How a modern Performance Management System can help ensure productivity of a remote workforce?

Given that work from home is not just a trend but is here to stay, it becomes critical to enable managers to effectively manage their team and their performance. It also becomes increasingly important to set and monitor clear objectives aligned to organizational priorities for each team, team member and then evaluate them on a real-time basis. We believe this approach will go a long way in keeping the workforce engaged and also drive the desired outcomes.

Highlighted below are some of the key components of a modern PMS that help this new working paradigm for organizations:

OKRs methodology:

OKR or Objective and Key Results, is a popular leadership technique that helps organizations set, communicate, and track their goals. It is a holistic approach towards management of goals and performance levels of employees at every level of the enterprise. It helps in creating better alignment and engagement around measurable goals.

Transparency and Alignment to Organizational Objectives:

Employees are often not aware of an organizational vision, core values and objectives. This becomes further pronounced in a remote working environment. A modern OKR based PMS empowers employees to set challenging goals that are directly aligned to organizational objectives. This ensures that everyone is working towards the shared vision and are driven for the same outcomes.

Employees are more engaged when this alignment is clear and when it transparently shows how an employee goals are contributing to his manager goals and how the manager goals are contributing up to the larger outcomes for the organization.

Set SMART Goals:

The idea of goals is to help employees improve their performance. It is therefore equally important that the goals are understood and defined clearly. Poorly defined goals lead to confusion and poor performance. It is, therefore, important that the goals are Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). SMART goals bring in the much-needed clarity, inspire commitment, and provide employees with a sense of ownership in achieving their goals. SMART goals define clearly what needs to be achieved (specific), remove subjectivity (how to measure it), outline what needs to be done (actionable), set achievement (relevant), and set a time frame for achievement (time-bound).

Regular monitoring of Goals & Lead Indicators:

Times like these warrant that managers are not just reviewing overall goal progress but also the underlying tasks/activities and regular updates on the same. This is important to ensure that employees are consistently focusing on these inputs which would determine attainment of outcomes (Goal).

Schedule regular one-on-ones:

Your undivided attention is important for every team member. So, ensure that you conduct one-on-ones regularly. This will not only keep you updated but also provide your team members to speak directly about their problems and successes. Moreover, you can give constant feedback and discuss their progress with upcoming goals or tasks.

Real-time/Frequent Goals Review:

Tracking your employee’s progress regularly will help you understand and identify any troubles early on. Such identification can help course correction if needed. Reviewing long-term and short-term goals weekly, even of high-performing employees, can make them more dynamic and involved. They need ongoing feedback and coaching from their managers, especially with challenging goals or in tasks that they are doing for the first time. Managers can stay updated on the performance and deploy effective feedback processes with a proper employee performance management system. It also helps to keep track of employees’ performance and identify where they are in achieving the goals.

Give continuous feedback:

Annual reviews are a thing of the past. A continuous performance management system is what keeps an organization’s and its distributed employees’ on the same page. While you give feedback, make sure you have clarity in your messages. Be specific about what’s working and what’s not, and ensure you discuss things not going well and about improvising on it. Features for manager and employee to do real-time conversational chats at each goal level ensures continuous and timely feedback.

Link goals with employee competencies: 

Most organizations fail to explicitly consider employee’s competencies in the context of the goals assigned to them. Different goals need different competencies at different employee levels. Competency-based goal setting can help managers (and organizations) develop organization-wide competencies. They can link it to employees’ performance as well as career development. This way, you can link their competencies with the organizational goals and help them achieve work goals.

Record Important Observations:

As humans we are impacted with latency and recency effects which tends to impact employee assessments. Modern platforms allow managers to record all positive and negative observations specific to employee performance as a ready reckoner for objective year end assessment.