Performance management is how an employer maintains and improves the performance of their workforce so that the business achieves its objectives. And, as described in one of our earlier blogs, this is a continuous cycle with no single best approach. Instead, it should fit with your organisation and your culture, allowing for some flexibility.
Performance management allows you as a business owner or manager to align the strategic vision of your business with individual and collective performance through objective setting. This means that it should be embedded throughout the organisation, and form a joined-up approach with learning and development. By focusing on developing your employees, you are continually striving for improvement.
Historically (and in some cases this still applies), performance reviews were exhaustive paper documents circulated around businesses from managers to employees, then back to managers and then on to the HR department. In this technological era, this now appears an archaic process which takes time and attention and allows room for errors and inconsistencies. Your time is better spent on non-administrative duties and this is where online performance management systems take centre stage.
Cloud HR solutions, including performance management solutions specifically, are widely available, meaning these types of processes can be automated and streamlined, to take the onus off both you and your management team. Below we detail what a performance management system can offer in terms of transforming how your team works, reducing time spent on administration tasks, allowing each party to concentrate on their specific objectives and goals, whilst putting your people first:
SCHEDULING TOOL
Imagine being able to schedule and record one-to-one meetings, to generate objectives and deliverables, analyse your employee’s performance metrics and give praise? A performance management solutions offers just this, instead of having to manually organise meetings and remember to do so!
LINK OBJECTIVES TO COMPANY GOALS
You are now able to quickly and easily link personal objectives to company goals, ensuring your employees are able to meet and exceed expectations.
APPRAISALS
As with one-to-ones, at the click of a button you are now able to arrange your appraisal meetings quickly and easily. You will receive reminder emails from the system and take a quick look at your dashboard to ensure you never miss an appraisal again! At the click of a button an employee can receive an invitation to a Performance Review delivered to their inbox, from which they can login and add their details. You can attach any relevant documentation, mark progress on objectives and score your employees against set criteria, enabling you to compare with the rest of your employee-base.
Once the meeting has taken place, another click of a button sends the completed form to the manager for approval. All parts of the process are automated with email notifications and the time saved across the business for all parties involved, in particular managers is considerable.
MANAGING EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT
A performance management solution will enable you to manage the development of all of your employees. It assists the scheduling of training and monitors this process. As a manual process this can be a time-consuming task but a cloud solution can simplify this process of scheduling and approving training.
IMPROVE TRANSPARENCY
You can create communities to improve transparency amongst your employees, giving access to news and employee recognition programs. As a result, your workforce will be more connected and communication is much improved.
ANY TIME, ANYWHERE
The move from on-premise solutions to cloud technology has been a significant enabler when it comes to flexible and remote working. And performance management solutions are no exception. You can access your application from a web browser allowing you and your employees to work anytime, anywhere meaning you are no longer restricted to the office and set working hours.
DATA SECURITY
Gone are the days of paper records which can be easily lost and misplaced. Instead, you have a secure system and can set-up differing access levels depending on who needs to see what. Having all of your performance management information in one place means your data is secure and this is particularly relevant when taking into consideration GDPR compliance. We only recommend and work with companies that store employee data in the EU to comply with GDPR.
Many HR systems offer an ‘out-of-the-box solution which you can implement quickly and easily. This type of platform may be more suited to a small start-up business who wants to implement a simple solution quickly easily and at low cost. However, many solutions are flexible and they will work with you to tailor your reviews to your specific requirements, because each and every company is different. They offer a flexible solution which is fully configurable and can be amended to meet your unique business needs. It may be that as your business grows, the need for the latter will become more apparent.
There are many solutions out there and it can be a somewhat daunting and confusing task selecting the right platform for your business and so if you need help selecting and implementing your chosen HR solution, please contact me on 01453 297557 or email enquiries@peepshr.co.uk.
