Identifying familiar mistakes in performance management will boost your business’s productivity significantly.
1. Ignoring the signals
The performance management process is like a web connecting many successful aspects of a business. When the business operation starts to show downsides, signals will appear everywhere, from the employee engagement to the growth rate of the business. The key point is to address the signals popping up everywhere and trace back to the core cause.
“High turnover and low employee engagement are two common-sense yet tell-tale signs that traditional performance-management strategies aren’t working,” says Vip Sandhir, CEO and founder of HighGround, world-class employee engagement software provider.
Vip Sandhir, CEO and founder of HighGround
According to Sandhir, the decrease in management statistics alerts unhappy labor force whom is not receiving enough ongoing feedback. The personnel don’t know whether they are doing a good job or not, and might get annoyed with the current task.
“Stagnant growth and lagging adoption of new skills shows that employees aren’t working with their managers enough to truly meet their goals and advance in their careers,” Sandhir points out.
So what is the lesson here? The tracking statistics show a close involvement with the signals of “uncertainties”. Solutions should be given immediately, or even prior, in case the statistics are turning red.
2. Setting up unclear objectives
“In my experience, the most common mistake employers make when evaluating employee performance is failing to establish a clearly defined set of goals and key performance indicators,” says Brandon Seymour, CEO and founder of Beymour Consulting.
CEO and founder of Beymour Consulting
“When evaluating the performance of an individual employee, it’s important to assign a certain set of goals that pertain to a specific role,” Seymour says. “This way, organizations can see how individual employees are performing independently, and employees can understand which specific aspects of their performance need improvement.”
There is abundant amount goal-tracking software, it’s illogical not to implement one to encourage managers to design specific goal for their team. However, in order to utilize these tools sufficiently, managers must fully understand the impact of certain skills, in order to conclude an advanced measurement.
In order to simplify the process, you can refer PropleTrek, a software supporting users to set up objectives and align them with the KPIs. Both staffs and directors can receive real-time information about an individual productivity. Both sides can comprehend the situation clearly and easily identify must-focus area, in order to achieve a specific goal.
Find more about PeopleTrek software here.
3. Applying subjective scoring system
Scoring systems are usually implemented in performance management for quantitative measurement and results comparison. Scoring a certain skill on the scale from 1 to 5 provides employees and managers a clear view on attention-needed area. However, there is a noticeable flaw with this feedback method: the lack of scoring unity.
“Often, scores are given arbitrarily, with managers varying in how tough they are at ranking team members,” says Lori Scherwin, founder of Strategize That. “Some are fair, some are easy [in order to promote] goodwill; and others are harsh, to generate higher productivity.”
If there is not any set standard, performance scoring does not create much value for employees and managers. “[Random scoring] leads to mistrust and a lack of belief in the system,” Scherwin points out. “Ultimately, when performance management is unfair – or even seems unfair – you lose the engagement of your team, which can cause negative feelings and turnover.”
There is a noticeable flaw with scoring system: the lack of scoring unity
Scherwin recommends approaching performance management in a balance manner, instead of just scoring people. Thus, instead of identifying and focusing on negativities, managers should discuss positivity and reward accordingly for employees to precisely recognize strengths.
Performance management is a process for managers to conduct daily, not once in a while. Negative habits are actually disrupting the management process. In order to recover productivity successfully, obsolete habits from the past must be eliminated totally to make room for new positive changes.
Le & Associates
