Performance Management Trends

Performance Management Trends

 In our growing digital world, we find more and more of a struggle with remembering what makes our jobs human. And that is the employees! Help continue the success of your employees and your business by implementing a successful performance review process. 81.6% of managers use performance reviews to help employees develop and improve professionally. But if the employees don’t understand how their performance is being measured, what’s the point?Lately, there’s been a lot of chatter in the HR sphere about continuous performance reviews. Just like in Deltek’s recent blog about the MUST in Continuous Feedback, we agree that the push for ongoing Performance Reviews helps keep the employees and managers engaged while continuing their growth as well.  You’re moving the focus from “results only” to “results and behavior”, by identifying employee strengths and how these strengths can be used more effectively.              By giving employees the position to give and receive feedback, employees feel more in control of their standing in the organization. Managers can draw back on instances from throughout the year and reviews are more fact-based than emotional.  Employees are more satisfied in their job because they can use each feedback review as a growing point to learn from. TIPS TO HELP PERFORMANCE REVIEWS “MAKE THE GRADE” Automate the Process: Using a dedicated tool or running document for performance can help streamline your appraisal process. Feedback can be gathered from virtually any source, including clients and vendors. Have a strategic process in place to ensure everyone is poised to help the company meet high-level objectives.Make it a priority: In your calendar, link yourself to the running document or automated system that you are using (having employees have visibility and able to do the same helps both manager and employee be more efficientRename the Appraisal: If the word performance reviews, doesn’t help with your company culture and you are needing a livelier name to get people started, get creative! Include your organization name, or come up with a name like “Feedback Sessions”, or “Team Talks” that inspires well-rounded feedback.This will help you and your employees not fear performance reviews and find them to be more encouraging and lively and not dreaded and boring. By constantly taking a look at you and your employees’ performance you are self-evaluating and helping to see where the company is growing and moving towards.This is just one step, maybe even the first step, towards a successful talent management strategy. In this white paper: learn about better corporate performance, reduced turnover, and organizational mobility.   Don’t forget to register for our joint webinar, Did Your Performance Management Process Make the Grade? on June 27, 2017.

*Giveaway* Receive a $15 Amazon gift card by attending the webinar and signing up fora demo on our Performance Webinar!

Setting SMART Goals

Setting SMART Goals

Why is it so important that organizations set clear, well developed goals? Many of us see goal setting as a chore we must complete at the beginning of each appraisal cycle without really understanding the impact or importance of the process. If done correctly, goals can motivate employees, help align business processes and improve the overall performance of the company.

How can goals help to align employees and business units with the overall organizational business processes? There needs to be great visibility throughout the goals of the company. If realistic goals are set and there is a vast deal of information sharing during the goal creation process, goals throughout the organization will be consistent. Visibility into the organizational goals enables employees to align their own goals with those of the organization to ensure they are helping support and contribute to the future of the company. Furthermore, this can help clarify the roles of all employees in the company so they are clear in how their performance contributes to the overall success.

Not only is determining a realistic timeframe a key factor in monitoring a goal, but also determining how it will be achieved and how it will be measured. In some cases, a particular goal may require several objectives to be adequately monitored. Goals without objectives are essentially meaningless because progress is impossible to measure. It is this level of specificity sets goals and objectives apart.

One of the methods we employ in the Brilliant HR Talent Performance solution is that of using S.M.A.R.T. goals. These are meant to guide both managers and employees through a successful goal setting process. Each letter stands for an attribute every goal should have to be a clear and reachable goal:

  1. Specific – simple, sensible, significant
  2. Measurable – meaningful, motivating
  3. Achievable – agreed, attainable
  4. Relevant – reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based
  5. Time-bound – time-based, time limited, timely, time-sensitive

The bottom line is that goal setting is not just an annual exercise all employees need to go through so they can check off the box in their list of tasks to complete. Goals are critical to the success of a company and when the proper attention and priority are given to the creation of realistic goals, the outcome realized will definitely be well worth the effort invested up-front.

