If you have not yet taken a hard look at the current performance management process in your organization, maybe now is the time! Traditional performance management processes, highlighted by the “annual review” are no longer meeting the needs of employees or really providing value to the organization.
Agile performance management may seem like a catch phrase, but this is really about adapting an organizational need to an employee need. It’s about ensuring managers have the information required to justify pay changes, while employees having continual conversations to help them to be successful in their role.
At its heart, this methodology of looking at employee contribution recognizes that a more skilled and capable workforce can perform at a higher level. And we know that higher individual contribution leads to better organizational performance.
To make the shift, there are three areas that demand your attention:
1| Agile goal setting: Individual work goals are aligned with team goals but assigned to enable individual development. Goal setting should be driven by employees based on both their awareness of the work and their own capabilities.
2| Continuous feedback: Managers need to help employees address the issues hampering their productivity, immediately. Using the “SKS” approach – what should I “Stop doing, Keep doing, Start doing” – may uncover it’s your own behaviour impacting your team’s effectiveness.
3| Quarterly and quality conversations: Continuous feedback requires managers to have quarterly conversations instead of annual ones. Conversations need to move away from a performance discussion dependent on their ability to deliver on time or deliver quantity, versus quality. Managers need to up their game as coaches and focus discussions on developing capabilities through feedback, training and recognition of work, to ultimately lead employees to perform better and increase productivity.
Add a tool to the process and competency development that truly enables and captures the ongoing conversations to take place and you will have an end-to-end solution that really moves the needle.
Dean Fulford is a senior human resources leader with experience in all aspects of HR vision, strategy and implementation, applying his background to many facets of the businesses he’s worked with. He has done consulting in organization development and effectiveness, performance consulting and process improvement in both small and large organizations, and bringing solutions that provide immediate impact while enabling sustained organizational impact.
Dean has led the implementation of operations review practices in HR departments, bringing a unique skill set and approach to human resources leadership driving pragmatic, metrics-driven solutions. He is also a certified human resource leader (CHRL) and licensed professional engineer. He specializes in HR strategy, employee engagement to drive effective operational processes and talent management. For more information, get in touch with Dean.
This article was published more than 1 year ago. Some information may no longer be current.