Most businesses will have had a performance management process in place since their inception – but how often are they checking it is fit for purpose, and making updates in accordance with this?
OneAdvanced partnered with HR Grapevine on a recent webinar, to explore critical questions around performance management and encourage businesses to evaluate whether their professional development processes are aligned with plans for future growth and success.
Katie Obi, Chief People Officer at OneAdvanced and Paul Ridings, Global Director of Growth, for People, at OneAdvanced, discussed everything from employee engagement amongst the desk free workforce, to the role of artificial intelligence in the future of HR.
Here are some of the key takeaways:
How can you tell if your performance management is fit for purpose?
Katie and Paul covered some key questions business leaders should ask themselves when assessing if their performance management processes are effective and ready for the future:
- Do we get high engagement and satisfaction scores when we survey our employees?
- Do employees have clear goals and objectives?
- Do we have low turnover rates?
- Does your performance management process have a high adoption rate among employees?
- Can you measure performance against other factors, like if your staff are on the shop floor or elsewhere – providing data-driven insights?
- Can you provide employees with continuous feedback throughout the year rather than waiting for yearly reviews?
- Are you saving your staff time with AI and automation?
- Do you have people who want to be people managers in the role? Are you giving them the right training?
If the answer to all these questions is ‘yes’, then it is likely your performance management function is strong. However, if you find yourself answering no or the question makes you want to investigate further, it may be worth considering whether your performance management processes could be improved or refined. It might be that there is technology ready to help you level up…
AI adoption
It’s been difficult to get away from the topic of AI over the last year. When adopting AI, it is important to start with your “why” – understand what you are trying to achieve – rather than diving in without structure. Our speakers explored some of the uses of AI in the world of people management. For example, it can be used for sentiment analysis; sifting through large amounts of unstructured text to gather overarching themes, for example from an employee survey. Similarly, it can sort through customer feedback, useful for assessing the performance of those in customer-facing roles. Solutions like Performance & Talent can help people give feedback, if they are worried about writing it, if they are neurodivergent or if they do not have English as a first language. An AI wizard can assist these employees in crafting their words.
One option is to learn from vendors and partners, seeing how they are using AI, as a nice route of entry without feeling like you must invest immediately yourself.
People leaders should deploy a “crawl, walk, run” approach, to always keep the human element of performance management. Even as AI is adopted, processes have got to be empathetic and personalised. Tools should follow a human-led design, to augment decision making rather than replace it.
Hybrid or remote performance management?
As hybrid and remote work continues post-pandemic, the regular face-to-face 1:1 is perhaps no longer feasible. There is also the question of frontline workers, where managers may not be sharing a workspace with their reports on a day-to-day basis.
This is where it is vital to leverage the technology available and meet workers where they are. For example, providing performance management on a hand-held device that is operated on every day.
“Shadow IT” refers to the phenomenon of colleagues using tools like WhatsApp and Facebook for work communications, because the technology provided by companies does not have the right capabilities. Leaders need to identify and fill these gaps, to ensure effective performance management that bridges physical distance.
Sometimes, more important than in-person interaction is creating the right psychosocial environment: encouraging employees to feel free to make mistakes, try new things and not know everything. Agility and curiosity are two of the most important skills for the future across sectors; your performance management processes must reflect this.
Watch back the full webinar here.
