The pandemic has caused much confusion with performance management systems—and the responses have been telling.
In March, Facebook revealed that it would send all 45,000 workers the same ‘exceeds expectations’ performance appraisal ranking for the first two quarters. Some businesses have entirely canceled their next evaluation period. Others are scrambling to clarify last-minute improvements to their performance metrics and allocations of incentives.
Those businesses caught in an unpredictable, lopsided market climate might be the most unusual situation: they have individual departments that smash it like never before, while others are (a) busy but operating at a loss or (b) stuck without work. In this topsy-turvy, ever-shifting, uncertain-future world, how do you make performance targets fair and meaningful? What are you meant to think about bonus pay and incentives? The old metrics sometimes don’t make sense, and it is possible that adding pay to the mix would confuse people.
Many companies’ initial response tends to be a realization that their performance management processes are inefficient, challenging, and too static for a competitive high-risk marketplace. Many organizations assumed that they had modernized their method of performance management before the pandemic.
Today, however, the boardroom buzzword “agility” has finally become a pressing necessity. Whatever happens, rest assured that the marketplace will move for several months, if not years.
Some pointers can help you achieve the right performance improvement metrics. We also identified the following significant factors to be implemented that will ensure that your updated performance management plan will sail through smoothly, as a variety of obstacles will come your way when guiding your performance management activities.
Three Basic Features of Modernized Performance Management’s
Based on circumstances on the ground, the current approach to performance improvement would have to be more collaborative, flexible, and individualized:
1. Agile Goals:
- Setting and forgetting targets is not an option anymore. Our market landscape’s ongoing change and future complexity require an agile approach to target setting.
- Focus on aligning company priorities and how workers can better bring value to the organization where goals are frequently updated.
- Include an “agile mentality” that helps staff to own their priorities and anticipate improvement.
- Employees and executives should search for opportunities to pivot with improvements to the company’s needs and be rewarded for finding new ways to impact the organization positively.
- As their role shifts, managers should be given the expectation, authority, and flexibility to adapt to the team and the employee’s target set.
2. Ongoing Conversations:
Nearly half of workers claim that they receive input a few times a year or less from their boss. However, ongoing coaching discussions that build a cooperation rhythm create collective success, and growth transparency will be the only viable management style. These talks are more than just word—at weekly, monthly, and quarterly intervals; they will have distinct purposes and effects.
- A two-way communication street gets generated by great ongoing coaching conversations that make it easy to address needs and concerns and provide highly individualized recognition.
- Significant discussions and coordination, much like teamwork in any other field, require preparation and practice.
- Also, this is how trust is constructed. Managers should not just turn a switch to gain confidence; they must win it by behaving and developing a good working relationship. This was true pre-COVID but has become more relevant now.
- A line graph shows that the more regular feedback a person receives, the more engaged they are and is particularly true for those who work remotely.
- With a widespread change to remote work, ongoing coaching conversations would be so much more important to master.
3. Dynamic Adjustments to Accountability and Incentives:
- For workers compensation systems that made sense before the pandemic can now seem inhuman and needlessly painful. They may also misrepresent conduct, as specific individuals can try to game the scheme for short-term benefit. Employees should not be disciplined when a metric is no longer fair. Don’t keep workers in the current market climate to a measure or reward that doesn’t make sense.
- As a source of employee motivation, many companies rely heavily on financial rewards. This will be difficult in an unpredictable marketplace. Performance rewards are incredibly tricky because sharing the financial burden or benefits provided by COVID-19 and receiving consistent changes to pay around the company can make sense for all.
- Besides, taking a performance goal-based performance assessment approach that focuses on clearly defined criteria and goals allows for a more versatile or task-based system where metrics do not exist or can be misleading. Do not confuse activity and involvement for high-quality positive performance results — such as emails, meetings, hours on a timesheet.
- Gallup also noticed that they are more involved and feel happier about their compensation when people have discussions with their boss about success and pay, even though they don’t get a pay rise. Now is the time to honor everyone’s achievements and struggles and speak about how we can move forward together.
That said, in today’s market climate utilizing conventional performance management systems fails to address employee expectations adequately. It’s time to burn the boats, leave behind old performance practices and develop an adaptive, modern, responsive, and calibrated performance management system for the new workplace.