Redefining Performance Management In Today’s Work Environment
The components are the same, but they’re different now
Posted on 08-17-2020, Read Time: - Min
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OK, everyone understands that performance management is more than just the appraisal process—you know—preparation, self-evaluations, appraisal meetings, and so on. It’s not a form. It’s not just a tool, although tools may be used in the system.
Performance management is all about enabling people to perform at their best, and driving that level of performance with support, feedback, and rewards all throughout the employee cycle. Up until the events of 2020, that’s been a well-established process.
Today, the performance management steps may be the same, but the actual content of those steps is likely out-of-date for a significant portion of your workforce. Unfortunately, many employers have been slow to make the necessary changes. For most organizations, they’re just struggling to keep the doors open and get the basic work done. The finer points of performance excellence take a back seat in times like these.
The best organizations, the most nimble, are making rapid changes to their performance management process—changes that reflect the new reality. They’re not content to coast along in crisis mode. They’re looking for ways to once again establish a competitive advantage in their levels of performance.
New Concerns for Performance Management
For example, here are some of the elements of a performance management system that have to be modified:
Job requirements. For example, work-at-home requires a very different set of technical and communication skills. Employees need to be good typists, or there’s a tremendous loss in productivity with a hunt-and-peck keyboarder. They need to be effective with live and recorded video, projecting and expressing themselves well on-screen. They need to be experienced with collaborative work-sharing applications. These are just a few examples. You’re going to have to update your job descriptions for all the new skills these different positions now require.
Job traits. Then there are all the personal factors involved. It’s like kids and online learning versus the classroom. Some people can work independently and are self-disciplined with their time. Others, all those people that used to stand in the aisle talking in the office, need human interaction and the structure of deadlines and face-to-face accountability. Candidates can have the right skills for the job, but still not be right for the job.
Employee recruitment. You may not be able to even meet in-person with candidates you hire. All you have is a screen persona to evaluate. So you’re going to have to be much better at doing performance-based interviewing and evaluation. What can candidates actually do … not just what they say they can do? How can you make candidates demonstrate their capabilities rather than merely claiming to have them? How do you test and evaluate them fairly, where they can’t game the online system?
Hiring. Bringing someone on board at a distance can almost be a non-event. There’s no hoopla, no smile and handshake saying, “You got the job!” How do you create an event that makes people feel like they’re now part of the team?
Orientation. This is a crucial time for new employees. They need to be integrated into your organization and your culture. They need to understand how their job fits into the overall mission of the organization. They need to experience all your orientation content. They need to be connected with their boss, their peers, and hopefully a mentor. Only they’re sitting at their kitchen table with the kids running around and the cat walking on the keyboard.
Competencies. How are new employees (or old employees in new jobs) going to learn their jobs? They’re hired. They get up the next morning. They sit in front of their laptops. Now what? They need to know all about concerns such as: job requirements, performance standards, outcomes, scorecard measures, consequences. Oh, and it also includes exactly how the job is supposed to be done.
You used to have new-hires shadow a co-worker. You could sit them in classes with other employees. Supervisors could personally coach them throughout the day. Now it all has to be conveyedat a distance, in more of a batch mode. So how is this getting done? Or is it learning by default?
Performance measurement. The reality is that nobody has any idea how productive people really are out of the office. OK, so they answer their phone when called, and respond to e-mail in a timely fashion. But how much are they really working, and how much of the time are they sitting in their pajamas playing Call of Duty with their buddies?
This is why the most frequently said statement by managers is, “I don’t care what they’re doing as long as the work is getting done.” Be honest with yourself. This is a total copout. You mean, in the office, if an employee only worked two hours per day you’d be perfectly happy? Or would you be thinking, “That person doesn’t have enough to DO.”
In this new world, you not only have to be concerned with the quality of work (which is all most employers worry about), but you also need to make sure that you’re also looking at the quantity of work being done off-premise. Otherwise, the remote work strategy is a great way to build massive amounts of fat into your organization.
Career development. This is actually a part of the process that may see the least amount of change. You’re talking about the coaching that goes with periodic performance evaluations, moves, transfers, promotion opportunities, and so on. The biggest challenge here is the communication element. Employees are more isolated, and have a harder time learning about what’s going on outside their own areas than if they were mixing daily in-person with a mass of co-workers, and were all looking at the same bulletin boards. So you’re going to have to do a much better job of getting career information out to individuals.
