With the first days of Spring finally here, it might be time to take a pause and assess your people leadership score for the first quarter of the new year. Q1 is inevitably the time when businesses come out punching, charging at the new year's goals and objectives, ready to jumpstart the strategic plan, duel with the competition, and drive immediate results for the quarter and beyond.
TalentFirst had a great chat this week with WilliamTincup, the President of Recruitingdaily.com, and one of the most experienced advisers in the HR Tech space.
We were discussing the evolution of annual performance reviews, and the reality that many companies readily admit today: The original system of annual performance reviews was designed, as William put it, "to serve two masters, which never works."
The performance review system, as it stands today, is broken. Employee engagement rates are abysmal, hovering around 30% according to Gallup research, and part of the reason for that is employees simply aren't getting the substance they need from managers during performance reviews.
So what do employees need from performance reviews?
We want information and we want it immediately. Whether it's our phones buzzing with a Facebook notification letting us know it's a friend from middle school's birthday, or a pop-up on our computers telling us we have a text message, we live in an always-on world.
Why then is the workplace falling so far behind?
It’s time for the annual performance review process: managers are wracking their brains to complete all of the paperwork; employees are stressed out thinking about how to condense a whole year of accomplishments into a few sentences and a 30-minute conversation, and HR is languishing in deadlines and details to ensure the entire process goes off successfully.
A business without goals is like a ship without direction ̶ you will end up somewhere, but you won't know where (and your "crew" likely won't be too pleased with the landing spot).
Think back to when you were in college, or even high school. Maybe there was a certain class you weren't crazy about. It wasn't in your major and you couldn't fathom any of the information being useful once you tossed your graduation cap skyward. If you had a test coming up, you waited until the night before to start cramming all the textbook knowledge you could into your brain. Then you went into class the next day, (ideally) aced the test—and by the end of the next week forgot everything you'd just "learned."
Planned change is a challenge for any organization. As leaders, we have to work hard to plan and to bring every employee along. But no matter how daunting planned change is—at least we have time to create an action plan, and a shot at controlling the message.
We talk a lot about positive and negative feedback, and also about positive and negative reinforcement. Reinforcement and feedback are both useful tools in a manager’s skill set. But are they the same thing?
Change isn’t easy. But it is inevitable. With the recent and rapid changes taking place in talent and performance management, many HR leaders are finding themselves in the uncomfortable role of change-maker. Here are five tactics for making that evolution go a little easier on you and your organization.