Make Performance Management Sticky With Betterworks’ Andrea Couto and Harini Sridharan
Laurie Ruettimann
Trailblazing author, career advisor, speaker, podcaster, and leader. ? Top LinkedIn Learning instructor. ? Still trying to fix work.
My guests on this episode of Punk Rock HR are both from Betterworks: Andrea Couto, head of solutions engineering and sales readiness, and Harini Sridharan, head of product marketing. We discuss the evolution of performance management into performance enablement, why small businesses can experiment with performance enablement, the role of people analytics in performance and much more.
Harini has been with Betterworks for over a year, and her role is to present a compelling narrative for how Betterworks can change organizations’ lives, especially regarding performance management.?
Andrea has been at Betterworks for close to a year and has nearly 25 years of experience in human capital management technology. Most of that time was spent in solutions consulting, where she helped customers find the perfect technology for their business needs.?
We often talk about performance management being bad — or worse — but in this episode of Punk Rock HR, we’re showing you that it doesn’t have to be that way.?
Punk Rock HR is proudly underwritten by Betterworks. The world’s most dynamic organizations rely on Betterworks to accelerate growth by supporting transparent goal setting, enabling continuous performance and learning from employee insights. Betterworks is on a mission to help HR leaders make work better. Discover how they can help you by visiting?www.betterworks.com .?
Performance Management’s Ongoing Transformation?
Performance management evaluations started in the 1950s as personality-based assessments, Harini notes. That quickly evolved into objectives-based performance management. “There's been lots of fine-tuning that happened along the way, but it's not until more recently when the concept of continuous performance enablement model came into being,” Harini says.?
Continuous performance enablement is designed to elevate performance management as a more effective tool for employees, managers and leaders — and especially managers.?
Traditional performance practices fail managers, Harini says. “Performance management and performance tools have done nothing for them,” Harini says. “Nothing to make them more effective. Nothing to simplify their lives as managers. Nothing to help foster better connections with their employees. All it does is give them a form to do a performance assessment.”?
Managers need the right tools and guidance if they’re to develop their employees, and that’s what performance enablement addresses.?
By combining a wealth of data, the right tools and a people analytics approach, “we're able to figure out, ‘all right, managers, how can we help guide you to play on employee strengths, create stretch goals, and suggest and recommend these stretch goals or pull out employee strengths that maybe the manager just doesn't have insight into today?’” Andrea says.
How Small Businesses Can Implement Performance Enablement
It’s easy to talk about performance management and enablement only in the context of larger organizations. This approach is also possible for small businesses that are willing to experiment, Harini says.?
“Why not experiment with different tempos of goal setting and check-ins to see what works best for them?” Harini says. “They have a lot more of that flexibility and that ease of making change. That's really a benefit that's only easily available to small companies.”
Small businesses can also give more latitude and authority to managers than larger organizations. “You start with the sentiment that your managers are smart and capable and want to do the right thing,” Harini says, “and enable them to do what's right for their teams, and then ultimately later you can come up with something that works for the entire company.”
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Andrea brough up the example of Gympass, which operates by the mantra that every employee is a leader . This shift gives more autonomy to managers and employees, builds trust throughout the organization and drives better performance.?
People Analytics’ Role in Performance
People analytics doesn’t have to be the enemy of being human. Already, Harini says, HR leaders recognize the value of people analytics for measuring adoption and compliance, for tracking progress against business goals, and much more.
“Is there an actual correlation between an optimal number of check-ins and conversations that I am trying to bring into effect and performance that comes out of teams?” Harini says. “Is there something that we can do for a specific department or demographic group to make them more productive, more engaged?”
Those are what Harini calls “higher-order questions” that HR has struggled to answer but where people analytics can help.
Andrea notes that Betterworks wants to use people analytics to move from backward-looking metrics to helping managers and employees access real-time insights to make in-the-moment changes.?
And there’s much more to come: “I feel that we're going to see a big wave of in-the-flow-of-work capabilities continue through well into 2030 and meshing that with responsible AI,” Andrea says.
The goal isn’t to replace the manager but to help them do an increasingly difficult job. “With responsible AI and all of the content that's being shared in conversations and feedback,” Andrea says, “we're going to be able to present all of that to managers so that they can have better conversations and, more importantly, build better relationships with their employees.”
Finally, people analytics data should be accessible to everyone. “Don't keep this data within HR. Just democratize the data, share it with the business folks, always map it to what business cares about,” Harini says.
People in This Episode
Andrea Couto: LinkedIn
Harini Sridharan: LinkedIn
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