Performance management is crucial for maintaining a healthy, happy workforce. It ensures that employees understand how their individual performance contributes to the overall success of the organization. And when it’s tied to effective development goals, it boosts engagement and strengthens the employer-employee bond.
Yet, in the words of Harvard Business Review, traditional performance management processes are often seen as “time-consuming, demotivating, inaccurate, biased, and unfair” by both managers and employees. This is because employers often lack the right performance management processes and tools.
Turn your performance management into a rewarding experience with these 3 tech-driven processes.
1. Setting goals
Strong performance management always starts with setting clear, realistic development goals. The problem is that months go by between performance reviews. Employees easily lose sight of their goals if they don’t have an effective way to monitor their progress.
Tech tools like the goalsetting feature in FourVision’s Performance Management Web App for Microsoft Dynamics 365 lets employees continually manage their development objectives.
For example: Managers can decide with their team members’ which new skills or behaviors employees want to develop. With the app, both employees and managers get a clear overview of their ongoing performance objectives, including the category, status and completion rate of each goal.
2. Performance development reviews
Periodic performance development reviews (PDRs) are the backbone of effective performance management. It is essential for managers to meet regularly with employees to provide feedback, discuss challenges and set new performance goals.
Most organizations conduct performance reviews (also known as job appraisals or one-to-one meetings) for all employees every 3 to 6 months. Yet some HR experts argue that holding reviews on a monthly basis may be even more beneficial.
No matter how often you conduct PDRs, preparing for them is a complex, time-consuming task. Tech tools simplify and automate the review process by collecting all performance-related information in a single, easy-to-read overview.
The PDR tool in FourVision’s Performance Management Web App saves time and effort while also helping employees keep on track with their performance goals. It gives employees and managers a real-time picture of the employee’s performance and how it has progressed during the current review cycle.
3. 360-degree feedback
Traditional performance management often feels unfair or biased to employees. That’s because it has long been a top-down process in which managers always have the last word. By integrating 360-degree feedback into your performance management, you gain a fuller picture of the employee’s performance.
What do we mean by 360-degree feedback? Instead of only collecting performance data based on KPIs and quantitative targets, you also ask employees, their co-workers and even customers for qualitative feedback.
One efficient way to conduct these types or reviews is to ask co-workers to fill out performance reviews in which they rate each other’s performance in various categories (for example, on a scale of 1 to 5 stars).
Yet sending and managing surveys—not to mention analyzing their results—is a complex task. Fortunately, you can easily conduct and manage questionnaires with the right tech tools, such as the 360-degree feedback tool in FourVision’s Performance Management Web App.
Getting the most out of your performance management
Another benefit of optimizing your performance management is that it has positive ripple effects in other areas of your HR management. That’s because performance management is the basis for advanced HR practices like Succession Planning and Workforce Planning.
Getting the most benefit out of your performance management starts with having the right tools. Our Performance Management Web App for the Dynamics 365 HCM module is designed to meet the needs of today’s workforce. With insightful, easy-to-use tools like these, you transform your organization’s performance management into a positive experience for everyone.
