An empowered workforce needs these seven performance management factors
Once you’ve assembled a quality team through a finely-tuned recruitment and onboarding process, you need to ensure team members thrive so that your organization can be successful. And employees flourish in workplaces where goals are achievable, meaningful careers are created, and top talent is molded.
Below are seven critical elements of performance management that will help you maximize organizational efficiency and performance:
1. Employee self-appraisal
If a team member is struggling with meeting a specific goal (for example, time management), self-appraisal is an empowering technique that enables them to partner with their manager to positively analyze the challenge, implement new procedures, and realize success. Additionally, reviewing employees’ self-assessments can provide useful insights into the ways that they are communicating, completing tasks, and balancing work-life objectives. Self-assessments can also bring to light untapped but useful skillsets or the need for more training.
2. Constructive guidance
Team members need you to help them identify and focus on ways to enhance their current strengths and uncover hidden talents. You can also guide team members toward optimal performance by encouraging them to cultivate a growth mindset. Employees with growth mindsets are more open to opportunities to learn and to practice new skills. However, employees with fixed mindsets are more concerned with not looking incompetent and so tend to avoid situations where there’s the risk of blundering (for example, mastering new skills).
3. Challenging conversations
Discussing weaknesses or shortcomings can be difficult. However, it’s the best way for managers to help team members to overcome those shortcomings and keep advancing. It’s not about pointing out failures; it’s about providing critiques and suggestions that can help an employee be more successful.
4. Regular performance reviews
Make performance reviews an ongoing process rather than a once-a-year event. To be truly successful, employees need to regularly examine their progress. Understanding the challenges and triumphs that individual employees face throughout the year will enable you to have significant impact on their performance and consequently, your organization’s overall prosperity.
5. Employee surveys
Historically, employment surveys were conducted annually or whenever a team member departed. However, making quality employee surveys a part of your review process throughout the year can give you a clearer picture of your team’s functionality and cohesiveness as well as the general work environment. Pay attention to the wording in your surveys. Properly-worded questions will produce more accurate responses and give you better insights.
6. Efficient, holistic processes
A quality performance management platform allows you to gather information that will help you create the best possible team. For example, you can use quantitative analyses to compare an employee’s past skill set with new achievements to see what’s working and what improvements need to be made.
Streamlining the performance management process makes it easier to deepen its impact. By letting go of the traditional stacks of paper and instead recording information online, users can more easily view, analyze, and use data to drive action.
7. Not just feedback, but also “feed-forward”
Feedback involves looking at the past and seeing what can be adapted or changed for the better. Your performance management review process should include looking to the future. Create a goal-setting outline and process to help you and your team move forward. This is the final factor in helping your organization move toward its goals, cultivate creativity and careers, and convert talent to a growth mindset.
Learn how to implement these performance management factors and more. Contact us.