Performance Management for Changing Times
Change is happening faster then ever. Advances in technology, innovations and paradigm shifting ideas are spreading at an astounding pace. What was new yesterday, is best practice today, and out of date tomorrow. Businesses must remain nimble and fast.
Performance management is one process that managers must look at changing in order to meet new needs. Traditional performance management systems typically include setting goals on an annual basis, reviewing them once or twice a year, and a final end of year review. Consider some of the following challenges to this structure:
- Shifting strategies: Setting year long goals in an environment where strategy can shift on a monthly basis.
- Infrequent reviews: Waiting to review performance at 6 month intervals, when projects can have week long life spans.
- Staff Turnover: Holding annual performance reviews, when staff turnover can lead to newly appointed managers assessing staff they’ve only supervised for a short period of time.
How can we adapt our performance management systems so that they can keep up with the pace of change?
One way is to do everything you do in your performance management process more frequently.
- Set shorter term goals and change them more often. This doesn’t mean you should abandon your long term strategic plan (though you should be reviewing that more frequently as well), but a focus on shorter term goals will ensure that goals are aligned to whatever priorities are most important.
- Give and get feedback more often. Getting constructive feedback is the best way to improve. Employees need more feedback to develop their skills, learn from their mistakes, celebrate their successes, and improve their performance. Provide feedback immediately after projects are completed, so that the receiver can reflect upon their performance while it is still fresh in their mind. Look to gather feedback from multiple sources, so that in the event of staff turnover (such as a new manager) there are multiple inputs towards assessing someone’s performance.
- Review performance more frequently. Take the time to meet with your staff on a more regular basis to talk about what they are learning, how things are going and what they need from you. Because of faster changing goals and priorities, this becomes even more important than ever to ensure that you are keeping your employees engaged and on track.
The good news is that it doesn’t necessarily mean more work. If you do these three things more frequently, the time it takes to do them becomes much shorter. Rather then day long retreats to set goals, days working with office doors closed, carefully constructing performance appraisals, and weeks wasted delivering year end performance reviews- look for bi-weekly or monthly 15 minute status updates, where you set goals, review feedback, and talk about performance.
