Performance appraisal as a whole must be relevant to everyone – those being evaluated, those doing evaluations, and those senior leaders who look to the performance management systems to gain a better understanding of how their people are performing year after year. With the rapid pace of change, Performance management needs to focus on positive, transformative, and breakthrough performance not only to assess but also to drive corporate and individual change.
Make Performance Management Concrete and Measurable
Is measuring performance difficult? Yes. Does it depend on a number of assumptions and variables? Sure. Will it always be subject to cynicism? Absolutely! This is not abnormal. Humans have difficulty measuring and evaluating other human beings. The system will never be perfect. You don’t need to make it perfect. There are other much more important factors you need to focus on. One of them is measuring sustainability of performance. It’s making performance reviews a daily event as opposed to a yearly event. Evaluations are very often perceived as a deadly event. Why? Because perceived as nonsense since “no one pays any attention to them anyhow.”
Measure Employee Value
To make performance management a living event ingrained in your company culture, you need to ensure that your employees will perform well into the future. You need to ensure performance sustainability. For example: it’s not enough to measure if performance is keeping up to date with technology. Your employees need to be emotionally inexpensive in order to drive your bottom line. What this means is your performance reviews need to not only measure performance but also emotional expensiveness. You need to include measures of personal accountability in order to drive the bottom line value, whether it’s in performance or market share.
Reinvent Yourself
Make your performance review process relevant. Measure performance review patterns and trends (matched to specific company initiatives). Make your managers and leaders accountable for strengthening the muscle of your organisation human capital asset, and their key focus as leaders should be to create a culture of accountability and no drama. Ultimately, their ability in attracting, retaining and developing the best and brightest talent in the industry (not just your company) will make or break your own success.
Be the change you always aspired to make. Create a reputation for being a turnaround expert in the area of leadership and performance management. Give your business the gift of a competitive advantage by working with your employees in bringing their career to new heights.
