Employee performance management is one of those subjects that comes with training, which makes many people in leadership positions cringe. I often sympathize in my writing with both leaders and employees who have mandatory training thrust upon them, as the training is often theoretical is not directly relevant to their daily work.
However, given the constant learning environment that the modern digital world demands, training is unavoidable, and so is employee performance management. Leaders who are good leaders don’t get any pleasure out of judging their employees, or in being disciplinarians or logistics people. The very idea of grading, correcting and critiquing performance both in the workplace or in a training scenario, is a daunting and rather unappealing thought. It is a position most people would rather avoid having forced on them.
Well, I’m going to try and make this a bit less of a nightmare for you. It’s not as bad as you think, if you follow four simple tips that I’ve found make this not only easier, but less socially stressful as well. They don’t guarantee a painless, definitely successful venture, but they will most definitely tip the scales in favor of such.
#1 – How to “Grade”
I’m going to take something right out of gamification here, because this is one of the bigger issues people have. In training, traditional grading methodologies are actually not as constructive as one would think. While positive grades motivate and reward success, negative grades for failures only reinforce failure by breeding negativity and an environment of harsh judgment.
Gamification calls for a new way of looking at the success, failure and progress of employees or students, by awarding experience and levels for success, and simply nothing for failure. This will reduce the insult or belittling that negative grades create, and let people know that mistakes happen. They motivate improvement, while not harshly punishing failure.
#2 – Encouraging Cooperation
Making your logistics less of a nightmare is possible if you encourage cooperation between trainees or employees so that everyone is motivated to help. This way, no student is left behind, and a constant juggling of overall and individual performance is no longer an issue. With everyone learning evenly, this part of management becomes so much easier and less of a confusing nightmare to handle.
Once more, gamification encourages this, so I’m just going to say, reference its practices for how to best encourage cooperation. If you don’t completely gamify, at least use its solutions as a base to build from.
#3 – Making Meetings Social
There will come a point when this management will require you to approach your students or employees, and publically hand down judgment. This is inevitable and unfortunate, but this tip is all about lessening the blow as much as possible.
Making these team meetings a social event, either at a casual restaurant, or in a social atmosphere with food onsite is going to make this far less of a negative experience. It will make them comfortable, receptive, and feel less judged.
At the same time, it’s a chance for them to voice their concerns or questions, which are invaluable to you as a leader. Without knowing their issues or misgivings, you’re not going to succeed with employee performance management, when you need to make changes.
#4 – Allow for Training Within the Flow of Work
Too often performance is low because the training is seen as not something relevant to daily work. Therefore, in order to boost performance, the strategy of continuous learning, learning that takes within the flow of work, makes it possible for the employees to fulfilling their everyday tasks better than before.
Interactive self guidance technology, WalkMe being a great example, is an incredibly valuable tool in empowering workers to perform their daily tasks at the moment they are working. Employers are able to monitor the employees performance, while employees can work efficiently and mistake-free.
It is with these four tips, that I hope that employee performance is better managed and maximized, ensuring organizational growth and success. Futher information is available on Employee performance improvement planpage.