Performance Reviews – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Performance Reviews – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

When it comes to performance reviews, many companies have a way they are (or aren’t) doing it now, but are on the lookout for best practices or new ideas to make their process better and increase the effectiveness of the tools they use.  With this in mind, we bring to you a few good, bad, and ugly things to help you streamline your techniques.

The Good

  • Providing opportunities for regular check-ins and feedback sessions.

Performance reviews should not be an event that happens once a year, causes a lot of stress, and then is forgotten about otherwise. Set your goals early, and provide employees and managers with a forum when they can meet regularly and discuss these. One way to do this is to include scheduled feedback sessions in your process, and then make providing feedback easy in an online tool. Don’t just talk about how you encourage feedback, but put a process in place that reminds managers and helps you gather this feedback in a central location.

The Bad

  • Not including your employees in the process.

Performance reviews should not be a one-way street where the manager has all of the power and the employee doesn’t have a say. Yes, we want to have manager feedback, but it is equally important to involve the employee in the progress so that they understand what is expected of them and they are able to provide feedback on their own progress.

The Ugly

  • Having a process so confusing or hard no one does it.

When your process is so cumbersome that employees and managers don’t want to do, you will spend a lot of time nagging them to complete things, and you will probably end up with a large segment of the population who either doesn’t complete reviews on time, or doesn’t complete them at all. Make sure that the objectives of your review are clear, and make it easy for everyone to figure out what they are supposed to do and when.

For other ways to make sure that your next performance review doesn’t fall under the Bad or Ugly category use this data sheet to help you win at your next assessment.

Goal Setting. Why Bother?

Goal Setting. Why Bother?

Why is it so important that organizations set clear, well developed goals? Many of us see goal setting as a chore we must complete at the beginning of each appraisal cycle without really understanding the impact or importance of the process. If done correctly, goals can motivate employees, help align business processes and improve the overall performance of the company.

How can goals help to align employees and business units with the overall organizational business processes? There needs to be great visibility throughout the goals of the company. If realistic goals are set and there is a vast deal of information sharing during the goal creation process, goals throughout the organization will be consistent. Visibility into the organizational goals enables employees to align their own goals with those of the organization to ensure they are helping support and contribute to the future of the company. Furthermore, this can help clarify the roles of all employees in the company so they are clear in how their performance contributes to the overall success.

Not only is determining a realistic time frame a key factor in monitoring a goal, but also determining how it will be achieved and how it will be measured. In some cases, a particular goal may require several objectives to be adequately monitored. Goals without objectives are essentially meaningless because progress is impossible to measure. It is this level of specificity sets goals and objectives apart.

The bottom line is that goal setting is not just an annual exercise all employees need to go through so they can check off the box in their list of tasks to complete. Goals are critical to the success of a company and when the proper attention and priority are given to the creation of realistic goals, the outcome realized will definitely be well worth the effort invested up-front.

Performance Management Introduction

Performance Management Introduction

There are so many different ways to conduct performance reviews, but how do you know what is right for you? In many ways, it depends on why you are using performance reviews – for compliance, to determine salary increases, to measure team member success, to gather feedback, or for coaching opportunities. Below are five different types of performance reviews that you can use depending on the needs of your company and the driving factor behind why reviews are conducted.

Traditional Performance Review

When we think of the traditional performance review, we tend to think of an appraisal that runs on a schedule (usually annually) and involves the manager and employee.  There can be other variations, such as mid-year reviews or the omission of the employee from the review, but the ultimate outcome from this traditional review is a score.

Some of the elements scored within the traditional review can include competencies, skills, goals, and achievements.  Participants in the appraisal score appraise elements and a final score is calculated based on the feedback given by the participants.

In many cases, the scores from traditional performance reviews are used to determine top performers, as a basis for salary increases, or to document that reviews have been completed.

