By Stuart Hearn | 3/2/2016 | General

Guest Post: Growing Your Business with Performance Management

Guest Post: Growing Your Business with Performance Management

Growing a successful business means cultivating a performance culture that feeds into your overall strategy. Managing performance takes time and careful consideration. If it’s ignored, employees will feel demotivated and business can languish. When done right, employees will be productive and business will flourish.

Set Goals to Achieve Growth

What does excellent performance look like in your organisation and for each individual employee? Relevant goals need to be set for each employee to achieve, both in the short-term and long-term. Goals should contribute towards the growth of the company and each employee should have a clear understanding of how they will do this.

Quick Tip! Using the SMART acronym can help to ensure that short-term goals are precise and motivating. Objectives should be Specific and Stretching, Measurable, Achievable and Agreed, Relevant and Time-bound.

Create a Positive Performance Culture

Performance management doesn’t mean putting employees in competition with each other to try and gain better performance scores. In fact, the opposite it true. Employees should be looking to improve their own personal performance and develop their skills.

At Accenture, they’ve decided that their teams “will engage in future-focused conversations about their aspirations, leading to actions to help them grow and progress their careers.” Personal development plans are an excellent way to engage employees, helping them to identify existing skills and strengths to achieve their full potential.

Provide Continuous Feedback

A well-oiled performance management process will be one that focuses on giving employees regular feedback. Continuous performance management increases workforce efficiency by minimising the time taken to complete set tasks, ensures that each employee is on the right track and boosts morale.

Frequent feedback is another way to improve company culture by creating a friendly and supportive work environment. Employees should support co-workers and feel comfortable asking one another and their managers for feedback. Regular feedback can be given in regular one-to-one check-in meetings or via a feedback app.

Allocate Time for Regular Check-Ins

Performance management experts have long advocated the need for more regular and informal discussions between employees and managers. Instead of making notes all year and holding off addressing work-related issues until an annual review meeting, set aside time to check-in with each employee weekly or monthly to discuss progress and tackle problems as soon as they occur.

Adobe led the way with regular check-ins back in 2012 when they revamped their performance management system. Adobe’s check-in culture allows different teams to set their own schedule and has eliminated ratings and rankings. This has led to voluntary turnover decreasing by 30%. Deloitte has introduced more frequent weekly check-ins, which are supported by quarterly reviews.

Use Performance Management Software to Excel

Performance management software is an essential tool for growing businesses. HR are able to export data from performance management software to identify company-wide training and development needs. An efficient performance management software system can give companies an edge on their competitors by enabling them to support employees, take steps to improve productivity and excel in their marketplace.

By Stuart Hearn | 3/2/2016 | General

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