Appraisals and Performance Management

Podcast Episode 10: What really works in Performance Management

8th July 2019

718 views

5 min read

In this episode, Lucinda debunks some of the ‘Spin’ around appraisal and performance management and shares what the research literature tells us about what really works in terms of driving people performance.

She runs through eight key evidence-based practices with examples on how you can put these into action in your organisation.

Key Takeaways

According to studies, one-third of the workforce are choosing to leave their companies in the first six months. This is a bad sign especially that employers invest so much money, time, and energy in recruitment, employment, training, etc.
Onboarding – the period of time from when an interesting candidate has accepted your offer and is performing and engaged with the organisation
Operational 0nboarding – Tools are needed by new team players to do their job.
Knowledge Onboarding – How should you do it? Knowledge is more digestible for them if you do it in small chunks over a period of time.
Social Onboarding – Make them feel included.
Performance Induction – Set goals for individuals to achieve. It’s easier to evaluate their performance and give them feedback.
Talent Onboarding – Managers should know your skills, talents and expertise, so they’ll know how you can help each other improve.
Cross-boarding – people are moving from one business to another.

Performance management is, and should be, a people management process that should be aligned with the needs of the organisation and delivering business value. However, the process of condensing an entire year’s worth of progress in a once-per-year three-hour meeting has always been an unproductive way of handling this.

Goal Setting – We set goals in our personal lives all the time. It’s how we measure success in health, finance, and our lives in general. So why aren’t we taking more advantage of goal-setting in the workplace? Also, have we made the overall goal of the company itself clear to our employees?

Strategic Alignment – We need to ensure that our goals are strategically aligned and relevant to the business goals and to our career aspirations. An affirmative to both of these questions would give us our “why”, our reason for doing it.

Coaching and development – Coaches and managers need to get to know their team. They need to know where their team wish to go and what they wish to achieve. It’s worth investing coaching time on our coaches to develop their talent with people. Telling people how to do things isn’t coaching.

Feedback and recognition – Giving ongoing feedback to employees throughout the year is an incredibly powerful tool. When we receive feedback, it engenders our fight-or-flight response. To prevent a level of fear arising the moment we tell someone we’re about to give them feedback is to make sure the feedback is high-quality and positive.

Communication and transparency – No one should arrive at an appraisal and be surprised or shocked by what they hear. By delivering ongoing feedback, you remove the element of surprise and create a company-wide atmosphere of transparency and communication.

Climate of Trust – People need to trust the processes of your company. This leads on from being transparent and communicating well. Building a climate of trust and a healthy relationship with our employees, we increase their productivity and happiness.

Rewarding Performance – Remember that rewards don’t have to be monetary. Development programs, extra holiday allowance, even making sure that a good employee’s input is part of moving the company forward, can all act as an incentive for employees to do their best.

Trained Managers – Is your business placing importance on people management? Managing people should be an ongoing process, not just reserved for a once a year appraisal meeting, where the juxtaposition of positives, negatives and career development can make for an awkward and unproductive meeting.

Best Moments

“The appraisal is dead, long live the catch-up!”
“We all know that these practices are the right thing to do, but are they actually happening?”
“Common sense is not always common practice”
“We have to help managers realise how important it is to manage people well, and give them the tools and methods to do that”
“Coaching is empowering people to make decisions for themselves”
“Catch people doing things right”

Valuable Resources

Dr Nuno da Camara – https://www.southampton.ac.uk/business-school/about/staff/nrdc1y13.page
Link to the full academic research review – https://actus.co.uk/free-performance-management-resources/whitepapers/research-review-what-works-performance-management/
You can access additional free HR Resources via the Actus Software website link below. Lucinda Carney is the founder and CEO of Actus Software: https://actus.co.uk/free-performance-management-resources/

VIEW THE TRANSCRIPT

About The Host

Lucinda Carney is a Business Psychologist with 15 years in Senior Corporate L&D roles and a further 10 as CEO of Actus Software where she worked closely with HR colleagues helping them to solve the same challenges across a huge range of industries. It was this breadth of experience that inspired Lucinda to set up the HR Uprising community to facilitate greater collaboration across HR professionals in different sectors, helping them to ‘rise up’ together.

“When we look up we rise up”