Performance Management Process -What Employees Need To Know.

Now you’ve been hired! Away from the excitement and the new office space, you should concern yourself with your performance. Your performance is measured by how you fulfil the duties of your role, complete required tasks, and behave in the workplace. Employers often have work expectations and it is your onus to align yourself with the existing or new performance management process.

A successful Performance management process often involves outlining job objectives for employees by senior management or task givers. Guiding and coaching employees through their assigned tasks and providing a reward for a job well done.

Do you know your employer’s expectations of your task? Are you aware of an existing performance management process in your workplace? Keep reading to discover what the performance management process is and everything you should know as an employee.

Performance management: A highlight

Performance management (PM) is the process of ensuring that a company’s activities and results should meet its set goals effectively and efficiently. The principles of performance management are mostly used in the workplace but their application can also work in any situation that involves human interaction to provide desired results such as in schools, churches, agencies, or even in the political sphere.

Managers are always concerned with the performance of their employees. Employee performance is key to business success and profitability. Employees’ performance in a company is greatly motivated by some factors such as the condition of the workplace, the salary or incentive system, and the work culture prevalent in the workplace.  What performance management does is provide a unified front for both managers and employees to agree on what is more important to the business and stick to actualizing it.

Company Management uses performance management to align company goals with the goals of teams and employees in a bid to increase efficiency, productivity, and profitability. Performance management guidelines state the activities and outcomes by which employees and teams are to be evaluated during performance appraisal.

It can focus on the performance of an organization, a department, an employee, or the processes in place to manage particular tasks. To ensure the success of the performance management process, it is essential to outline the roles of each individual in the organization in terms of functions and responsibilities.

The advantages of having performance management in place include:

• It helps boost the employee’s morale on the job. With appropriate recognition for their performance, employees are likely going to be motivated to do better.
• It provides a means for employers to measure job performance and productivity for each skill.
• It increases the productivity of the company; as it helps identify top performers and motivates them to work harder.
• It helps reveal the right employees who are due for a promotion. This is because their overall performance can be tracked and appraised easily.
• It highlights the need for training or skill development among employees. Whether your employees need to brush up on a certain skill or get up to speed with new trends for their role; performance management helps to identify any shortcomings or future training needs.
• It increases employee retention as employees have the chance to regularly interact with their managers, and communication becomes more fluid and easy.
• It promises greater employee autonomy as your employees are aware of the wider business objectives and their contribution to those; they are relatively free to make their own choices about how they go about their responsibilities. As a result, employees are happier, more committed, more productive, and more loyal than those whose every action is dictated.
• It allows for accountability. Effective accountability defines a company’s mission, values, and goals, and ensures each individual understands their role within that.

The performance management process: A cycle to productivity.

According to a 2013 Gallup study on the state of the American workplace, only 22% of employees are engaged and thriving in their workplace. What this indicates is that a high percentage of employees are disillusioned with their jobs and this trend can be solved with the performance management process.

The performance management process is a collaborative, communication-based process where employees and management work together to plan, monitor, and review the employee’s objectives, long-term goals, job trajectory, and general contribution to the company. This process is continual, with regular sessions where management and employees have the opportunity to give and receive feedback.

Performance management process steps

The steps in the performance management process can be broken down into five broad categories: Planning, coaching, developing, reviewing, and rewarding.

1. Planning

This stage includes clearly defining set goals and objectives. Goals should be clear, done in the SMART format (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-based) and clear performance standards should be clear. There should be an opportunity for the employees to have input at this stage, and finally, management should agree with employees on what these set goals should be. This will help to ensure that the process is collaborative and assure employees that they are valuable to the business.

2. Coaching

After the first stage is done, the next step is coaching employees through their assigned goals. This should not be seen as a witch-hunting exercise as it will make employees avoid it. It should be a regular opportunity for guiding employees through any hitches mitigating against doing their job well. This stage should also be highly collaborative. Management should be open to accepting feedback from employees without providing a combative attitude to their complaints.

3. Developing

At this stage, management uses the information and data provided in the coaching stage to facilitate the success of the process and improve employee performance. It may require creating refresher courses, providing an assignment that helps employees improve their knowledge and performance on the job, or changing the course of employee development to enhance performance or sustain excellence.

Reviewing

At the end of the performance management cycle, there should be a performance appraisal for employees to review their performance for the entire year. This performance review is the only step that looks backward, to assess the behavior of the past year. It is an opportunity to gauge the effectiveness of the performance management process.

Questions that can be asked are:

• Were personal and organisational objectives met? If not, why?
• What challenges did the employees face?
• What training would help the employee perform better?
• How did management feedback help? If not, why?
• How could the process be made better?
• Was the time spent on this process effectively?

Answering these questions will pave room for a better collaborative effort between staff and employers.

5. Rewarding

The last phase of this process is taking action by recognizing and rewarding employees for their efforts. This stage is pivotal to the success of this process as it will keep employees motivated. It might not necessarily be monetary, it can also include assigning them to new projects and giving them company-wide recognition, time off, or leadership opportunities.

Wrapping up

The success of any business is usually a two-way operation that involves both employees and employers. The success of any business is linked to the performance of employees, nevertheless, employers still have a huge role to play to facilitate successful operations. They have to be willing to coach, review, and reward employees appropriately to ensure they stay motivated to do their assigned work. Employees should, however, understand the vital position they play in performance management and seek a collaborative front with employers. They should not alienate themselves from this process, as it will only prove detrimental on their end. Employees should not only focus on their assigned tasks but endeavour to understand the impact of these on the business. It should not be about working, but working in line with the overall business objectives.

If you are going through a performance management process and have concerns that you are being treated unfairly, being pushed out, going to be fired or have been fired because of the process; you are welcome to call us on 1300 766 700 to discuss whether you have been treated unfairly and how we could help.