Performance management and high-performing teams
According to CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) performance management “describes the attempt to maximise the value that employees create”. It consists of the following activities:
- "Establish objectives for people and teams to see their part in organization strategy
Hold people to account for their performance by linking it to reward, career progression and termination of contracts
Improve performance of people, teams and organizations”
If you ask people in the organizations what they think about performance management and specifically performance appraisals you can usually hear that it’s a formal time-consuming process but it’s needed because the decisions related with salary raise, bonuses and career progression are based on that.
These days I’m asking myself as an HR professional why we are still counting on something which doesn’t bring the value we expect – nor to people, nor to managers or the organizations. Or we just continue to apply a well-known process and believe we support the organizations and managers to manage better people performance. It’s time to reconsider how we apply those processes. Because the intrinsic motivation for higher performance and productivity doesn’t come through extrinsic factors like manager’s or peers’ feedback or salary increase. It comes from a meaningful and purposeful work and environment that unleashes people talents and strengths.
According to a McKinsey research 70% of employees said that their sense of purpose is defined by their sense of work. It means that people expect their jobs to bring sense of purpose to their lives and it’s up to employers to help people optimize their sense of fulfillment from work.
Deloitte’s case study for reinventing performance management brings also some insights on high- performing teams. They used six-item survey based on Gallup examination of high-performance teams and there is one which was the most powerful across the organization and correlated best with high performance: “I have the chance to use my strengths every day.”
So, instead of setting objectives, leaders might help people link their individual purpose with the organizational purpose. Instead of assessing and rating people based on the past results (as at school), leaders might help people to enable their strengths and realize their full potential by providing the right activities for future outcomes.
Instead of getting biased, subjective and insincere feedback on people skills and competencies, leaders might ask themselves how much they can rely on their people and for which tasks. And finally, I do believe that career progression and salary increase is a consequence of doing our job with passion and self-fulfillment and in the right environment where we can realize our sense of purpose and talents. This guarantees great performance and productivity for organizations and happier people.
