It’s Time To Solve the Performance Management Puzzle
— by taylor (3 min read)
Performance management ain’t easy. At least not for most of us.
As Deloitte’s 2013 Human Capital Trends report noted, “… 58 percent of HR leaders gave their performance management process a ‘C’ grade or worse.” In fact, the report itself contains an entire section called, “The Performance Management Puzzle.
Puzzle—as in riddle. Enigma. Challenge. Problem.
It’s a fair comparison. After all, the performance management process encompasses a complex chain of moving parts including organizational goals and targets, individual goals and targets, manager/employee relationships, team relationships, evaluation tools, perceptions, judgment and communication, among others. Just thinking about all of these components and how to piece them together effectively is enough to make your head hurt.
As daunting as it might seem, we all need to solve the performance management puzzle—and the sooner the better because the future of our companies depends upon it. That’s no exaggeration. It’s the simple truth. Organizational performance is a direct result people performance. So the time to solve this particular puzzle is now.
But (you knew there’d be a “but” in here somewhere, didn’t you?) we need to proceed judiciously. The performance management puzzle can’t be “solved” all at once. The only way to raise that “C grade or worse” to something more respectable is to address one piece of the puzzle at a time:
·The tools, systems and software we use.
·The processes we have in place.
·The comprehensiveness of our reviews—and our reviewers.
·The training we provide to managers and supervisors.
·The uniform and fair application of measurements and standards.
·The effectiveness of our communication.
And so on.
As the Deloitte report noted, “the pressure for performance will likely increase as business decisions become more complex and challenging.” In other words, the need to improve performance management is only going to grow more urgent. So we’d better start bumping up our grades in quick fashion.
In our next post, we’ll push the puzzle metaphor just a little further and touch on some of the new realities of piecing together a strong performance management solution.
