Employees are the backbone of any organization as human force is behind anything that is possible today in the world of business. However, hiring employees is not the only thing to do when it comes to running an organization. You also have to make sure that their performance is optimal. That’s where the role of performance management comes in. So what’s performance management and what are the best practices for performance management? Let’s explore.
What is Performance Management?
Performance management in an organization refers to increasing the performance of the employees with best practices like making new rules, adding new tech innovations, and training them for better performance.
Performance management is a loop that basically never ends because it has to be continuous to deal with new challenges that come in the way of your employees’ performance.
Four Performance Management Best Practices
1) Ongoing Feedback
You may remember those days when you had to do homework and get it checked the next day. It’s just like your employees doing a project and you or the concerned person check it once it is completed. In both cases, the results come out at the end and if there were mistakes, they can only be pointed at the end. But now imagine, your elder sister sitting next to you to help you do your homework and pointing out mistakes even before you made them and even cheering you up. That’s called ongoing feedback which basically eliminates all the aftermath by making feedback a real-time thing.
2) Firm Goal Setting with Flexibility and Realignment
Setting goals is not bad and actually, it helps you to know where you have to head. But there are a few things that make a perfect goal-setting criteria. What are these?
Firstly, make your employees capable of making firm goals in adjustable settings. It basically means that even when the goal remains strictly the same, the way to achieve can be adjusted as per the needs. This flexibility and realignment ensures that if a particular approach isn’t right for achieving the goal, then it can be changed on the go.
Moreover, make sure to set SMART goals which are to set goals which are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. These five factors allow us to set a timeline for goals that are real and achievable.
3) Accountability and Recognition
Another best practice to boost the morale and performance of your employees is to recognize their efforts. But it can only be done when your employees know what they are accountable for. So, accountability comes first. Being accountable has two things, i.e. to know what the employee is responsible for or the expectations from the employee and to be brave enough to be at the forefront of the responsibilities.
Now, if something goes wrong, accountability will make it clear why things go wrong. But it also tells you that if something goes brilliant, then who’s the one over-performed for things to brilliant?
4) Continuous Training and Development
When you hire an employee, you clearly tell them about their responsibilities, like what they must know. For instance, if it’s important to know Excel for a job role, then there can be many employees who know Excel. But one can be better than the other, making him perform better. So, how will you make sure that the other employee also performs better? The answer is to continuously train the employees. Platforms like Lattice vs Culture Amp vs PerformYard offer unique approaches to performance management and understanding, It leads to the development of employees who are weak and makes them equivalent to others.
Final Words
With these best practices, you can help your employees perform better and so the company. These best practices allow you to ensure a higher performance without exploiting your employees which many organizations choose instead of working on performance management.