In many organisations these days, a prevailing view seems to be that the best way to manage performance requires a structured appraisal system, formal annual discussions, complicated online form-filling and lofty-sounding ‘balanced scorecard’ KPIs.
I’m not saying this doesn’t work – certainly an annual appraisal process is far better than not reviewing performance at all. But if the way you roll is slightly less bureaucratic, it isn’t necessarily the only approach available to you. A common criticism of structured annual appraisals is that they can be so formal and onerous they’re dreaded by managers and employees alike. And when it comes to setting performance objectives, these are often either too weakly defined to be useful, or crafted in such specific detail that they become obsolete after a few weeks. Either way, they get put in a drawer (or logged out) and forgotten about. Until next year when they get pulled out again, dusted off, thrown away, and the process starts again.
But There Are Alternative Ways To Manage, Monitor And Support The Performance Of Your People
The most effective organisations I know focus their energies less on the system, and more on the spirit of aligning the work that people are asked to do with the strategic imperatives of their business. Done well, this naturally places less emphasis on form-filling and more on:
- Setting relevant goals
- Keeping track of what people are working on and how they’re doing
- Ensuring their work is still relevant to the needs of the business
- Having less formal but crucially, more regular and focused conversations about both performance and development
Key components of this approach include:
- Giving and receiving honest, good quality feedback
- Providing relevant support and coaching
- Willingness on the part of everyone involved to be flexible to the changing needs of the business, if required.
First, The Emphasis Is On You To Create & Communicate Clear Business Goals
The most critical factor, of course, is ensuring the vision and strategic needs of the business are fully communicated, clearly understood, and translated into meaningful and relevant objectives on which all your employees can focus their efforts. Think about it. In order to be profitable, your business needs to be operating as efficiently as possible. An essential part of this is ensuring the efforts of all of your people are fully aligned with what your business is fundamentally trying to achieve. Yet I have known organisations where people have told me that the only time their manager ever went through what was expected of them was on their first day. Even in businesses where managers do communicate slightly more frequently with their staff, it’s not uncommon for people to still feel they don’t fully understand what’s expected of them. So setting clear objectives, linked to the higher level goals of your business, is fundamental if you are to successfully translate your strategy into action.
Employee Goals Aligned to Business Goals Can Be Both Challenging And Motivating
Having clear, relevant goals is important from your employees’ perspective, too. Most of us like to feel our work is important and that it has purpose and meaning. Setting strategically aligned goals is a great way to motivate your people, by showing them exactly how they fit into the bigger picture and how important their contribution is to the overall mission and aims of your business. Goals also clarify for each individual what is expected of him or her, and which aspects of their roles are most important. This provides them with the scope to use their own initiative and make their own decisions day to day.
Moreover, most of us like to feel challenged to some degree. Having the opportunity to work towards a stretching – but attainable – goal, achieving it, and having that achievement recognised by our manager is highly motivating. In addition, with clear objectives should come clear and objective performance measures. Because as well as ensuring your people are focused on the activities that are important to your business, they also need to be delivering the performance you expect. Having agreed, quantifiable criteria for assessment in place helps focus performance review discussions and ensure they are constructive – however formal or informal these conversations happen to be.
Employee Goals Should Be Tailored To The Role In Hand
If part of your strategy is to attract new customers, then you might set someone goals around how many new customers are signed up by the end of each month. Or if your vision includes offering best in class customer service, then a goal might target the number of customer support issues that remain unaddressed by the end of each week.
What Else To Bear In Mind When Defining Objectives For Your People
- Ensure that each objective is a chunky, reasonably stretching deliverable, not a routine task.
- Use simple, clear and specific language, and define both exactly what the objective is, and how it will be measured.
- Accountability matters: make sure that an employee’s personal objectives do not overlap with anyone else’s.
- Make each objective time-bound: taking into account the complexity of the tasks and the urgency with which the business needs them completed, include realistic milestones or deadlines.
Of course, while setting measurable goals and objectives is key to driving performance – it’s not the only ingredient. Don’t forget the importance of factors such as trust, communication, teamwork and inspiring leadership and you will be well on your way towards creating a culture of truly high performance.
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Photo Credit: arrow on target by Via Tsuji