Job requirements. For example, work-at-home requires a very different set of technical and communication skills. Employees need to be good typists, or there’s a tremendous loss in productivity with a hunt-and-peck keyboarder. They need to be effective with live and recorded video, projecting and expressing themselves well on-screen. They need to be experienced with collaborative work-sharing applications. These are just a few examples. You’re going to have to update your job descriptions for all the new skills these different positions now require.
Job traits. Then there are all the personal factors involved. It’s like kids and online learning versus the classroom. Some people can work independently and are self-disciplined with their time. Others, all those people that used to stand in the aisle talking in the office, need human interaction and the structure of deadlines and face-to-face accountability. Candidates can have the right skills for the job, but still not be right for the job.
Employee recruitment. You may not be able to even meet in-person with candidates you hire. All you have is a screen persona to evaluate. So you’re going to have to be much better at doing performance-based interviewing and evaluation. What can candidates actually do … not just what they say they can do? How can you make candidates demonstrate their capabilities rather than merely claiming to have them? How do you test and evaluate them fairly, where they can’t game the online system?
Hiring. Bringing someone on board at a distance can almost be a non-event. There’s no hoopla, no smile and handshake saying, “You got the job!” How do you create an event that makes people feel like they’re now part of the team?
Orientation. This is a crucial time for new employees. They need to be integrated into your organization and your culture. They need to understand how their job fits into the overall mission of the organization. They need to experience all your orientation content. They need to be connected with their boss, their peers, and hopefully a mentor. Only they’re sitting at their kitchen table with the kids running around and the cat walking on the keyboard.
Competencies. How are new employees (or old employees in new jobs) going to learn their jobs? They’re hired. They get up the next morning. They sit in front of their laptops. Now what? They need to know all about concerns such as: job requirements, performance standards, outcomes, scorecard measures, consequences. Oh, and it also includes exactly how the job is supposed to be done.
You used to have new-hires shadow a co-worker. You could sit them in classes with other employees. Supervisors could personally coach them throughout the day. Now it all has to be conveyedat a distance, in more of a batch mode. So how is this getting done? Or is it learning by default?
Performance measurement. The reality is that nobody has any idea how productive people really are out of the office. OK, so they answer their phone when called, and respond to e-mail in a timely fashion. But how much are they really working, and how much of the time are they sitting in their pajamas playing Call of Duty with their buddies?
This is why the most frequently said statement by managers is, “I don’t care what they’re doing as long as the work is getting done.” Be honest with yourself. This is a total copout. You mean, in the office, if an employee only worked two hours per day you’d be perfectly happy? Or would you be thinking, “That person doesn’t have enough to DO.”
In this new world, you not only have to be concerned with the quality of work (which is all most employers worry about), but you also need to make sure that you’re also looking at the quantity of work being done off-premise. Otherwise, the remote work strategy is a great way to build massive amounts of fat into your organization.
Career development. This is actually a part of the process that may see the least amount of change. You’re talking about the coaching that goes with periodic performance evaluations, moves, transfers, promotion opportunities, and so on. The biggest challenge here is the communication element. Employees are more isolated, and have a harder time learning about what’s going on outside their own areas than if they were mixing daily in-person with a mass of co-workers, and were all looking at the same bulletin boards. So you’re going to have to do a much better job of getting career information out to individuals.
The Message
When it comes to performance management, the steps are well-established. In today’s work environment, it’s not a matter of changing the entire process. It still works. But the tasks within those processes may no longer be valid for a major part of your workforce.
You’ve seen some of the questions you need to be answering. There are certainly more. Make sure you’re asking them, and then working within your existing performance management framework to provide the required adaptations.
Excellent performance isn’t going to just happen. In fact, performance is likely to be impaired with changes of this scope. So get in front of this issue, make the changes, and get back to generating high performance.
You’ve seen some of the questions you need to be answering. There are certainly more. Make sure you’re asking them, and then working within your existing performance management framework to provide the required adaptations.
Excellent performance isn’t going to just happen. In fact, performance is likely to be impaired with changes of this scope. So get in front of this issue, make the changes, and get back to generating high performance.
Author Bio
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Ken Cooper is a Consultant and Researcher at CooperComm,Inc. He is a training, performance excellence consultant, and e-learning startup founder. He has conducted over 2,500 seminars, and has appeared in hundreds of online video and live satellite training programs. Ken is the co-author of Taming the Terrible Too’s of Training and author of How to Model and Assess Employee Competencies. Visit https://kencooper.com/ Connect Ken Cooper |
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