Performance management is a vital part of good employee development. Getting it right can unlock huge amounts of potential among employees, by giving them the tools to improve their performance at work.
There are plenty of horror stories about bad performance management. From irrelevant feedback to inappropriate comments, most individuals will be able to summon up a story from their past where an appraisal, review or feedback session struck them with horror and stayed with them for years to come.
Doing performance management well is not difficult, yet it’s something that many businesses seem to struggle with. We know that the best way for a person to develop is to understand where their drawbacks are and what steps they can take to improve them – yet many businesses still rely on formulaic approaches to performance management that often raise more questions than they answer.
Over half (56 per cent) of employees we spoke to for the recent annual Performance Management Report* told us they receive feedback only once or twice a year, including 19 per cent of those who said they feedback conversations less than once a year. Meanwhile, another fifth (19 per cent) said they only have performance conversations quarterly.
That’s a stark contrast with what managers say – 27 per cent said they have performance related conversations with their team once a week, and 45 per cent said they did so once or twice a month. Only 4 per cent said they were having performance conversations once a year.
This is a significant disconnect between managers and employees – so what’s going on?
What is a performance related conversation?
One of the reasons for the above discord between how often managers say that they have performance management conversations, and how often employees say the same, could be a miscommunication over what constitutes a performance related conversation.
It’s likely that most managers are indeed having regular conversations with their team members – but the question is whether or not these conversations are really meaningful for the employee. Are these chats actually helping the employee do better? Are the outcomes of these conversations recorded and referred back to? Are managers getting to the heart of underlying issues and setting clear and realistic expectations with their teams?
Without managers’ training in best practice performance management, the answer is ‘probably not’ – so in that case, what’s passing for performance management in these organisations?
Why performance management is important
Good performance management is about allowing every employee to improve their performance at work. It’s a simple concept – by giving regular, useful feedback along with clear goals and access to training to support development, managers can develop their teams to make them better at their jobs.
Not only that, but good performance management can support workplace satisfaction, lower stress levels, better management processes and greater visibility over the workforce direction. It helps support productivity and profitability, and requires little more than an investment in time to deliver.
What works best in performance management
The most impactful performance management approach requires three core steps:
- Setting good quality, relevant goals.
- Providing access to coaching and training.
- Giving constructive, quality feedback in the moment.
Without these three core components, performance management won’t fulfil its true potential, yet many performance management approaches don’t deliver the complete approach. Most often, it’s step three which is missing. That can be for many reasons, but cultural norms is a major factor. If it’s not usual to give and receive regular ‘in the moment’ feedback in your workplace, then the first step is to work towards making this the case.
Receiving feedback from all sides – managers, peers and juniors – is a really important part of personal development. But one of the main issues with receiving feedback is how closely it’s linked to our self image. Pitched wrongly or unconstructively, feedback can trigger resentment, defensiveness and upset.
The first step, then, is to foster a supportive environment where giving and receiving feedback is the norm and it’s done in a fair and constructive manner. Getting senior buy-in and trickling this down through the organisation is paramount.
Can ‘feedback circles’ help?
Interestingly, feedback is far better received when given with context, which is why instantaneous feedback works so much better. Additionally, feedback from people who the employee trusts and respects will have a much greater impact – which is a key argument against anonymous 360 degree style appraisals, which deliver out of context feedback, given weeks, months or even years later, making it very difficult to act upon.
It’s far better to develop a system of regular feedback where the employee can seek out the timely opinions of the people they respect, no matter their level or role. This is termed a ‘feedback circle’. Feedback circles are a way of delivering regular feedback among trusted colleagues.
Importantly, the employee is in control in this scenario, and this makes a big difference to how well the feedback is received. Actively seeking out feedback and receiving it from people who are respected and valued means that the employee is far more likely to take it on board, making this a much more valuable exercise than formal appraisals or anonymous feedback.
Evolving your performance management approach
Making long term changes to a performance management approach is not an easy process. While software can be deployed quickly to help with the administrative side of performance management, changing the culture around performance conversations takes more time.
HR teams will need to normalise the culture of giving and receiving feedback by making the process easy and accessible to all, and by demonstrating the value of said feedback. This process can be time-consuming, but it is the only way to deliver a true evolution of performance management.
By making it usual for people to ask for and receive feedback – not just from their managers, but from all sides – you can create a supportive and helpful environment where people understand that feedback is given to help them develop and not to criticise.
For this to happen, managers need to be supported by making time and budget available to them to roll out performance management processes. There is no point in giving regular quality feedback if there is no access to training, development, coaching or mentoring that will help the individual progress – whether formal training or simply freeing up internal time to dedicate to personal development. Managers need to be able to give feedback and provide helpful next steps, including goals to work towards and training to help the employee get there.
Feedback should be positioned as a way to help everyone do better at their jobs, with all the perks and benefits that come with that. Better job satisfaction, opportunities for career development and potential pay increases are all good examples of how quality performance management can improve an employee’s life.
For HR teams, the potential presented by getting performance management right is clear to see – it’s now a case of finding the right way forward for your organisation so that you can embed a modern approach in your workforce.
*Report from Advanced
