A sigh of relief!  

Finally, the most dreaded year 2020 is over. Everyone was anxious in 2020 because it made irreversible changes to our lives and completely changed our perspective on life and the way we do business.  

The vaccine is here, and so is the year 2021. We have lots of hopes and plans for 2021.  

Many businesses are opening up and requesting the employees to get back to the office, while many companies decided to go remote. The digital transformation of workplaces and technology help a great deal by making it easier for businesses to make their own choices, unlike COVID-19 that forced us to make one difficult choice.   

Once the decision is made, the focus shifts to maximizing the overall performance of the business in the normal post COVID. There are so many processes to be taken care of to bring back the familiar working environment in the work areas without affecting the performance. Amidst all the operations, here are a few easy and consistent ways to achieve new performance milestones in 2021, no matter where you work from or what goes around you in terms of operations and functionalities.   

The operations and functionalities change, so does our work. How can it not affect our performance?  

There is a way. A constant mantra to follow in any kind of situation to work things out.   

Keep Calm and Do the Work  

When there are a lot of uncertainties, it is very hard to keep calm and plan work. In business, data and predictability are significant to run a firm with profits. But situations like COVID happen all the time, and it might take a while to get hold of the happenings. During those times, always have a record of how you do things for the reference of future leaders. And if you have a record like that, refer to it to plan your strategies.  

Taking out the stress on others or bottling up and taking random measures are not going to help. You will have to focus and analyze the goals that you had set for the previous and future years.   

1. Analyze them and see if it is going to be relevant anymore.  

2. List out the possibilities of how the future might turn out.  

3. Formulate a strategy that would suit both normals or two for either possibility.  

4. Hire a business expert to look at the strategy, know their thoughts, and make the required changes if they suit your business needs.  

When you are calm, your employees will trust you and produce quality work despite any kind of business environment.  

Objectives and Key Results (OKR)  

OKR is the buzzword among the Goal-Setting experts. To increase the performance of your Employees, you need to make the goals and business direction clear to them. The employees should know their contribution to the company and what the company tries to achieve in the next year. OKR creates alignment, and it becomes easier to cascade goals in both top-bottom and bottom-top ways.  

Objectives help you to have a clear vision of where you want to go, and key results help you with measuring your progress toward the destination.   

Why OKRs? Because  

1. It is agile  

2. Midway corrections are possible  

3. All the efforts can be focused on one common goal. 

4. Brings in a transparent culture  

5. Promotes collaboration  

6. Encourages accountability  

OKRs bring the best out of the employees, thus increasing the performance.  

Continuous Mentoring  

The priorities are always quality and quantity. But to achieve both, continuous check-ins are indispensable. Regular performance conversations and continuous feedback build mutual trust and loyalty between the managers and employees. Employees will have the guidance and direction which make them perform well. Employees will also have new innovative ideas because of the knowledge they acquire through regular one-on-one meetings.  

Nagging bosses are the reason most of the time when employees quit companies. When managers act as coaches, the employees stay with the company for a long time for the learning they get and the employee experience. Managers acting as mentors give a whole range of benefits to the employees as well as the company, performance being one of them. The other benefits are,  

1. A great deal of knowledge and experience to the team members  

1. The lower employee attrition rate 
2. Increased productivity and quality  
3. Strong teamwork  
4. Ability to weather any storm like COVID-19  

360 degree feedback  

What the manager hasn’t noticed, the peers and other stakeholders would have done. With 360 degree feedback, your Employees learn more about themselves, their strengths and weaknesses. In 2021, with everything going around, with or without face time, your employees should keep going, setting new goals for themselves. 360 degree feedback will be really helpful for that.   

Manager bias and other negative effects can be eliminated with feedback from peers, primary manager, cross-functional manager, direct reports, clients, and others who work with the employee.   

Do not stop the process with that. When the employees learn their areas of improvement, provide them tailored development plans and training programs to work on those areas and improve themselves. The more the skills are developed and perfected, the more productivity and performance.  

Reward the Employees  

This step is really important to keep your employee turnover rate in check, to be precise, lower. All employees, after hours of working hard draining their brains, expect a little bit of recognition from their managers. If that is not given, they will soon become disengaged employees. The recognition need not be done with grandeur things, even the simple little things matter a lot to the high-performing employees.  

You can,  

1. Send a thank-you email, if you’re working remotely  
2. Offer a ride to the office for two days  
3. Give a card appreciating his/her efforts  
4. Provide a free training course   
5. Lunch or a small bonus  

Learn the employees’ aspirations during the small talks or continuous check-ins and try to fulfill that whenever they go beyond your expectations.  

Therefore, incorporate a well-rated reward and recognition program into your performance management system. And, reward the employees who perform outstandingly and contribute a lot to the project and company.