Bersin Research recently stated that the #1 high impact talent practice gap at most companies isperformance management/coach. #3 is workforce planning (future talent gaps), and #4 wascompetency maintenance (understanding job capabilities).
Is your company’s performance management meant to give feedback on the previous year, or to provide coaching and development for the future? If you did not answer the latter, then ask yourself which one is more valuable to the company….looking at the rearview mirror or through the windshield? When you are coaching for development, clearly identify what needs to change, what support they will have to commit to that change, and what the measured outcome will be that tracks the change.
Employees need to understand why their performance is important. This is done through: goal cascading, Key Performance Indicators, blah blah blah. Instead, goals have to be dynamic. Measuring performance annually is too static.
Even if you have a dynamic, future-oriented process, one of the primary issues could be that it is deployed in a subjective and inconsistent manner. Another issue might be that what a company primarily desires in an employee (leadership, innovation, motivation) is hard to quantify; thus, most employees are not rewarded for these contributions. It is wrong to assume that years of experience = performance capability. The final issue is that job descriptions document the minimal qualifications instead of the high-performing expectations that would define success.
Does your performance management system develop for the future? Provide dynamic goals?
