Performance Management: Once in a year to Once a week

BENGALURU, India - April 13, 2017 - PRLog -- One of the hottest and latest topics of discussion in business and HR recently has been the death of annual performance reviews. More and more companies are adopting a more frequent manager and employee feedback process which ensures that the big goals are broken down into smaller tasks and those tasks are measured at a regular interval.

While many companies have talked about moving away from the age-old annual performance reviews very few have really talked about what other aspects of the process will continue to exist. For example the annual performance reviews are closely tied up with the annual pay raise activities, with more frequent feedback how would organizations use this data to make more informed pay decisions? How would organizations tackle recency bias and more importantly how would organizations tackle the inherent unconscious bias that managers would have even while doing the regular feedback and review?

Our argument is you would need a process and system which gives you the flexibility to do both or has functionalities of both but lets you select which one to use where.

So if you are redesigning your performance appraisal process or evaluating a solution to help you design & migrate to a new age performance management system then consider following aspects:

1.       Setting of goals and objectives is going to remain fundamental. Key questions you should be asking about this process are:

a.       Who is able to define goals and objectives in the system?

b.      Who is able to review & modify them?

c.       Are we able to share the goals across departments and organizational boundaries?

d.      Are we able to link the individual goal & objectives to key organizational themes?

Asking some of these questions will help you think about what exactly you are looking to do and how you want to setup the process from your employee's point of view. Your ability to make this goals and objective setting process simpler for both employee and employer would go a long way in ensuring that the system is adopted and is able to deliver the business results.

2.       The frequency of capturing reviews and feedbacks, while there are various theories out there I guess it all depends on the maturity of the organization. You can't just swing the pendulum from annual review cycle to once a month cycle else you are going to spend a lot of time making managers just adhere to the time line and not really create a positive employee experience. However more important than the frequency HR should be able to answer how this frequently collected information would be used. If you are not clear about how this information is going to be used in the annual appraisal it just loses its importance in the eyes of both the manager and the employee. Your process design and definition should consider this aspect & be very clear how you are going to use the same.

Once you have collected all the information and figured out what to do with it- you also need to ensure that you have some mechanism to diffuse the unconscious bias. In earlier process it was called "normalization" while this did get closely associated with bell curve and those two terms have started to earn a bad reputation for themselves, they served a very statistical and mathematical purpose in the overall process. While the jury is still out on whether these approaches will survive the current onslaught of new age performance management, the fact remains that organizations have to figure out a way to compare performance of person A in location X assessed by person Z with another person doing exactly the same role but is in another city /country and is being assessed by another manager.

Addressing this aspect of the process will ensure that you have a uniform methodology to ensure that talent across boundaries can be compared and a wider talent pool is considered than what's immediately visible. Some organizations use the 9 grid model for the same, where since the definition of performance & potential in each grid is clear, it is assumed that talent in similar grids across organizational boundaries can be compared.

So if you are looking to overhaul your performance management process, you would need to look at all aspects of the process carefully to determine not only how you recognize and reward people, but also how would you identify poor performers and ensure alignment between individuals, departments and the organization objectives. It would make sense for you to focus on what business problem you are solving by fixing certain aspects of your performance management process or system.

To know more visit https://www.peopleworks.in/

For further information please contact:

Mr. Vaishakh Kelkar – Chief Operating Officer, PeopleWorks

Author Bio: An MBA in Marketing Management and a 20 year career in sales & marketing, business development, brand building & advertising, has given Vaishakh a 360 degree view of business which helps him in keeping company goals front and centre, while at the same time understanding details of day-to-day operations.

Having worked in Polaris, TCS and Leo Burnett India, Vaishakh as COO brings with him a breadth of experience and a strategic focus. With his ability to think out of the box and a successful record of building motivated and effective teams, the company's growth has been phenomenal.

Mobile: +91 9916214888

Email: vaishakh.kelkar@peopleworks.in

Website: https://www.peopleworks.in/