Performance Management

 Performance management is a strategic approach to creating and sustaining improved performance in employees, leading to an increase in the effectiveness of companies. By focusing on the development of employees and the alignment of company goals with team and individual goals, managers can create a work environment that enables both employees and companies to thrive. While performance management can sound deceptively simple, with just four steps as outlined above, the process itself is very complicated. That’s why we have put together this list of best practices for performance management. Think of it like the essentials of performance management – these will help make sure that your employee performance management system is performing the way it should.

1. Identify the goals of your performance management initiatives

As you are creating your performance management program, you need to understand what you want to accomplish.

Asking the following questions can help you:

• Is increased productivity a priority?

• Does your organization want to identify leaders from within and develop them?

• Do you want to streamline the compensation process?

• Are you seeking to improve employee retention or engagement?

• If you know what you want your program to do, it will be easier to build it to accomplish that goal.

2. Define and describe each role

We mentioned this above, but it bears repeating. It is much harder for an employee to be successful if they don’t know exactly what is expected from them, how they should do it, and what the end result should look like.

3. Pair goals with a performance plan

As you set goals, develop a performance plan to go alongside. Year-long goals often fail, as they are too large and employees can get overwhelmed before they start. A performance plan helps them visualize their path, making it much more likely that they will meet their goal.

4. Monitor progress towards performance targets

Review key areas of performance. Use metrics and analytics to your advantage, tracking how goals are progressing to make sure that interventions can happen early, if necessary.

5. Coaching should be frequent

The point of coaching is to help identify and solve problems before they get too big. If it’s not frequent, it’s not going to help at all. Monthly or quarterly meetings should be held to help keep employees on the right track (Valamis, 2022).

References

Valamis, 2022. Performance Management. [Online]
Available at: https://www.valamis.com/hub/performance-management
[Accessed 7 December 2022].