10 Ways to Truly Get High Performers From Your Performance Management System

HR and training professionals in industry, government agencies, and not-for-profit organizations invest heavily in creating and maintaining performance management systems—and we hope to these systems will create high performers from our employees. While we set up and are the keepers of these systems, we aren’t the main beneficiary or user of the system—managers and their employees are. Knowing this, how can we support and ensure the quality and usability of performance management in our organizations? Here is what we see the best do to make it happen:

1. Include performance-management-supportive competencies in your organization’s competency model for leaders. It is unusual for organizations to be without some definition of what is expected of a leader. For many organizations, this is a manager or leader-specific competency model. Ensure that you have included competencies such as “provides frequent feedback on performance” and “intervenes when employee performance doesn’t match expectations” as part of your existing model.

2. Don’t have a leadership competency model? Build one. Even a “less-than-perfect” model that is communicated and used to align development activities will go a long way towards creating the consistency that drives home the expectation to manage performance in an active way.

3. Design, develop and distribute skill cards and toolkits to managers that explains and outlines the performance management process including objective-setting, monitoring and interim feedback, documentation of performance, and formal appraisal feedback. These can include copies of standardized forms, links to online systems, and examples of conversation starters. Skill cards and toolkits can be housed on organizational Intranets or learning portals. For organizations without shared technology, tools can be emailed directly to clients or even provided in hard copy. Provide complementary skill cards and toolkits for employees.

4. Create a manager-specific skill-based training program on the roles in the performance management process and the core skills necessary in order to administer the system. For managers, a solid program should include goal-setting and agreement-setting skills, observation and documentation guidelines, skills critical in delivering feedback and responding to defensiveness without damaging relationships.

5. Create an employee-specific training program on how to get the most from your performance management process. This program should complement the manager-version of the program by explaining roles, but also explaining how employees can use your existing performance management system in order to get feedback and coaching on their performance from their managers.

6. If you have a self-study library in place, add resources on goal-setting, feedback, coaching, and dealing with challenging behaviors and publish an announcement that these resources are available—with “just-in-time” reminders in your performance management cycle (i.e., the month all appraisals are taking place, for instance).

7. Measure managers on the quantity and quality of their performance management actions. Measurement can be a tricky thing to implement. It seems complicated, and, sometimes it is. You can include a component on your performance appraisal form that covers giving feedback, providing development opportunities, actions taken to address employee performance. You can also implement multi-rater feedback (a.k.a., 360-degree feedback) that specifically addresses the elements that support performance management. Still another measurement form is the employee opinion survey.

8. Link your performance management software to the “live” actions of managers. If your organization utilizes performance support software (such as PeopleSoft), customize the help screen—or provide standalone software training—that demonstrates the connection between how managers will use the software for tracking and documenting performance management actions. Many managers believe that entering data into a system is performance management. Through training, you create a linkage for managers between the planning and conversations they are expected to have with employees and how they must enter the results of those conversations into the software. If your organization doesn’t utilize such software, chances are that you use some standardized forms for planning and appraisals. Be sure that these forms use the same language and follow the same process as the discussion-cadence in your actual performance management system.

9. Post reminders of key performance management activities in your organizational communication for managers and employees. Out of sight can mean out of mind, especially with the volume of work most professionals manage on a day-to-day basis. If your organization has an online or other news format, be sure to post reminders about target-setting, goal setting, interim or touch-base feedback and end-of-review-period actions that managers should be taking and in which employees are expected to participate. Some organizations have the ability to add calendar events or push reminder emails to segments of their population. If you do, push notice of an event to managers such as, “hold mid-term target-setting review with employees” or “complete appraisal discussions by…”

10. Hire managers who have demonstrated that they actively manage employee performance. Your recruiting profile and interview questions for applicants to a formal leadership role should not overlook that candidate’s disposition on coaching and giving feedback. Questions such as, “Give me an example of a time when you ensured an employee knew what was expected of him or her. What did you do about this? How did your employee react? What was the outcome this year?” Leaders should be able to readily provide examples of their role in performance management. And, if you have candidates without formal leadership experience, you can inquire about their behaviors in this area by asking questions such as, “Tell me how you get information about your own performance. What do you do? How has that worked?” or “Everyone has to work with others in order to accomplish results. Share with me an example of when you needed someone else to change his or her behavior so that you could meet your commitments. Who was the person? What did you do? How did the other person react?”

These actions vary in degree of complexity and difficulty to implement. Some organizations have the internal resources to implement all of these actions—and more. Still others are one- or two-person departments that must either prioritize what they can pull off, or seek outside support. In general, the more of these supports that are in place, the better enabled are managers—and, the more likely they will be able to fulfill their critical roles as “managers of performance.”

Kelly Fairbairn is President of PPS International Limited. PPS International Limited is a global consulting firm specializing in skill-based training and performance improvement. To learn more, email info@ppsinternational.net. We love to share best practices with our HR and Training colleagues and counterparts.