How well do your employees perform? How well does your organization as a whole perform? Do you have clear ideas as to what great performance for your organization is, or do you believe that you’ll recognize great performance when you see it?
Most companies set both long and short term goals. How well those goals are transformed into everyday goals and objectives at the individual level is more the challenge, and how the employees in aggregate are accomplishing the organization’s goals and objectives is the key to performance management.
Performance management is a systematic process by which an organization involves its employees in improving organizational effectiveness toward the accomplishment of the organization’s mission and goals. Performance management is the process of creating organizational goals and objectives, communicating clear expectations, setting standards of excellence, establishing measurements and aligning all activities.
The intention of performance management is to create alignment of thinking and action by “cascading” broad organizational goals down to departmental and individual goals. This, in turn, allows managers and supervisors to set clear expectations for results and for employees to understand and work toward meeting them. This results in the “line of sight” where every employee can see how their work supports the overarching goals.
Thinking –> Doing –> Checking –> Developing –> Evaluating –> Rewarding
Elements of Performance Management
How do you currently get everyone to operate together toward goals? You can use the Elements of Performance Management model as a way to systematically think about performance management.
Thinking is about setting expectations and goals to direct activities. It’s the planning phase. Thinking goes beyond a job description – it helps the employee know what, why, when and how things are to be accomplished. It includes teambuilding, developing a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities and team interdependence. This creation of expectations is the basis for the performance appraisal; employees must know ahead of time not only what results they will be held to, but how their results will be measured. SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely) goals are set up front for each employee and department or employee group.
Doing is the execution phase. It’s getting things off the ground and in the groove. This is often an organic process, where experimentation and flexibility are employed.
In Checking, projects and job duties are continually monitored, using a consistent basis of measurement. Feedback to employees is best if delivered both regularly and “in the moment’. Unless an employee is receiving any feedback, they believe they are doing a great job. Don’t forget the best motivator of all – recognizing good performance. In Checking, poor performance is “nipped in the bud” by providing immediate feedback and remediation, otherwise a manager may spend countless hours in disciplinary activities.
Developing starts with recruiting and orientation. Skills, knowledge and abilities are evaluated and training requirements are discerned. Orientation helps the employee to understand the culture, procedures, policies, resources and expectations. In Developing, performance deficiencies are identified early and remediated. Find an employee’s strengths and create challenges and advanced responsibilities, maximize their potential, and increase their value to the organization. Development is not an annual exercise or a few workshops. It’s about recognizing opportunities in everyday situations to help employees grow and improve.
Evaluating is a process of delivering consistent, fair, honest and constructive feedback, both formally and informally that serves as a basis for rewards. Make the evaluation mean something to the employee; ascertain that they understand both the accolades and the needs for improvement and leave with an action plan for performance improvement and/or enhancement.
Rewarding is the culmination of the Performance Management process. Since the reward is the incentive that motivates the employee to perform in a manner that moves the organization to success, careful consideration should be given to determine the right rewards. Get to know your employees in order to understand what excites them – tickets to their favorite sports team? An early end of the day? Be sure that the reward matches the level of performance. Also, the “great job!” is thought to be the number one motivator – much more that money and other fringe benefits. It’s certainly the easiest!
Think of this Performance Management process in action for every employee, every department, every day and you’ll get a sense of the power it provides. It can be the difference in success for your organization, can create satisfaction for your employees and huge rewards for you! It is something of an art and takes time, but the payoff is well worth it – it’s smart!