Leveraging the Power of Technology for Effective Performance Management System

Who is Our Speaker? 

Yuri Kruman, J.D., SHRM-SCP, is an Interim CHRO for fast-growth companies, CEO of HR, Talent & Systems Consulting (Top 10 HR Consulting Vendor in 2020 per HR Tech Outlook Magazine) and top executive leadership coach. He is the author of the books, What Millennials Really Want from Work and Life, Returns and Exchanges: A Novel, The Egypt in My Looking Glass: A Novella.  

Podcast

A Glimpse of The Insightful Podcast 

00:41 – 04:35 – How did you cope with the greatest HR challenges leveraging the power of technology? 

04:51 – 08:55 – Are companies are matching the performance management needs of the current scenario? 

08:58 – 10:13 – Should managers provide some suggestive actions to employees along with reminders? 

10:16 – 11:32 – How do setting right objectives and continuous check-ins can make an organization more agile? 

11:33 – 15:15 – How do you make people accountable for their own performance? 

An Eye-Opening Conversation on HR Technology and Performance Management 

Since you started working in human resource, what in your experience has been the greatest challenge among engaging with employees through workforce planning, increasing employee engagement, or performance management? And how did you cope with these challenges using technology?  

I would say, that one of the biggest pieces is trust. It’s unfortunate but in this day most corporations have a lot of problem with just having trust from their employees, right? I mean you can set any number of factors between the distance, between word indeed from the top and of course, that filters down it becomes bigger through the lower levels. You can talk about the compensation structure of most companies, where the CEO makes 300 times or what your lowest level employees are making, you can talk about poor communication, you can talk about being beholden to shareholders but let’s not go too deep into that, just on a practical level, I think that partly due to companies being stressed, executives are stressed, everyone working there is stressed, and of course, COVID has not made it any better. It has made it even worse.  

There’s a squeeze for productivity, there’s a squeeze for survival so there’s a lot of anxiety, there’s a lot of kind of negative emotional forces not to mention the actual economic impact as well circling throughout every organization.  

So, trust is at a big premium and of course, in this situation, HR is expected to somehow instill that trust, maintain that trust, develop that trust, and that’s partly through communication.  

  1. You have to just make sure to be on everyone’s radar as much as possible.  
  2. You also have to make sure that you’re checking in with people. You also have to make sure that your doing coaching.  
  3. You have to have clarity about people’s job description, career pathways, how they’re going to get promoted because everyone is extra anxious, extra stressed.  

Certain elements of technology are very important, so let’s say in my work doing digital transformation for Inc 5000 companies so they’re growing very quickly but their processes, policies, procedures, systems are completely outdated and they’re no longer able to just run on this team of our mission is the most important, our vision is so fantastic, right? It’s kind of like we’re in survival mode while pretending that it’s fine, it’ll be okay, but it’s very tough.  

So, technology gives people access to information. It enables people to communicate regularly. I’m someone who is an interim CHRO sitting in Brooklyn for a company in San Francisco. So, for me technology, your Zoom, your Slack, and all these other tools, they are completely indispensable. I can’t physically be in San Francisco very often but for me the human factor which means I am a coach, so other than heading HR and building systems and making sure that our employer brand is excellent, my primary job is really checking in with people. So, I’m on Zoom calls all day checking with different employees, “How are you doing?” “How are your projects going?” “Let’s help you figure out your personal and professional development plan,” and “Let’s make sure that we close the feedback loop on communication,” and getting things done.  

I’m kind of the buffer between the top management and everybody else and just making sure that only the top 10, most difficult top 10% of the most difficult problems filter up and the rest either I take care of it or I make sure everybody who needs to be on that task force so to speak is on it, problems are solved, then we move on to something more important.  

Almost every organization has a performance management either system or methodology in place but what do you see as the actual need of employees from a performance management process? Do you think organizations are matching those needs, given the current scenario?  

I would say that it’s in normal times this is not done well. In current times, companies that already had this right, they’re doing it very well. Companies that didn’t have it right to begin with are doing even worse. So, it’s a very unfortunate separation, where either HR had its performance management piece together very well and again, the feedback is not going to be effective if it’s once a year even if it’s once every six months. If you look at what millennials want so to speak really millennials don’t want anything more what everybody else has wanted at the same career stages. It’s just they’re not afraid to ask for it. That’s the real difference.  

So, I think everyone has always wanted feedback like “Am I doing well?” or “Am I not doing well?” “How are my presentation skills?” “How are my speaking skills?” “What about my analytics?” “I want feedback.” The normal person wants to know, “Am I doing well?” or “Am I doing not so well?” and in granular detail. So, again, if you have, before this COVID situation, a good system in place where you’re not only giving feedback but also, “Hey, that was a great meeting but yeah you should work on your PowerPoint so go take a course.” It’s not really helpful to kind of just throw that out by the water cooler and not track it and not follow up on it.  

So, in companies that are like my typical scenario, need 5000 company fast growth, again the startup roots of a company are starting to show and not in a good way. They’re at a place where they’re too big to not have stable processes, regular communication, performance management and yet to complete engagement surveys. So, that situation, the infrastructure is not great “Oh! Your review! We are too busy now. Let’s postpone that to February,” and then you postpone it again and again. Again, people leave, I‘m not getting much out of this.”  

