligned, it’s about time for you to take action and measure the effectiveness of your current performance management software. Before measuring its effectiveness, it’s paramount for you to understand how to develop an effective performance management software that’ll provide meaningful and measurable insight into employee performance while encountering the expectations and needs of today’s employees.
What is the modern approach to the performance management system?
Performance management is an ongoing methodology for establishing a motivating organizational culture where your employees and managers constantly review themselves and sail concurrently to accomplish the strategic objectives of the organization. Using a performance management system will enable your organization to better understand your employee productivity and performance. It will assist you in tracking, analyzing, and evaluating your workforce and ensure that the goals are met and the concerns are timely addressed.
Millennials constitute the largest portion of the workforce globally. They are creative, tech-savvy, and picky about their workplace. To do a better job at getting them on board and keeping them, organizations have to rethink their strategies when it comes to performance management and employee engagement. You might argue that the traditional performance management tool was great at storing employee data and automating performance reviews, however, they fell short when organizations wanted to achieve their top priority – making their employees feel more connected and engaged with their organization.
One of your organization’s strategic goals would be to keep its key talent, isn’t it? However, tracking performance reviews alone isn’t enough to achieve this. Your employees now want to be told that they are valued and appreciated by the organization and leaders. Frequent feedback and recognition for accomplishments through performance management tools will help you in augmenting employee retention.
Long gone are the days of top-down hierarchy and ratings as every organization is constantly veering towards a bottom-up and feedback-centric approach. No wonder there’s been an ever-soaring demand for an agile, easy-to-use performance management tool that will help the employees feel more engaged and satisfied with the organization. The more engaged an employee is with your organization, the better they’ll perform, obviously!
How to develop performance management software to drive employee engagement?
Modern solutions for performance management are employee-centric and generally employee self-service systems. It means that all the team members use them, unlike the old framework that was governed by the HR managers. These systems should provide:
1. Goal setting
It is substantial for you to define performance objectives clearly as it is the first step on the ladder towards increased employee engagement. Researches back the fact that setting specified goals will impact your employee’s performance in an utmost positive manner. As per Deloitte, organizations that look at their goals at each quarter experience a 30% better performance and retention than organizations looking at their goals annually. To drive employee engagement, a suitable performance management tool should enable the user to establish objectives and key results (OKRs and KPIs) and manage them continuously.
2. Ongoing 360-degree feedback
Feedback gathering is one of the most valuable features of the modern PMS. Constant feedback serves as the second pillar of the modern performance management approach. For you to drive engagement and retention in your organization, providing feedback is imperative. However, to be effective, feedback has to be regular and on spot. Employees now want immediate feedback for their efforts and they value feedback not only from their leaders but from their peers as well. When employees get the platform where they receive and give constructive feedback, their engagement is bound to shoot up!
3. Schedule check-ins
The check-ins are a recurring communication practice that was introduced by Adobe as they binned their annual review approach. The motive behind check-ins is to get managers and employees to have dialogues about the objectives. This approach helped Adobe in making their workforce more engaged and therefore, productive. Now, these check-ins don’t need to be a long and stressful process as they are meant to be an easy way for you to gain an understanding of what your employees are working on and the issue they experience from time to time so that you can assist them in resolving it without having to wait for the year’s end.
4. Employee recognition
Most employers forget to appreciate their employees for their efforts, but specifically, remember to criticize them when something is done wrong. Such a practice will not only foster disengagement in your employees but create a sense of dissatisfaction amongst them. So, make sure to let no chance pass by to appreciate and recognize the efforts of your employees. Granted this ability by a performance management software, you can change your organization’s culture to the one that promises employee appreciation for even the slightest of their progress.
For you to drive your organization to better performance, your employees have to be aligned, engaged, and motivated towards the priorities of the organization. A modern and effective performance management system is the route that you need to take to drive your organization to the desired success. Contact us now for all your queries and needs pertaining to performance management.