Project-Based Appraisal

As opposed to the traditional performance review, project-based appraisals are run at the end of an employee’s involvement on a project team to determine how that employee completed their portion of the project. Additionally, instead of the primary reviewer on the appraisal being the manager, the project lead takes on this responsibility.

Similar to the traditional performance review, these project-based appraisals can also include competencies, skills, goals, and achievements which the project team lead can review.  Additionally, the participants review these items so that a final score is calculated.

Project-based appraisals are great for tracking a team’s members input in a project.

Continuous Feedback

As companies move away from score-based appraisal, continuous feedback is taking over as the way for managers and employee to track progress toward employee goals. This is an easy feedback process for when companies don’t want to use scores.

Continuous feedback provides set meeting points between the manager and employee to document notes and progress towards goals.

These are a great tool for tracking feedback, and can be combined with the traditional performance review process to give both scored and feedback based performance options.

360 Appraisal

This type of appraisal can solicit feedback from others both inside and outside of the organization that open up the review process beyond just the self and manager reviews and scores.  As with the continuous feedback, this information gathered can be useful as a one-off, but also can be a great tool for getting feedback and using this as a part of the traditional performance review.

New Hire Review

New hire reviews are typically done 90 days to 6 months after start date and enables managers to review a new hire on specific competencies, skills, goals, and achievements. Both the manager and employee can be involved in tracking progress, and these are typically done at the end of a probationary period to make sure the employee is fit for the job and meeting expectations.

This review style is beneficial for giving great feedback and seeing where this new hire will excel and needs maybe more work in the role they were assigned, to hopefully help them improve and grow in the long run.

Whichever performance review works best for your company having an automated system will also be beneficial in the long run, and will help measure and keep track of everyone in one area. Read our Performance Product Guide to show what key features you should be looking when using an automated system.

Tracking Hiring Milestones and Recruiting KPIs – Part 1

Tracking Hiring Milestones and Recruiting KPIs – Part 1

Knowing what to measure and when to measure it helps define your HR team as a crucial addition to the company’s success.  Gone are the days of simply posting job opportunities on your company website, and hoping for the best. Building a strategy, being smarter about where you are finding candidates, and knowing how effective your recruiters are will determine the future of your organization’s talent. When it comes to recruiting, there are dozens of metrics that you could report on, but we have picked out just the top five most commonly used to focus on in Part 1 of this post, with another five coming in Part 2.

 

1 – Time to Start

 

Time to Start refers to the amount of time it takes to bring a new hire on board from the moment that you first publicize the open position.

 

It is important to distinguish that this means the time until a new hire’s first day on the job, not the day they accept the offer. This is probably the most important recruiting metric to focus on as it relies on the efficiency of the recruiters and the sourcing channels used, but also determines the success of your overall recruiting strategy. Job vacancies within an organization can mean a loss of productivity until that position is filled, so the longer the time to hire, the longer your organization is lacking in that area.

 

Of course, the time to fill is going to vary based on the job level and perhaps the skill set that is required. As time goes on, however, HR should be able to determine an average time frame across all positions and work towards reducing that time.

 

2 – Retention Rate

 

Employee retention is an important metric for many reasons. Not only does it show how successful your recruiting efforts are in finding qualified candidates, but is also a great indicator of the overall health of an organization. For now, we will focus on what the retention rate can tell us about recruiting efforts.

 

If your organization has a hard time retaining people for longer than a year after their hire date, you may be hiring the wrong type of candidate. Once you have determined the cost per hire for each position, it’s no wonder that the retention rate is such an important metric. Your company could be bleeding money with this unnecessary turnover. The cost of replacing an employee can be upwards of two times their salary! (Article from the Center for American Progress)

 

So, as with any problem, the first step is to identify whether or not your organization has a reasonable retention rate based on your industry’s standards as this can vary widely by industry.

