With a plethora of performance management tools on the market, picking the right performance management system can be challenging. First and foremost, as a talent leader, you have to understand the purpose of performance management, which is to (i) align goals throughout the organizations, (ii) develop employees and (iii) motivate employees.
How can organizations make sure they are choosing the right performance management system?
As a talent leader, you may have narrowed down your selection to a couple of vendors. Asking the following questions can help you make a decision:
1) What are the current performance management pain points?
Are employees not receiving enough feedback? Is feedback not being documented? Are performance reviews time-consuming? Do you want to be able to track and manage goals more easily?
These questions need to be considered so organizations can understand what features are a requirement, and what features may just be nice to have. Understanding the core features that are necessary can also help talent leaders see through the bells and whistles of some of the fancy performance management solutions.
2) What other systems does it integrate with?
If an organization is paying the money to implement a new performance management system, they should want the system to integrate with some of their existing systems. This can make it easier to share feedback, track goals, conduct employee surveys, and simplify performance reviews; therefore, talent leaders should find a performance management system that integrates with communication channels and your current HRIS systems.
Pavestep integrates with Slack, allowing employees to get notified when they have received feedback for a quick and easy way for them to improve on their projects, goals, etc., in real-time.
3) Is the system intuitive?
A big struggle for many organizations that implement a fancy performance management system is that they get it set up and no one knows how to use the features- they want to, but the system is too complicated and time-consuming for employee and managers. When looking to implement a system, make sure it is intuitive. We suggest requesting a pilot period, on top of having a demo, to ensure that employees understand and can use the features.
While some think implementing a performance management system will fix their performance management pain points, it won’t be effective for long if the employees are not buying into it. Organizations should research what performance management system offers training/ coaching for their service.
Pavestep will create an adoption roadmap with the organization which includes workshops, processes, and action items that will maximize employee adoption.
What are the core features of a performance management system?
Some of these may be more important than others depending on the industry your company is in.
1) Goal setting and tracking
Effective performance management begins with goal aliment. Setting and tracking goals can be an important feature. Moreover, setting OKRS cascade goals down from the organizational level to the individual level help align employees. 93% of employees are unable to tie their actions to organizational goals.
2) Continuous feedback
Continuous feedback has been implemented in many organizations. Being able to document these conversations is important as it helps reduce common performance appraisal biases as well as serves as a record for both employee and manager. Real-time, 360 feedback may also be important if your organization is agile or is a matrix organization.
3) Performance reviews
Most organizations have a formal reviews process – this may be held annually, bi-annually, or quarterly. These reviews should be a compilation of feedback conversation that an employee has had throughout the year.
4) Analytics
A lot of organizations are starting to use data to make the tough decisions about their employees. Analytics can help uncover employee strengths and weaknesses, thereby allowing for better talent decisions to be made.
Conclusion
Implementing the wrong performance management system can be costly and ineffective. Ensure that the performance management solution integrates nicely with your current culture.
