Improving Team Performance In The Age Of Rapid Change

Will Covid-19 encourage employees to achieve what they once thought was impossible?

Business executives, HR managers, and corporate leaders are all faced with a new reality – everything they once knew no longer applies. Covid-19 brought to the workplace an entirely new business culture where workers are now remote, changing the way employees interact on a daily basis – suddenly there is no more casual interaction in the office or possibility of meeting up for lunch. With the face-to-face aspect removed from the workplace, creating constant communication between remote employees, who may have kids at home and are juggling multiple responsibilities, is a new challenge. These sudden shifts mean employers need to be more creative in how they create a positive, interactive culture with team members. With employees scattered in virtual silos across the country, how do HR managers and employers keep the communication fluid and strong?
 

In addition to the communication challenges, customer needs have changed, and companies need to modify products and services to accommodate the new demands. Executives today are juggling a lot, and it’s not about making one large change across the organization. It’s about leading and responding to constant and rapid changes. Organizations and the people in them need to be nimble and able to bend and adapt as the situation calls for it. Creating a culture like this takes a level of ingenuity, requiring leaders to dig deep, think differently, and create the change they never knew was possible.

Further complicating this new reality, no one knows when Covid-19 will “end” – when will businesses get back to normal? Will this become the new normal? Corporate leaders will have to adjust their business environment, culture, and management style indefinitely since no one really knows when the corporate world will be “back to normal” and what that normal will look like. To meet all these challenges, executives need to implement new tools and solutions to keep their employees connected, efficient, and able to adapt quickly  when change is the only constant.

Continuous Performance Management (CPM) platforms have been a key technology that has guided employees and improved the business culture through monumental corporate changes and crises like Covid-19, while keeping employees in constant communication and improving the overall business performance. Traditional CPM platforms are designed to have employees set KPIs, receive quarterly reviews, and engage in conversations with their managers when feedback is necessary. Today, CPM platforms have a more sophisticated model that is a continuous feedback loop between managers and employees, creating opportunities for learning and growth constantly. The model takes on an approach that enables individual executives and team members to learn from one another via “lessons learned” so that the corporate culture is based on self-improvement, team learning and collaboration, accountability, and eventually high level results. 

The most innovative CPM technology uses AI to intuitively provide information to employees that is valuable and relevant to their work. Whether it is briefing employees for their next meeting or reminding them of a team members’ lesson,  it provides employees with the tools to constantly improve and be in communication, even if they are not in the office. CPM platforms also provide an impetus for employees to set goals and provides actionable insights along the way to help them achieve those goals.

The focus of the new CPM platform model is to create a culture of learning and improvement in any environment while encouraging employees to set high standards, achieve them, and then inspire others to do the same. It was created to be a technology that sits alongside employees and encourage continuous growth at a time that demands nothing short of transformative change.

Who knows, businesses scrambled when Covid-19 hit, but it may actually bring out the best in our businesses and encourage employees to achieve what they once thought was the impossible.