 

Then, rather than trying to look at retention rates for all positions across all levels of the organization, it will be more insightful to analyze by sections. For example, you can look at the turnover rate for a specific role. If one role is causing turnover every year, maybe you need to take a look at the responsibilities of that role. Are there unrealistic expectations or unattainable goals? Another way to look at the data is turnover by pay grade or even by department. In this way, you can determine if the retention problem is company-wide, if it’s in a certain department because of a bad manager, etc.

 

Ultimately, measuring the retention rate will allow you to pinpoint whether or not the issue is a recruiting one. To quote an article from Forbes, “The best recruitment strategy is a solid retention strategy and this has to start at the top.”

 

3 – Applicant Satisfaction

 

While related to the employee retention rate, it is important to look at applicant satisfaction on its own to ensure that your recruiting efforts are placing applicants into positions where they feel they can grow and excel.

 

The best way to measure this is simply to have a standardized new hire survey, and then use performance reviews as another chance for employees to express how satisfied or dissatisfied they are with their job. Surveys can include questions on the hiring process, on-boarding, and overall job satisfaction. These metrics will help you determine how positive an applicant’s experience is from the moment a recruiter reaches out to them. This allows a company to take a step back and look at their processes from an outsider’s perspective, and shed some light on how they are portraying their organization to applicants versus what they experience when they are hired.

 

In today’s social world, this firsthand experience and testimonial is as important to a company’s reputation and messaging as any other marketing effort. The real goal is highlighting where a change needs to occur internally.

 

Is there an opportunity for more training for not just the interview process, but the competencies of employees? Is there a reason for employee dissatisfaction with the company that can be fixed to help retain top talent? It may be as simple as the job descriptions need to be revised. But it may be the job, the role, or the company direction that may need to be refocused, clarified or redirected. These are just some of the insights that can be gained by using applicant satisfaction company’s self-reflection.

 

 

4 – Sourcing Channel

Sourcing channel or source of hire simply refers to the efficacy of the different job boards or media a company uses to publicize its current job openings. The reason for tracking this metric is simple – there are hundreds of options for sourcing candidates, but depending on your industry or your specific organization, certain sources will prove to be more effective or provide higher quality candidates than others.

 

Talk about sourcing channels comes up often when thinking about Big Data – gathering the information above, you are able to combine this data to see the big picture and support your sourcing choices. As noted by David Bernstein on HR.com, “Big Data analysis also enables the employer to measure the effectiveness of their recruitment campaigns in real time and make necessary adjustments—sooner rather than later—to improve performance.” Not only do we need to take a look at what we’ve done in the past that worked, but what are we doing now that isn’t working? And how might we shift our resources towards more effective sources?

 

5 – Quality of Hire

 

It will take some time to determine the quality of a new hire, but the longer the employee is at the company, the easier it will be to establish. This should take into account not only performance ratings, but also their potential. Over time, you will be able to see a trend in their performance reviews, and determine their overall worth to the organization. This metric can then be linked to the sourcing channels to help determine where the highest quality candidates originated from, as well as the time to hire so recruiters can get a sense of how long it takes to find the right candidate.

 

The formula for Quality of Hire should be comprised of recruitment-focused quality measures and post-hire contribution / performance quality. The factors that contribute the data for each side of this metric can differ from one organization to the next. Deltek’s Quality of Hire report plots recruitment efficacy and directly correlates this to post-hire performance appraisal scores.

 

Quality of hire may sound rather subjective and difficult to determine, but nevertheless is one of the most important metrics. Because the cost per hire and retention rate are constantly scrutinized, it is important to find quality hires that are going to stay with your company for a long time, thus diminishing the need for another costly hire down the road.

Because of its organizational impact, quality of hire is a more important metric to track than time to fill or cost per hire.

 

For more recruiting KPIs, keep an eye out for Part 2 of this blog post coming soon!

 

You may also find our Top 10 Recruiting Metrics Cheat Sheet to be helpful in your efforts to streamline your recruiting plans in 2017.