5 components of the modern performance management (forget paper forms!)

Performance is a key area of focus when managing human capital, and one that becomes more challenging when interfacing with multiple businesses, new technology, social pressures, workplace dynamics, and individual personalities.

Modern business requires a dedicated, motivated, and highly professional workforce, that will share company values, reinforce the mission statement and act as a company advocate both on the job, and in social settings.

To retain motivated employees, a company needs frequent performance reviews and a focus on learning and development to promote growth and advancement opportunities. Without managing these aspects, it will be difficult to keep top talent invested in the organization.

There are multiple ways to effectively conduct a performance review. New strategies and tools are being constantly developed to make employee performance evaluation more efficient, fast, and easy to implement.

Some current challenges in Performance Management:

• Retaining top talent
• Employee motivation
• Dedication to company vision and goals
• Establishing and promoting a thriving corporate culture
• Creating unity to achieve common goals
• Maintaining flexibility while creating structure

To achieve these goals, companies are trending to change their review cycles from yearly to quarterly at a minimum, allowing management to implement continuous ad-hoc feedback. For employees, it creates a 360-degree review culture, making performance measurements more focused, and aligning employee and company goals while implementing modern performance measurements and metrics.

To accurately determine employee key performance indicators, performance reviews have to be data-driven. Without an adequate IT tool, complex enough to cover all of the necessary processes and metrics while remaining simple for the user, achieving your goals in Performance management can be impossible.

These key components supported by Lanteria HR will enhance your ability to overcome the previously mentioned challenges:

Real-Time Feedback

One of the biggest trends in performance management is the ability to receive and provide feedback employee to employee with the help of Continuous Feedback Management. An extended cycle of employee performance review that takes smaller increments of time has proven to be a tool with multiple benefits, such as:

• The simpler onboarding process for new employees;
• Increased accuracy of the performance data with a bigger sample size;
• Motivation boost and increase in productivity;
• Allows for a more transparent and trusting working culture.

Another option is a 360-degree feedback model for employees, in accordance with pre-designed templates. What is a 360 review? It’s one of the performance review examples, which is designed specifically for gathering feedback about an employee from the people they work with – peers, managers, and direct supervisors. Performance review 360 is different from a familiar employee feedback survey, but the goals for performance review remain the same. There is a certain shift of focus from solely performance assessment to a constructive analysis of employees’ behavior and work qualities.

Overall, both methods discussed have the potential to greatly improve your everyday conduct. They promote constant, ongoing self-improvement and help to distance from certain biases and flaws of annual performance reviews, like the recency bias, that drew more attention to recent events rather than employee performance during the whole year.

Performance Reviews

This function automates the review process and allows users to create reviews both for the overall organization and for specialized departments or individuals. Generate reviews for employees with pre-designed templates that include all necessary sections (Introduction and instructions, Goals, Competencies, KPIs, Job Responsibilities, Development Needs, Career goals, additional comments, or custom fields) Reviews are delivered to all participants via workflow with notifications. In addition to structured reviews, the functionality also includes ad hoc reviews. During the review, the employee can be evaluated and scored according to preset conditions. A history of previous performance reviews is stored, and available for later analysis.

While performance review templates are helpful, for a more detailed and accurate representation of employee performance they need to be edited based on the field of work and specifics of a certain position. Furthermore, custom fields can be filled with various questions that can help better determine the progress of each employee.

Questions for performance review vary depending on what type of information is the most valuable for you at the moment. However, some are included in most reviews and are mentioned in performance review tips for managers. Some of the examples of such questions are:

• Which tasks do you want to finish in the next year?
• Where would you say there is room for improvement for you?
• How do you feel about this corporate culture?
• How has your direct management helped or hinder you in your job?
• How well do you collaborate with your team?
• What do you think are your personal strength that helps you with this position the most?
• What do you want your next position to be, which new tasks would you like to try out?
• What can the company do to make your job easier?

The list goes on, and you should definitely add your own questions to it. Make sure that the information you get is helpful, can be analyzed and used for employee performance improvement plan. Don’t waste your employees’ time with abstract questions, but try to get as much valuable data as possible.

Goal Management 

This function allows for both qualitative and quantitative goals to be measured on a continuous basis. Business unit goals can be linked to company goals or be tracked independently and the same applies to employee goals. Employee goals can be added by the employee through the Self-Service portal or can be assigned by management. Goals can be updated either on a continuous basis or be restricted to the specified review period. This flexibility covers all main needs in goal management while streamlining the process and creating transparency.

Goal orientation should be one of the main features of your performance review. The goals your employee aim for should be clearly defined, time-based, and divided into easily done steps. The goals you set should also be relevant to a larger task at hand.

The time each goal can be based on may vary, which is why they are often divided into short-term and long-term ones. Furthermore, each employee might have different goals that concern different tasks they work on. Plus, each of them has personal goals and goals in professional development. For a comprehensive performance review, the rate of completion of each type of goal needs to be assessed and compared with previous results.

Competence Management

This solution provides the possibility of building a customized, hierarchical competency model and framework while assigning specific competencies to certain employees or job roles in accordance with appropriate requirements. Besides, this function allows for a built-in, criteria-based estimation model that can be done on an ongoing basis, or during the specific review cycle. The historical data and gap analysis are available to track employee progress and competency achievements.

A detailed competency model can bring a lot of benefits to the company. It is helpful not only for detailed performance reviews but for recruiting and training as well. It helps to define the goals of the company more clearly and ensure that workforce follows the established principles.

A correctly created competency model can allow to better manage the skills an employee in each position has. This allows to create well-thought-out strategies and distribute skills whenever needed.  Competencies can also be divided into different types based on a type of skill in question. For example, there are:

• Core competencies – the outline of the basic skills needed to become an employee of the company;
• Functional competencies - specific skills needed to occupy a certain position.

There is no defined template for a competency model, moreover – each company will most likely have different needs, which will result in different patterns. The main goal is to cover all the bases and have a competent employee in each position.

Reporting and Dashboards

Multiple reports and dashboards allow for informed data-based decisions in regards to employee and company performance. In addition, we provide the option to design specialized reports with the Report Builder tool for data from linked lists.

In the final stage of the performance review, it’s time to formulate and analyze the results. The resulting report can be used to evaluate each employee, let them know about their strengths and weaknesses, motivate for future goals, and promote self-improvement.

When it comes to the performance review, avoid depending solely on your personal opinions of a person. Such reviews are ineffective in terms of a result and can create a skewed representation of your employees. That’s why the 360-degree feedback model is more reliable and trustworthy. 

A performance review is not something you should take lightly, as it is an important tool, helpful in multiple areas. Without the right tools, the right result is really hard to achieve. Unfortunately, there is no “one size fits all” method for performance reviews. So, the tool you’d want to use needs to be flexible enough to adapt it to your situation.

Don’t rely on employee one on one meeting template – decide which information you need for future use, formulate the questions, and gather the feedback. Follow the trends and learn more about new methods to polish your performance review process to perfection.

Performance Solution by Lanteria covers both the trusted, standard approach to Performance management as well as upcoming industry trends, such as the Continuous AdHoc Feedback Management system.

Lanteria HR includes built-in functionality that can be set up by our consultants in accordance with individual customer requirements.  Our Development center efficiently implements standard and customized solutions, and the Support team supports our customers 24/7.

Uphold your standards and upgrade your performance with Lanteria HR.