The use of new Technology to aid Performance Management

‍Feedback in real time

As we have said many times over: Just having an annual employee performance review is inadequate — people today want feedback in real time which calls for much more frequent check ins. By now we are used to new technology and the increased speed of which we receive information and feedback.

The incorporation of social media in our lives has brought with it this expectation of real time feedback on whatever we put out into the world: a new profile picture on Facebook gets a like, the article you just shared on LinkedIn gets a comment, a friend Tweets about your company event. The list goes on.

This is especially the case with Millennials, who grew up with this new technology and connectedness. They’ve grown accustomed to being able to ask questions, share opinions and provide commentary whenever they feel like it — it’s no wonder that they also expect the same in their workplace. To Millennials, not receiving a response is actually a bad sign — a sign of people not liking our profile picture, not being interested in the article we just shared and not finding the event worth sharing. The same goes for their performance in the workplace — no feedback is not something they take very well and research shows that only 17 percent say the feedback they do receive is meaningful. Read more about Millennials in our blog post here.

This development has had and is still having a massive impact on performance management. If managers just go by every day without ever giving feedback, they signal that they don’t really care about what their employees do or how they perform.

The fact is that employees will not go to work every day and not be recognized for what they are doing — at least not if managers want to keep them around. Remember, one of the biggest challenges for companies today is talent retention.

Employee Experience (aka HR in general)

There is more to HR than practical things such as payroll, employment contracts and leave balances. These are of course all important aspects of supporting employees, but when it comes to retaining the workforce of today there is much more to it. Employee Experience (EX) is all about people and how to keep them happy, motivated, engaged and productive. People are seen as people — not just employees. Which leads me to the other side of EX: the emotional side. Emotional HR is about engagement and personal development.

“We define employee experience simply as seeing the world through the eyes of our employees, staying connected, and being aware of their major milestones.” Susan Peters, Senior Vice President, Human Resources at General Electric.

Read more about EX in our blog post here.

Emotional HR

Employee Engagement and Personal Development are key elements of the emotional side of HR. Emotional Human Resources can be approached from two different angles: from a corporate angle and from a day-to-day management angle. These two angles could be called:

• People Analytics (and)
• People Management

These two angles make up two different levels of Emotional HR in an organization. People Analytics is about the overview of all the people in the organization through surveys and the insights obtained from these surveys. This is where you gain perspectives that enable you to see the patterns of behavior and opinions in the organization.

People Management is about execution. This level deals with the day-to-day issues of managing people, which is primarily based on frequent 1-on-1s between the manager and the employee. It’s simple — in order to fully understand your employees you must talk to them, hear what they have to say and give them your feedback as well. Preferably in private conversations, such as 1-on-1 meetings, so you don’t miss out on getting to the core of what really matters. Keep yourself updated on aspirations, issues, conflicts, mental health etc. and work towards a happy workplace. This will influence performance in the long run and play a big part in keeping it at a high level.

Continue reading and learn how new technology can improve your people management at www.duuoo.io.