Reasons Why Performance Management Will Change In The Upcoming Years. Can you think of any organizational practice that’s more damaged than performance management? Well that’s not if you agree with Marc Effron & Miriam Ort’s book, One Page Talent Management: Eliminating Complexity, Adding Value, in which they say “probably no talent management processes are more important or more detested than performance management.”
This actually draws widespread accord across different fronts:
• Just about everyone, including managers and employees hate It
• No one seems to do it well – it’s one skill that ostensibly fails to be grasped despite comprehensive training efforts
• It fails when tested for construct validity – it does not do what it was meant to do, which is enhance performance.
Conventional performance management programs have over time become organizational wallpaper. They just exist in the background without any expectations for impact. At the same time, regardless its declining popularity, the idea of performance at both organizational and individual level is crucial to business success. It’s just something that cannot be ignored.
So why is it damaged? In a massive survey done by WorldatWork, 58 percent of businesses concluded that their performance management systems were “Grade C or below.” Now that’s something many will giggle over. The entire performance management processes are subject to their own methodologies of setting up criteria and rating it against them — which in the end fails.
There are three major reasons why today’s performance management systems are damaged:
1. People have changed over time
2. Technology has changed and evolved
3. People — technology relationships have changed How can this damage be repaired? For organizations to compete effectively in today’s competitive market, businesses need to move on and adopt more agile performance management approaches.
Expectations by employees have changed overtime. Employees everywhere and from every generation now expect more. They expect more transparency, more accountability and more involvement. When it comes to performance management, employees have moved from just being passive receivers to more active agents. They are no longer satisfied with the one way download of performance feedback, today’s employees want greater participation in performance data collection processes. It’s not just employees only, but managers have also changed overtime. Control and command doesn’t cut it anymore – management is expected to coach and guide as well as provide constructive and balanced feedback necessary to inspire instead of enforcing performance.
Major Changes in High Performance Paradigm shift.
Ideally what worked before doesn’t anymore. Today’s managers need to be:
1. Real, communicate openly and often;
2. Inspirational to their subordinates to help them stretch to their maximum potential;
3. Open enough to trust their teams as well as empower them with accountability;
We’ve reached the turning point for technology with regard to talent management. It all started with simple automation where paper processes were put on the computer. While that was fine, but it left us grappling with many proprietary systems, Word templates, spreadsheets and disconnected point solutions which were submerged in complexity as well as data overload. This also indicated that many of these automation processes required revisions, simplifications or replacement with consistent feedback tools that allow for openness and transparency and are tied to performance goals and objectives. These tools must be focused on development, so they will allow for maximum performance enhancement over time. Learn here about how some new tools that are focused on social performance management are changing the world of appraisals to become more open, transparent, and embedded into the fabric of work rather than an annoying and cumbersome process.
