‘Technology’ is instrumental for humans, isn’t it? From helping us with the household chores to enabling enterprises to manage thousands of employees, technology makes life simpler. While moms are thankful for the washing machines, HR leaders are thankful for the HR technology that is making workforce management easy and effective. It is because of HR technology that organizations are able to connect, communicate, and collaborate with a scattered remote workforce.
Today, the traditional methods of managing employee lifecycle– right from hiring to employee exit- are being replaced with modern methods, all thanks to HR technology. Besides reducing the administrative burden, HR tech is helping companies to revamp their performance management process.
However, there’s an urgent need to reboot the HR tech to improve employee performance as the world of work is constantly changing. Therefore, organizations must realize that functioning with the same old tools and strategies isn’t gonna help them in the long run. According to a report published by Deloitte, 70% of respondents said they are either updating or have currently reviewed their performance management systems.
This transformation is needed because performance planning isn’t limited to achieving set targets or annual performance reviews. The performance management process today involves taking various things into account- from goal setting to exchanging continuous feedback to identifying the potential leaders to developing performance improvement plans (PIPs) to succession planning.
For this process to happen in a seamless way one needs robust HR technology that turns a dreadful performance review process into a more fun, integrated, and result-oriented process.
What changes can we expect in employee performance management in the near future?
Below are some of the big changes that HR technology has brought to the employee performance management process:
Rebooting the Reviews
Gone are the days for annual performance reviews. Today, employees, especially millennials, need continuous feedback as it helps them become better professionals, improve their performance, and work on any improvement areas. Moreover, according to PR Newswire, almost all (97%) of Gen Z is open to receiving feedback, and 67% want it in a timely constructive manner throughout the year.
This suggests that organizations must invest in a performance management system that enables managers to keep track of the review cycle, make scheduling one-on-ones easy, and keep all people in the feedback process updated and informed of the review process. This helps in the timely completion of the feedback process.
Integrating Performance Management With Recruitment
Organizations now need to focus on investing in a performance management system that can be integrated into the recruitment process. With insights into their employees’ performance, skills, and expertise, they can plan their next hiring.
The performance data gives employers detailed insights into what skills or abilities their new candidates should possess in order to succeed in a particular job role. This enables recruiters to hire only the best candidates which ultimately leads to improved performance and productivity in the organization.
Continuous Performance Monitoring
According to Harvard Business Review, 2016, one-third of U.S. companies are abandoning the traditional appraisal process. This is simply because traditional performance processes lack efficiency, are inflexible, demotivating, and don’t encourage collaboration or teamwork.
Therefore, organizations today need to look out for a solution that helps in continuous performance tracking. This is necessary to keep employees aligned with the organization’s goals and objectives throughout the year, not just when it’s time for performance appraisals.
Eliminating The One-Sided Performance Reviews
A performance management strategy can never be successful if it’s based on one-sided expectations. This is why it is important to seek employee input every now and then to make the performance review a two-way process. A performance management system includes every single person in the performance evaluation process.
It completely eliminates favoritism, unconscious bias, and one-way communications. The ability to self-assess or provide feedback to peers or subordinates known as 360-degree feedback makes the performance management system a great tool to measure performance.
Focusing On Agility
These are the times when organizations need to be agile in order to stand out from the crowd. A performance management system can help organizations achieve this goal. Instead of conducting annual reviews, a performance management system helps managers review employee performance quarterly, monthly, or even weekly.
This helps businesses adapt to constantly changing business environments. Organizations can change your performance strategy at any time of the year simply by evaluating the performance trends in your organization.
The Bottom Line
So it is clear that today, a performance management system is more than just a goal-setting tool, instead, it is a tool for continuous performance monitoring, continuous feedback exchange, rewarding the best performers, and helping the low performers improve their performance.
Before technology came into the picture, organizations would rate their employees annually and would measure traits like collaboration, judgment, initiative, teamwork, and so on.
Today, most organizations including Google, Adobe, Amazon are focusing their energy on OKRs (Objective Key Results) and are achieving great results.
Apart from that, 360-degree feedback is something that is catching the attention of HR leaders or managers. This is because it makes the performance management process unbiased and creates a culture of openness.
