At some point during our careers, many of us have been on one (or both) sides of the standard performance review. At their core, performance reviews seem arbitrary. They’re often provided too late to offer honest, meaningful feedback and are often abstract. Sometimes, a manager conducting a performance review may be influenced by their personal feelings about the employee instead of focusing on their performance. This can lead to quite a few issues regarding performance management.
Fortunately, technology comes to the rescue by replacing the tired old performance review style with an entirely fresh system. Want to know how you can use such a system to improve the performance review process at your organization? Check out the article below.
Frequent Check-Ins
Check-ins (or Employee performance check-ins as they’re colloquially known) are one-on-one conversations between managers and employees. They typically focus on goals, objectives, performance, reviews, and future plans. They’re a solid opportunity for building support, developing a plan, and discussing improvement areas. They also occur too infrequently — only a few times per year at most organizations — to offer much in terms of improvement at some businesses. But they can be a valuable resource to help boost employee performance.
So, what would happen if you could manage check-ins via a software interface or app? Keeping communication records and having everything available in one place for later review/reference is ideal for boosting the power of the standard check-in. One of the most valuable features of an integrated performance appraisal platform, check-ins can be easily streamlined and rendered much more valuable over time simply by using an all-in-one software solution.
Ongoing Feedback
The role of high-quality, ongoing feedback in any organization cannot be understated. Often, the feedback you receive during a performance review is either outdated, inaccurate, or both. Getting around the problem involves establishing a smooth feedback conduit or routine to provide real-time feedback to employees on various projects. Moreover, sometimes employees want to request feedback and understand what they can do to improve immediately.
Instead of seeking to tear somebody down or admonish them for not meeting some arbitrary goal, the purpose of ongoing feedback is to build, develop and help employees grow within the organization. Maintaining a positive approach to feedback while utilizing real-time tools for your entire team is a great way to cultivate a thriving environment where everyone can prosper.
Establishing and Keeping Goals
Another benefit of using performance management software tools is the unique ability to keep everyone on the team — from management on down — abreast of various project communication and goals. Setting and keeping goals is easier when everyone is on the same page. Facilitating this is easy when the check-ins, feedback, and communication priorities meet in a single open space. Using these tools can also lead to employee recognition opportunities, providing the opportunity to enhance and build up your team while meeting your goals.
Meeting goals is pretty important, so using any tools at your disposal to do that without making your employees feel rushed, stressed, or lousy will give your company an edge over many others — especially those competitors who don’t care nearly as much about the human element as you do.
Annual Reviews
While performance reviews for the individual might not be a great metric to measure performance, annual reviews and project reviews can still be quite valuable. Using performance management tools helps managers keep track of performance and evaluations while also supplying a path to grow for employees.
Project reviews also make sure you produce a high-quality project that meets your business requirements and helps accomplish the organization’s goals. Through assessment, reflection, and enhanced communication, your team can be the best it can be in a positive, energetic, and open community.
Insights
Analytics and insights are always important ways to gauge your company’s performance. Insights are typically baked into these kinds of tools. Data provides a leaping point from which you can quickly make critical business decisions and discover improvement opportunities.
Peer-to-peer recognition and management interactions all lead to further insight that helps you prioritize the human element over any business concerns. And isn’t that what running a successful, prosperous organization is all about? Technology can pave the way for vastly improved operations for everyone from the worker to the consumer and throughout the entire organization. Knowing who, where, and what actions are providing the most value is also a great way to find / discover top performers within the company.
Once those top performers are identified, it’s easy to help support them and guide them into training/developing other employees and succeeding on their own projects. Ultimately, fostering a culture of increased communication, employee recognition, understanding, and fairness in regard to evaluating performance will result in better retention rates and happier/more successful employees.
