The times, they are a changin' for performance management

In 1964 Bob Dylan could have been singing about the HR industry in 2016 when he released his single ‘The times they are a changin’.

Come gather 'round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You'll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you

Is worth savin'

Then you better start swimmin'

Or you'll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin'.

Some HR processes are in danger of sinking, by continuing to only use traditional performance management strategies like top-down annual performance processes.

In 2015 Deloitte conducted a public survey and found that 58% of executives believed that “their current performance management approach drives neither employee engagement nor high performance”. In their University Press article, Deloitte encourages HR departments to “replace ‘rank and yank’ with coaching and development” to achieve better employee performance results.

Business.com commends Microsoft, Adobe, Cigna and Accenture for scrapping formal rankings and introducing on-going feedback facilities and informal check-in meetings. Fast Company predicts that half of Fortune 500 companies will follow suit and “kill annual rankings and reviews by 2017”.

In the Business.com article, Paul Hamerman, Vice President and a principal analyst at Forrester Research has “predicted that a shift to the cloud and increased use of software will be a big part of the future of performance management”.

Although HR practices are continually being reviewed and refined, I believe that it is important to research the approaches adopted by well-respected companies and consider the role that culture has played in defining the performance process.  The performance dialogue and process of an organisation, more than any other process, in my view, needs to reflect the culture of your organisation.

If the process you have designed is too far from your current culture, you run the risk of failure.  Consider incremental change to bring everyone along with you towards your desired approach. What works in one organisation does not necessarily work in another – and no such thing as “Best Practice”, because it continues to evolve towards “Next Practice”.

Choosing and implementing new processes not only needs to work for your company culture, and understood by employees, but also needs to be easily monitored and regularly tweaked to bring about tangible positive changes to your performance outcomes.

Pivot Software published a white paper called Why death of performance reviews has been greatly exaggerated earlier this year. It discusses the changing face of performance management and the ‘must haves’ for a performance review process in 2016.

The Bersin report confirms that the times, they are a changin’ for performance management – it says that the redesign of performance management is the most disruptive area of HR today.

Have you made any changes to performance management at your organisation recently? What changes have you noticed? Share your thoughts in the comments section, or write to me.

You can also download the Pivot white paper here: Why the death of performance reviews has been greatly exaggerated.