Performance management is probably the most misunderstood term in corporate culture. We often confuse performance management with analyzing the team performance in terms of ROI only, whereas, in a bigger picture, performance management strategy should involve listening to employees, entertaining their queries and training requests, and then setting the objectives based on the inputs from respective departments. More or less, Performance management is a continuous process that needs checks-ins regularly instead of seeing through them on a quarterly basis. But how can one fit objective setting into the performance management strategy? Let’s find out through this blog.
To be true, employees don’t like it when we try to manage them. For employees, it’s more like jargon-filled, pompous preening when they are being managed without any end goal to look upon. We talk a lot about the ways to boost employee results but often tend to overlook the health of an employee-centric organizational structure. An organization that has cracked the equation of aligning the company’s mission with its employee’s objectives is the one that succeeds. In the absence of the same, employees feel like they’re running on a hamster wheel without a purpose, and leaders are managing their work with no mission in their hands.
Employees want feedback, positive or constructive. They appreciate both. For each task they do, they like managers to respond so that employees can cope up with the challenges and develop new skills. This is where managers can make the most of the chunks- by informing the analytics and using them to make decisions of fitting the objectives into the performance management strategy.
Here are some golden ways to remodel your performance management strategy:
1. Your Performance Management strategy must be comprehensive:
In order to make your objective setting fit in the performance management strategy, you need to make it comprehensive. A manager usually overlooks the performance of employees and thus fails to judge the combination of the skills and capabilities that an individual put in the context of a job. This is why performance management strategy should accurately tell everyone of the skills and capabilities by cohesion.
A PMS works well only when aligned with the employees, resources, and teams to meet their strategic objectives.
> Achieving individual employee goals along with the organizational objectives.
> Enhancing the skills and personal development of employees
> Encouraging the work that helps in fulfilling the business goals.
2. The Performance Management strategy must be efficient:
While making a performance management strategy, not aligning it with goals makes things go south in most cases. This way, companies end up lessening the performance instead of increasing it. A performance management strategy that has undefined goals is bound to take longer and provide no actionable output.
Long story short, once your performance management strategy is made, it should be implemented well and efficiently on the ground, not only as a flurry of paperwork.
3. The Performance Management strategy should elevate performance:
Traditional practices of performance management focused more on making sure that the subordinates were meeting the basic performance standards and expectations. An effective performance management system should link the individual’s performance to the organization’s strategic and individual’s performance and be structured in actionable terms. The system should provide managers’ input on how to improve, yet emphasize taking responsibility to drive strategic objectives and current initiatives forward.
4. The Performance Management Process should pay attention to coaching and development:
The process of your performance management enrollment should focus more on developing the basic skills. When you coach employees on the new skills needed to sustain in the industry, your employees feel valued and develop a sense of belongingness. However, just coaching employees is not enough; the PMS system must have coaching conversations associated with leadership as well. Providing feedback to others is a skill that doesn’t come naturally to everyone; thus, managers need to acquire this skill through formal learning methods.
5. Compensation should not be in the Driver’s seat:
In order to fit your objectives into your performance management strategy, compensation should not be a driving factor in the organization. As per HBR, compensation should never be the ONLY source of motivation for employees. Compensation and appraisals can be the by-product of performance management strategy, but the betterment of employees’ skill set should remain on the front foot. Not denying the fact that compensation and incentives can be a strong reinforcer to work a little harder for some employees, but keeping only raise on the center stage will not do any positive in the objective fulfillment.
6. Make Communication the Key:
Effective Communication is important for continuous performance management. When managers communicate within the teams with their employees, they become more aware of their team’s low and high points. Thus, leaders who communicate better are more likely to solve the forthcoming challenges (if any) by opting for the best possible measure. In any business and industry, Communication helps you gain insights into what is done and what can be done better. Once the analysis is done, managers can create the roadmap for filling the gaps by working on goal attainment strategies.
7. Empower your Performance management system with OKRs
The idea is simple: when you want to compile the objective setting with the performance management system key results can function as an elixir to fill the loopholes of your PMS system. Check-ins, which are an indispensable part of the OKR framework, offer a weekly or biweekly opportunity to discuss progress on priorities and exchange input on performance. There are many organizations like Google, Adobe, OLA that gained success through the framework of Objectives and Goals Settings. If done properly, OKRs can prove to be a revolutionary factor in changing how your employees see the Performance management system.
Final Take:
Organizations that get performance management aligned to the objective setting are the ones that emerge as formidable competitive machines. Getting to know performance management objectives is a tiny but essential part of making the system work effectively. When we introduce the performance management system with the employees, it’s essential to combine it with the attainment of the personal and professional goals that employees are going to get along the way.
Gaurav Sabharwal
CEO of JOP
Gaurav is the CEO of JOP (Joy of Performing), an OKR and high-performance enabling platform. With almost two decades of experience in building businesses, he knows what it takes to enable high performance within a team and engage them in the business. He supports organizations globally by becoming their growth partner and helping them build high-performing teams by tackling issues like lack of focus, unclear goals, unaligned teams, lack of funding, no continuous improvement framework, etc. He is a Certified OKR Coach and loves to share helpful resources and address common organizational challenges to help drive team performance. Read More