Three asks from a performance management system
Yesterday while talking to a seasoned senior HR professional, I asked it again. My favourite question.
What are your asks from a performance management system?
As she answered this question, I realised that it’s not the asks that are complicated, but the sheer labour that goes into getting those asks delivered is what bothers the HR professionals. The excel sheet she spoke about that she had to put together, update and analyse would tire out any expert.
Thankfully, as I showed her step by step how plugHR’s Surge performance management product worked, I could see the happiness in her tone. “This is good”, she said but not without giving some good critical feedback that I quickly added to my backlog.
So what are these three asks?
Performance ratings: As CEO or HR leader, I should at any point know who my high performers are and who need support / nudge to perform better. Both these data points must come in realtime or frequently enough so iterative actions can be taken without wasting the entire year. This means a simple way to set goals, run reviews, collate ratings and analyse results. Problem in achieving this that the scope of this ask runs across organisational roles, HR, employees, managers all have to do their bit correctly and in time.
Employee feedback: As CEO, HR leader and Team Manager, I should get feedback from team members at each performance run, not generic feedback but specific to goals they were chasing, things that went well and things that need to be improved. This is probably the most valuable outcome from the performance review effort. Now it’s one thing taking feedback, it’s quite another to collate, analyse and action them. It’s also a double edged sword. Not taking feedback is better than taking feedback and the ghosting out. For all the business leaders who talk agile to the world, capturing feedback at short intervals and creating feedback to action loop is exactly what agile is. Your 10x business transformation comes from actioning feedback.
Training needs: As HR leader, I should at any time know what skills gaps are most profound in my workforce, an ordered list of competencies that, if given budgets, I would spend on improving, in that order. Without skill gap data, that too coming from real performance records, training spends are more likely to get spent in wrong pursuits. Upskilling can do wonders to organisational capability, but only when attended to with data in hand.
The reason these three simple asks are not delivered by well intended HR teams is because most HR tools aren’t built for performance management. Surge from plugHR is fully focused on performance management and delivers the three asks without loading HR teams with enormous work. It takes 30 minutes to set up performance management on Surge. From thereon, you get the three asks delivered to you real time, all the time. So you spend time making decisions, not chasing papers and sheets.
If these are the three asks that matter to you, initiate trial of Surge at www.plugHR.com
You might get 10x performance from same team.