Your Brief Guide To Continuous Performance Management
- Written by Business Daily Media
Engaging and motivating employees is one of the most important things on managers' minds these days. It can be a challenge to keep employees engaged at work. Disengaged employees don't perform as well and tend to leave at higher rates than those who enjoy what they're doing. There's one "ace in the hole" when it comes to retaining your top talent, however: performance management. Instead of the old fashioned buy annual review, performance management focuses on regular feedback and management of employees throughout their careers instead of focusing on occasional reviews. Today, we'll outline the basics of the performance management process - what it is, how it works, and how companies can use it to get the most out of their teams. Read on for more.
What is Performance Management?
Performance management is a process where employers track and manage employee productivity. It involves setting goals for employees, measuring their progress towards those goals, and providing feedback on their progress both good and bad. The goal of a performance management system is to ensure employees are productive and meeting their objectives. It's also intended to provide them with feedback, growth, and ways to hone their skills. With performance management, the idea is to help employees grow with the company, not to discourage them or make them feel like the company is not the right fit for them. With the right performance management processes in place, your employees can thrive and grow instead of stagnating at a company where they might not feel as if they are valued. It works especially well in conjunction with employee recognition and rewards programs, and regular follow-up from management.
How Does Performance Management Work?
To use the performance management process effectively, employees need to understand how to plan, monitor, and review employee objectives. They need to make it a collaborative process and have regular meetings. Check-ins are an important part of this. The check-in is a quick, simple interaction between the management of the employee to discuss goals and accomplishments. It can also be a platform for feedback. These are integral to ensuring Performance Management works. It's also important to implement a performance management system that can help keep everything together in a sort of hub environment. A computerized system is perfect for reviews, performance counseling, and any other aspects of the comprehensive performance management process. When you want to ensure your employees are meeting their goals and performing to their best, the performance management process can be helpful when you do it right.
Setting Goals
There are three main steps in the performance management process: setting goals, tracking progress ,and providing feedback. The first of these, goal setting, is incredibly important. To succeed, employees need to have a clear direction, transparency, and know what they're doing. This can help them set effective goals that will help them perform well. Goals can be as varied as hitting sales targets, completing a project by a certain time frame, or simply working their way up into the company. Goals set the basis for the employees performance in general. Managers need to monitor and assess the goals to understand how they can help the employee achieve them. This is part of the planning process in performance management. During check-ins, managers can discuss these goals and establish new ones if needed. Employers set specific goals for employees to achieve as well, which could be individual or team goals,depending on the structure of the company. Whatever the case, goals are the first step in monitoring performance management and helping employees put their best performance forward.
Tracking Goal Progress
After your employees set their goals, it's up to management to do reviews and check-ins to track gold progress. There are software tools like Slack and Zoom that are perfect for this, as well as in person evaluations to ensure goals are progressing productively. In order for goals to be effective, employees need to show actual progress as they go. That's where performance management processes can really step in to help. Remember that management is merely tracking the goal's progress, they're actively encouraging the employee to meet their goals as they previously defined. If they notice that progress isn't happening, there might be some changes needed or required that the manager can help the employee figure out. Ultimately, this helps create a better atmosphere of feedback and achievement for the employee.
Providing Feedback
Feedback is the most important part of any performance management process. A mix of both positive and constructive feedback can help employees improve their performance over time. Formal reviews, reviews of different intervals, and check-ins are all part of this process. Conversations need to happen between the employee and manager as needed. Once managers get a chance to measure the progress employees make on their goals, they can provide reasonable feedback that will help them perform better now and into the future. Feedback is an integral process to any business, and should not be overlooked as one of the most essential aspects of performance management at any organization.
