In my last article, I discussed on how performance planning helps organization to achieve their goals, as well as how it encourages employees to perform to their full potential. But performance planning alone will not produce the desired results. Like any other planning activity, the performance plan would have to be followed up by periodical monitoring and tracking activities to measure employee performance. This will ensure that employees make progress on the goals that are set for them, thereby ensuring organizational success.
How to encourage periodic monitoring of employee performance?
Generally, the main concern of an HR manager when it comes to periodic monitoring is that when it is difficult to ensure compliance of managers even on the performance appraisals that are done just once a year, how to make them to do it more regularly”. Also, they feel employees might feel demotivated because of constant monitoring.
It is the responsibility of the organization to ensure that the benefits of periodic monitoring is clearly communicated to everyone, and the process of monitoring is kept very simple which does not over burden the managers and employees at all.
Note: Periodic review, Interim Feedback, Continuous feedback – are terms that can be used inter-changeably (though sometimes the tools to give these feedback might be different), as the end result is to monitor employee performance on a regular basis.
Some factors that can contribute to make periodic monitoring of employee performance easier:
1) Goals should be measurable. The sources of information for measuring the goals and the metrics should be clearly available. This will help managers to easily measure performance periodically.
2) The organization can invest in a system of continuous feedback which will encourage managers to give feedback anytime by just recording quick notes or by sending feedback through an email.
3) When a manager changes or when a project is over, it would be the right time to do a periodic review for an employee. A system which can send reminders in the above scenarios will be helpful for managers.
4) To ensure consistency in doing periodic reviews, an organization can initiate a very simple review process, once every quarter, and take the average score for measuring the annual performance.
5) Awards, appreciation etc. given to an employee and which can be shared to the entire organization, will help employees to be motivated by the continuous monitoring. Constructive feedback can be just shared with the employee alone and so employee’s stress levels are low.
If an organization brings in the culture of periodic and continuous assessment of their employees, feedback would be much more valuable both for employees and organizations. Employees will also no longer complain that the feedback reflects just the last few months of their work in a year.
