Using Continuous Performance Management To Guide and Empower Teams

According to a Deloitte survey, 58% of executivesOpens a new window believe their current performance management approach drives neither employee engagement nor high performance. Yet, an effective performance management strategy makes a company stronger and ready to scale. 

Standard bi-annual or yearly employee performance reviews rarely provide the most accurate assessment, which can stunt the growth of companies and employees alike. Managers want real-time, individualizedOpens a new window , and holistic data to evaluate individual employee performance. They can surface that real-time feedback through continuous performance management, which helps teams: 

• Better understand their objectives
• Feel supported by management
• Have a way to own their progress and growth

Further, the context surrounding real-time data improves processes to understand employees on a more comprehensive and personal level. By implementing continuous performance management combined with using a people analytics platform, an organization can transform its data to become more accessible so teams can spend less time analyzing and more time acting.

Benefits of Continuous Performance Management

Managers should conduct reviews more frequently than the conventional once-a-year model for true continuous performance management. As the name suggests, with this approach, managers continually evaluate how individual employees are performing according to the expectations of their role. 

Continuous performance management can look different from one company to another, but the core concept involves frequent evaluations at regular intervals to generate more insights and data. This approach enables a company to create a trusted environment where employees feel empowered to take control of their own development. Continuous performance benefits both companies and their employees in three important ways. 

1. Greater employee engagement

According to Gallup’s “State of the Global Workplace 2021 Report,”Opens a new window only 34% of employees in the U.S. and Canada feel engaged at work. Conducting regular performance reviews is imperative to building trust between supervisors and individual employees. When workers feel seen and heard by management, they tend to be more engaged and work harder, directly translating to a company’s success. 

An engaged employee feels connected to their company’s mission and is committed to shared company goals. One telltale sign of an engaged employee is if they speak highly of their employer and recruit friends to the company. A positive ripple effect happens when people feel challenged and excited about their work. 

Continuous check-ins empower managers to provide feedback and help employees set objectives and identify goals. Making employees wait months, or even an entire year, for the opportunity to discuss their progress is not only unfair to the employee but impractical from a business perspective. Employees can’t meet or exceed expectations if they’re not clearly defined, revisited, and updated more frequently. 

See More: The Great Resignation: Retaining a Contingent Workforce in a Tight Talent MarketOpens a new window

2. More efficient evaluations

Continuous performance management enables leadership to think proactively instead of reactively and allows managers to identify issues quickly. 

Consider the benefit of addressing problems and grievances throughout the year instead of waiting. Covering an entire year of work in one annual review increases the potential for hasty, incomplete, or inaccurate performance reviews. Even biannual reviews can leave significant gaps in critical data. For example, what if a sales representative’s average deal volume began declining over several months. The sales team would see significant missed targets that more frequent reviews could have identified and addressed much sooner than if the manager waited months to conduct an employee review.

Long gaps between reviews can also result in managers inadvertently overlooking hard work and ingenuity. Real-time feedback gives workers more opportunity for recognition and a transparent framework to identify and work toward broader career goals. This future-focused approach is crucial. Traditionally, organizations center performance reviews around the past. Managers ask how the employee’s year went and what went well and what didn’t go well. While this reflection is necessary, it shouldn’t take up the bulk of performance conversations. 

3. Stronger performance data 

An essential piece of performance management includes collecting data that drives change. Reviewing continuous data in context benefits both the employer and employee, such as one-on-one evaluations, which provide detailed feedback on goals like revenue targets or production output. Further, collecting data from a range of sources builds a more complete picture of employee performance.

Evaluating an employee’s performance review in isolation doesn’t paint a complete picture. Instead, gathering more information from multiple sources makes it easier for leaders to identify and close genuine skills gaps in teams and across entire organizations. It also provides a comprehensive view of an employee’s performance within the organization. 

Essentially, collecting performance data more frequently tends to yield more accurate results, as relying on a single source of performance data increases the potential for biased or incomplete information to inform decision-making.

Implementing People Analytics To Increase Data Accessibility

Organizations have trouble combining data and visualizing insights when those things don’t live together. Managers end up toggling through different platforms and datasets to create performance plans, set goals, and track progress, which is often time-consuming and inefficient. The right technology enables leadership teams to review company-wide and individual performance management data in context to help drive decisions on HR matters like compensation or promotions.

Additionally, people analytics software consolidates and leverages an organization’s data. Users can access all their performance-related data, like salary, OKRs/KPIs, and engagement levels. For managers, this is especially helpful in supporting employees. For example, a manager advocating for an employee’s promotion can see everything that employee has accomplished in their tenure rather than a narrow snapshot of their most recent objectives. 

Leaders should feel empowered in making company-wide decisions. But it’s a lot easier to do so when your data is centralized. As business needs change and objectives evolve, companies need data living on the same platform. In turn, decision-makers can better understand the dynamic nature of their organization and can see a more straightforward path to growth. 

A robust people analytics platform does the heavy lifting so organizations can:

• Visualize and act on insights company-wide.
• Identify ways to improve the employee experience.
• Empower employees to see how and where they fit within the organization. 

This solution, paired with continuous performance management, provides leadership with multiple touchpoints to help do their jobs successfully. 

How are you using continuous performance management and people analytics software to make data more accessible? Let us know on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window . 

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