In the current situation, the simplest thing you can do is systems are important but you have to have technology, you have to have a system that can track all of that feedback and close that loop. So, you don’t have to throw something out as a manager and it’s not tracked, it’s not followed up and it is not actually improved. It is not even tested again. So, you need to close that loop, and technology can be very useful.  

There are all sorts of different platforms like the one that you guys have, which does great work on this subject but the key piece is you cannot leave it up to the managers to remember and to hope that their calendar has all these check-ins because it is not going to work. You know too many things going on, you need nudges. So, good system for performance management nudges managers, “Hey, It is time for your one-on-one meeting this week with your reports,” and it really should happen every week and that feedback what happens in that one-on-one meeting, part of it you want to spend minimal time doing updates but you want to say, “Hey, you know what, if you want to fulfill your goals for your six months, then you need  to be taking this course on this platform, do LinkedIn learning and here are a couple other courses I suggest.” And track that in the system to see how they’re doing.  

The system should nudge you and say “Hey, check in with this person.” Have that conversation, track it and then by the time you have that yearly performance review or quarterly or every six months, you have a track conversation. You see how this person has improved. Have they done what you suggested? Have they moved up? Are they ready for promotion in six months? So, it is not rocket science, it just needs to be tracked and you have to make sure that the system nudges you ideally in at least a couple of ways. 

So, not just the notifications and reminders but also some kind of suggestive actions from the manager, which the employee can follow so that they seem to feel that their management is equally invested in their growth? 

Someone has to care and you have to do it in a human way. You have to acknowledge that all of us really are in the same boat regardless of where we are in the totem pole and given all of that, we have to check off whatever is on the list but we want to make sure that you’re doing well here, that you move forward, that you have chances for meaningful professional development and also given how tough the times are and that this is also my philosophy when I come in as an interim CHRO that’s one of my things to make sure that their personal development is also front and center because people don’t live in a vacuum, they have financial problems, they have career issues, they have side hustles. You can’t just put blinders on and hope all of that doesn’t interfere. It does.  

So, you have to make sure that the one-on-one meetings with each report reflect that managers always look to help each report in a human way but yes also in a professional sense.  

On top of what we just discussed, with respect to performance management, the greatest change has definitely been the introduction of better structured objectives and feedback for employees, how do you think setting right objectives and continuous check-ins can make an organization more agile? 

 So, let’s take a step back and presume for a minute that we have achieved some kind of digital transformation that we’re starting from a little bit higher level then. My boss picks up the phone and says, hey is this project done like that’s okay, like we can’t do that, like we can’t run a proper business with that kind of mindset but some industries unfortunately are like that, something like home health, which I’m very familiar with.  

So, presuming we’re at a place, where we have Slack that connects to 10 different apps, Zoom, Loom, Calendly, G-suite, Synergita, and five others. So, you have one source of truth, one source of information for all internal communication, for project management updates and for all of that. We’re in a place where we’re starting to kind of look more to the future.  

 How do you make people accountable for their own performance? Eventually, an employee should be just as much or even more interested and more responsible to improve his or her performance otherwise it’s their future that gets affected. How do you make involved and accountable towards their own performance?  

I think the most important piece here is not the particular technology that you’re using to nudge people. You can set all that up. There’s no shortage of all these. I think it’s important to look at philosophy, right? So, as leaders, I believe this very strongly, I have been an employee in all kinds of different companies, from Fortune 500 to startups and everything in between, pretty much every kind of role you can imagine, project manager, product manager, finance and operations, business development, and sales, HR, special projects. I’ve worn all those proverbial hats and a number of industries as well in my sixth career, so I should give you some sense of pretty well traveled by this point. And at a certain point, you realize that it is not so much about the right kind of talk, it is not just about smooth language and psychology, which is very important. That’s my specialization but you have to start with the right premises.  

So, if you’re leaders, what should you be doing. You should be clearing the road for your employees meaning make work as it is not going to be simple necessarily but facilitate it. Make it as facile as possible. Get them the right coaching because you have to get people to understand you why are we doing this, what is this for, how does this help you and your career pathway. So, what’s in it for you, not just what’s in it for me as a leader who gets equity and something like that. Basically, as a leader, my job is to clear the road for the people I work with to make sure that they have everything they need to do their life’s best work and yes that means personal alignment as well.  

Now when I do that, when I go and clear the road, I’m the proverbial snow shovel whatever. I go back to them and say, “Look! I went out a little for you. I did everything I could to empower you, to help you move forward in your career, to give you feedback, to give you the right tools. You know what, you’ve gotta produce and it’s that simple, right? You don’t have any crutches. You got everything you need, all the support, all the mindset work, all the tools, the planning. Now, it is your turn.” I think that alone tell people, “Okay, that’s it.”  

When they have the right mindset, they know what the path is, they know where it’s going, how it’s connected, how it’s gonna help them. There’s really no reason why they shouldn’t be owners, why they shouldn’t be accountable because you kind of got rid of that sense for them that someone is to blame and it’s again, we’re not looking backwards anymore. We got our house in order and we are taking care of you. You’re psychologically safe and you’re clear about the bigger picture. Now, it is all about helping yourself by doing well in your work. When you kind of flip the table and show people that suddenly like, “Yeah, you’re right. Actually, this is pretty awesome like I’m in control of my fate and I’m gonna do the best work because it’s good for me.” That’s it. You step back and let them do their thing.

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