Make Performance Enablement A Centerpiece Of Your Employee Experience Strategy

Remote performance enablement needs to support their unique scenarios and facilitate success

Gartner forecasted that we’d enter 2022 with a little over half (53 percent) of the U.S. workforce either fully remote or in a hybrid scenario. Both can lead to work silos that affect employee engagement and performance.

These environments present HR with a strategic opportunity never seen before on this scale - an opportunity to improve organizational agility by acquiring new skills from a broader talent pool and enable the workforce in ways not available just a few years ago. Yet, many organizations struggle to make this shift, leading to turnover and employee disengagement. Employees cite lack of career development opportunities, work-life balance issues, and manager disconnects as primary reasons for leaving their companies.
 

Antiquated performance management processes and legacy technology hamper HR’s ability to address these challenges, driven by the need to comply with traditional talent appraisal processes and a false assumption that goals remain static for periods as long as a year. It is no surprise that this category of technology is often labeled “performance management,” which separates it from what should be its purpose – enabling great performance from the workforce. 

These issues further exacerbate employee performance, lowering productivity and morale throughout the culture. What’s more, it can cost one-half to two times an employee’s annual salary to replace them. According to a 2019 Gallup article, U.S. companies lose up to $1 trillion every year due to voluntary employee turnover. 

It begs the question - How are companies stemming the tide? It is more imperative than ever that organizations cultivate a more engaged, stable, and productive workplace. Some of the most reputable and successful companies in the world are making performance enablement a centerpiece of their employee experience strategy. 

Become More Deliberate in Remote Performance Enablement

Merely re-creating legacy performance review processes digitally won’t improve remote employees’ productivity. Instead, remote performance enablement needs to support their unique scenarios and facilitate success. These five tips will empower employees and help them reach their goals:

Adopt a Frequent Feedback Model

According to a Gallup survey, 74 percent of employees don’t believe that the feedback they receive helps them improve. Even more disconcerting, only two in 10 strongly agree that their performance is enabled effectively enough to yield exceptional results from them.

It underscores why frequent communication is essential to keeping remote employees engaged, motivated, and productive. Although remote work is pushing us towards these new paradigms for enabling employee performance, these principles apply to everyone. When employees receive little feedback besides a traditional once-a-year review, isolation, frustration, and low morale can set in, leading to higher rates of disengagement. Managers who communicate constructively, purposefully, and supportively to employees likely are going to yield happier, more productive team members who are more strongly aligned with the organization and its goals. 

Performance enablement solutions can facilitate this process for both the manager and employee. Shifting to an “enablement mindset” means the solution provides the process and insights necessary to make feedback both an expectation and a habit. Moreover, frequent feedback fosters trust between managers and their reports. It leads to more honest and productive conversations that help resolve issues and find solutions. 

Train Managers to Lead Meaningful Conversations

There are some managers, especially those new to management, that are ill-equipped to convey the proper feedback to employees, especially those working remotely. It’s crucial that managers are equipped to have productive conversations. If necessary, train managers to take a big picture approach to enabling employee performance rather than micromanaging it. Performance enablement should be tailored to the organization’s needs and should be set up to guide the manager through the process of knowing how and when to ask leading questions to uncover issues or areas that need improvement. Not only do you lack the advantage of reading body language, but you also don’t have the ability to physically see what an employee is doing to identify areas of improvement. 

The next important component is a manager’s ability to help the remote worker improve and/or enable performance in those problem areas. Rather than managing, a manager should view his role as a coaching one, helping employees set personal benchmarks to reach goals and enhance performance. When managers convey a sense of shared responsibility, remote workers will be more inclined to achieve their goals. Performance enablement solutions can help managers coach employees, while giving remote workers a sense of purpose and greater focus.

Shift to Outcome-Based Performance Appraisals

Remote and hybrid work scenarios add another layer of ambiguity to productivity measures. Even those situations where employees are pulling late hours aren’t always a good indication of whether they are productive and happy. In many cases, they can be overworked and heading towards burnout. Remote performance enablement should focus on output rather than assessing or micromanaging input. 

Typing performance to goals and outcomes can help because such results are concrete, measurable, and indicative of progress toward a specific objective. Frequent feedback conversations shouldn’t dwell on input unless it directly impacts output, such as a manager helping an employee find a better, less stressful work process. The manager should be able to have productive conversations about clearing roadblocks, investing in the necessary skills, and finding creative pathways to achieve goals. On the subject of burnout, an effective manager will ensure that employees’ health and wellbeing are prioritized. Lead by example and encourage employees to delineate between work and home; something that can be a real challenge for remote workers. Resources such as health and wellness programs, employee assistance programs (EAP), and/or paid time off (PTO) should be available to employees.

Schedule Formal Performance Reviews Quarterly

Frequent feedback is the key to better performance enablement. In an age of constant communication, the traditional annual review doesn’t work for today’s employees. Instead, break out the annual review into quarterly performance reviews to collect relevant data, set a baseline, and measure continued growth. Doing so more frequently keeps employees engaged and tracks their growth over the year. 

Since the substance of formal quarterly reviews is drawn from daily or weekly check-ins, nothing in the evaluation should surprise the employee. If the manager employs a robust performance enablement tool for tracking daily conversations, then the evaluations become much easier to write and track. As a result, the employee should feel comfortable having a face-to-face meeting via videoconferencing software to create a better sense of personal connection.

Unshackling Recognition is Even Better

When we provide an environment where achievement and recognition are real-time activities accessible to the entire organization, employees receive consistent reinforcement when they are on the right track. Those organizations committed to this process don’t wait to promote people annually. They make it part of their quarterly objectives. 

Encourage Healthy Boundaries

For remote workers and their managers, the adage “out of sight, out of mind” is always lurking in the background. Consequently, remote employees might struggle with setting clear boundaries between their work and personal lives, feeling they must work more to prove themselves. According to the Workforce Institute 2021 Engagement and Retention Report, as many as 44 percent of employees currently working remotely feel prompted to log into work earlier and stay online later to demonstrate productivity to their managers. 

A more deliberate remote performance enablement approach and the associated tools help curb this behavior and allow employees to create healthy and sustainable work habits. Effective remote performance enablement coupled with goals clarify an employee’s priorities, making it easier to create a realistic and manageable schedule. Collectively, these factors can help drive sustainable performance.

Remote work isn’t going away anytime soon. In fact, it will likely continue to grow. A Society of Human Resource Management article referenced data from The Conference Board, a New York City-based research nonprofit, which noted that 36 percent of companies say they’re willing to hire workers who are 100 percent remote regardless of whether they are in the U.S. or overseas versus just 12 percent that were receptive to that idea before the pandemic.

The sooner organizations get onboard with performance enablement, the faster they will reduce turnover, boost productivity, and strengthen the bottom line. Performance enablement can bridge the divide — between manager and employee, in office and remote work — ultimately enhancing communication, building greater trust and engagement, and meeting organizational goals.

John Schneider is the Chief Marketing Officer for Betterworks. He leads the global marketing organization. His passion is centered on working with people-leaders across industries that apply modern management practices and innovative technology to help people thrive and shape the future of work. John most recently held an executive position at Intapp, where he led Solutions Marketing and guided the company through multiple acquisitions and an IPO.  Connect John Schneider