Getting the Most
| Getting the Most from Your Performance Management System |
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This synopsis is brought to you by the RCI Center of Excellence. In addition to summarizing the work for you to save you time, we relate the salient points to our own thinking on the subject. Please feel free to add your own views and comments in the Comments section at the end of this article. Enjoy! Getting the Most from Your Performance Management SystemAuthored by: Patricia Davis and Robert W. Rogers If your organization had implemented DDI’s performance management system three years ago, the chances are you would have saved $750,000 and experienced positive change. Productivity, customer satisfaction, quality, innovation and financial performance would all have gone up – exponentially. DDI’s earlier study, ‘Retaining Talent: A Benchmarking Study’ collected data from 745 employees from 118 organizations all over the globe. Analysis revealed that employees seek:
So what do most expect from their performance management systems, the article asks. Are we expecting too much? The answer is: no. But maintaining the system requires hard work. Implementing a successful performance management system requires five things: communication, accountability, skill, alignment and clear measurement. Communication: make the business case. DDI suggest using multiple communication platforms such as newsletters, hotlines, emails, reminders on pay stubs, letters from CEOs, user handbooks and so on. Use everything and anything to generate enthusiasm, commitment and understanding about the system. And following implementation, continue with the ‘advocating, cajoling, recognizing, awarding and encouraging’ . Only then will the system and the message be clear to all employees. Clear roles and accountability: A performance management system is in fact an accountability system; it sets up business expectations and shows people what they are responsible for. Senior management must be ‘150 percent behind it’ and set and communicate the organization’s strategic priorities. Measures then need to be established for those priorities and all of this cascaded on to the next level down. Discussions can then be included in quarterly meetings which makes the performance management system a ‘living, breathing entity’ – not a once-a-year review. Develop skills: Let employees draft their own plans in accordance with their business unit’s objectives, let them track and share their own performance data and let them self-rate their performance. Of course, this ‘type of shared ownership requires skill development in the form of training for both leaders and employees’. Aligned systems and processes: How will other systems support your performance management system and how will the data collected be used in other HR developments, such as succession planning and training and development? Or rewards, recognition and compensation? For example, an evaluation of specific competencies for example can feed into HR’s selection and screening processes. Provide clear measures: It is important to establish from the outset what is required from the performance management system and the methods you will use to measure. Once the use of the system becomes established and accepted, ‘focus shifts,’ the white paper suggests, ‘to the quality and effectiveness of the system itself’. One company, for example, ‘used an upward appraisal process where employees were asked to evaluate how effectively their managers used the system’. The DDI white paper concludes that each of these five components of the performance management system process is taxing and will take a great deal of effort. However, performance management impacts every single person in an organization; it maintains culture and helps achieve desired business results. But everyone will understand the goals, what is expected of them and how they can continue to grow and add value to the business. ‘Is the effort worth it? You bet it is.’ Access the Original Work (Some sites require registration) Center of Excellence clients, Performance Staffing and STREAMline™ alumni only: If you have trouble downloading any of the original works referenced here, please contact us so we can arrange access for you to our private-study archive. All other visitors please contact the publisher.
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