AXIOS Blog

Performance Management Process – give it up, or make it work?

  

  

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Many workplace guru’s are espousing the “no performance review” work environment, where formal review processes are shunned for a more casual process, or no process, whatsoever.  From a time & efficiency standpoint, it’s an approach that is hard to argue with.

However, from an overall organizational performance standpoint, it’s a bit hard to understand, unless your organization is a 100% sales or “production” based company and you are using daily or weekly metrics to provide feedback (which, by the way, is a performance management system).  Even then, when do you talk to your folks about their future goals, career aspirations, and ensure they are aligned with the goals of the organization, which is really the point of performance management?

Generally, it’s not so much that your Performance Management Process doesn’t work.  It’s more than likely the case your managers just aren’t good at delivering feedback and coaching their folks.  No performance matrix, behavioral or “Mission Centered” review process will fix that. 

First issue – manager coaching skills.  Get the folks some training.  Start at the top with your executive team since they need to model the behavior to ensure it flows downhill.  Next, work your managers & line supervisors into the mix.  Start with small, easily digestible & implementable steps, and work your way into a more fully formed coaching system.

Second issue – it’s a process, not an event.  While you may only set individual goals and expectations once a year, how often to you touch base on those goals & expectations?  Three months later? Six? Twelve months later? Not at all?  If your annual “review process” is really only an annual event, you are missing a lot of opportunities to take employee engagement to the next level.

Third issue – does your process integrate the key focus areas of the organization, and the team the employee works in, and the employees’ individual & professional interests?  A performance process that starts with meeting the employees’ needs, but integrates the other aspects, will ensure the employee knows that you are looking out for them first, while also ensuring their goals are aligned with the organizations goals. 

Notice how none of this is about review forms? 

An informal but regular feedback process conducted by well trained managers can go a long ways towards helping your employees and organization meet their goals.

A highly sophisticated review process with extensive tools and metrics done annually by managers with low to no skills can do just the opposite.