3 Must-Reads about the Future of Performance Management
Performance management is finally getting the 21st-century transformation everyone has been waiting for. Annual reviews with a meaningless, “tick-the-box” routine are on their way out, and meaningful, action-oriented conversations about future performance and employee engagement are taking their place. Now, performance management is becoming an ongoing process with real-time feedback that provides unique insights to move the company forward.
Leading organizations have already begun to implement this new approach, and their results have been astounding thus far. In case you’ve missed any valuable information about this exciting development, we’ve hand-picked the top three articles you should read to find out everything you need to know.
1. “Abandoning Annual Reviews for Ongoing Feedback” by Stanford University
This article from Stanford follows Adobe’s plunge into the new concept of continuous performance management. Instead of a single review once a year, the company now utilizes ongoing feedback and completes regular check-ins with their employees.
Since the 2012 implementation of this new system, Adobe has experienced a 30 percent decrease in voluntary employee turnover and a 50 percent increase in involuntary turnover. The article also taps Donna Morris, who is the senior vice president of people resources for Adobe, to share great insights into the entire overhaul process, from the initial brainstorming sessions all the way through the execution stage and onto the stunning results.
2. “The Performance Management Revolution” by Harvard Business Review
This is an excellent crash course on the extensive history of talent management over the course of the last 100 years. The article will guide you through important performance management procedures dating all the way back to the United States armed forces during World War I. A history lesson may not seem relevant, but there is plenty to learn about modern performance management practices in here, too. The article ends with information on the “Agile Manifesto” that laid the groundwork for today’s processes for measuring and improving performance through ongoing, real-time feedback.
3. “Reinventing Performance Management” by Harvard Business Review
The final piece, also from Harvard Business Review, is written by Deloitte’s Director of Leader Development Ashley Goodall. In it, she details how the company transformed its talent management process to better “see”, “recognize” and “fuel” the performance of its employees.
Deloitte is another company that has successfully adopted an approach that focuses heavily on continuous feedback, collaboration, coaching, and development. These ideals have fundamentally changed how performance management is viewed. Instead of it being something that happens outside of the regular workday, it is now fully integrated into daily growth and productivity in the workplace.
Bonus Video
Before you dive into the articles mentioned above, consider watching this short, information-packed video by Goldman Sachs. It is a terrific and informative video memo that outlines all of the reasons they chose to implement a real-time feedback system. They believe that a system which offers employees timely, constructive and actionable feedback throughout the entire year yields vastly superior long-term results. The video also explains how transforming your company’s performance management into something engaging and dynamic can create an atmosphere where the best minds can thrive. The words of Edith Cooper, Global Head of Human Capital Management, said it best:
“It’s constructive feedback that people are looking for, specific things that you can do to improve performance. It’s the purest form of investment into another individual. Feedback is made for two purposes only: to improve employees and to become more effective. We have total confidence that as we pay attention to our people, the return will be enormous. That’s why feedback matters. You give someone feedback; they think about it. They internalize it; they probably stress a little about it, but at the end, it will improve their performance.”
To learn more about how your company can apply the approach of continuous performance management in practice, feel free to contact us. We’re offering a cloud-based application that integrates directly into employee workflows, capturing the instantaneous, context-rich feedback between employees that naturally happens every day. Real-time feedback is far more relevant and actionable than comments typically delegated in an annual performance review because it empowers employees to improve as soon as they receive the feedback. By creating an intuitive, simple application that makes it frictionless for employees to interact, QuercusApp removes barriers in communication to cultivate a culture of continuous feedback for more engaged, high-performing employees.
