Wishing you a very happy year 2017. This is going to be a milestone year for HR and Performance Management in particular.
Performance management is at a stress point. Fissures have been visible over the past 2 to 3 years and the cracks are now being acknowledged by company after company that gave up their existing ways of doing things when it comes to managing performance
The popular press (sic !! Experts on social media) and also the fourth estate makes it look like companies are abandoning the appraisal process. Look at below four examples among hundreds of misleading titles and excerpts |
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"Microsoft and Dell are ditching employee performance reviews" (Source)
. "Similar to the visionary Adobe and Accenture are dumping and redesigning annual performance reviews, Deloitte long knew that their old performance management approach neither boosted employee engagement nor high performance." (Source)
Reinventing the Wheel: How companies like GE, Adobe, and Deloitte get rid of the performance review with one on ones (Source)
Starting September, multinational management consulting firm Accenture will officially get rid of its performance reviews as part of a “massive revolution” in internal operations. (Source)
One would get an impression that companies are giving up the performance review process. Managers and employees are saying "Ahaa.. finally we don't have to go through the boring motions of appraisals"
In fact the opposite is true. Companies are not giving up rather they are making it more focused, more relevant and more aligned to the business. This will actually mean managers, employees and leadership will have to spend more time, undivided attention and bring in more rigor into the process
The systems will have to be more agile, fact based, evidence driven and outcome focused. All this will mean more work. Remember what gets focus gets attention and what gets attention gets done.
That's exactly what's happening. Lets look at what will change.
1. Goal setting and reviews will be more frequent. Biannual, Half yearly etc will now become monthly, quarterly and feedback will kick in more often than ever experienced except at some very agile (few that may be countable on your fingers) organizations
2. Discussions will be more focused on all round focus of development, performance. More evidence based data driven scenarios have to come into the picture. Focus will not only have to be on what was achieved but also why and how. (means to the end more relevant in a performance driven organization)
3. More stakeholders will need to validate the performance outcomes and specially the focus on process (why and how) . Peer reviews, customer feedback (internal), stakeholder surveys etc will be more commonly used in organizations.
4. With the five digital forces staring at us from all sides, a data driven analytics based approach to data will be the key way in the future. This is so true as my favorite quote I use in my PM sessions. "In general we can argue but with data we can dialogue". When we have a data driven approach dissonance will be low and both outcome like engagement and productivity will see a positive shift.
5. One on one's will be key: in the days to come. The one on one's will focus on key issues relevant to the day to day job and core need of the individual employees when it comes to his or her work. This would mean that work gets discussed in context of how it gets executed removing the uncertainties, addressing the stumbling blocks and getting things to move forward for the organization
Thus we can say that performance reviews are only going to transform and not vanish. Time will show who stands out. Organizations that understand it and take it seriously will surely stand strong vis a vis the also rans who try quick fix and patchy solutions to the key DNA of the organization (Managing Performance) |
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