Deciphering the myths of employee performance:
Myth 1: A Mission Statement is Enough
Employee performance touches every part of the organisation. However, simply creating a new company vision every three to four years and setting board level objectives of increasing sales or market share is not enough.
Such goals have no relevance to or resonance to all employees. The challenge is to take this vision and translate it to functional level objectives and then on to individual performance expectations that will drive employee performance and behaviour.
While the onus is on the HR Director to facilitate this process, every line manager needs to be fully engaged with the concept and able to undertake relevant conversations with individual employees, either as part of the regular day to day management or as a specific focus on performance management.
Critically, in companies with good employee performance, this is not a one-off event or box-ticking exercise, but the communication of clear goals and performance expectation is embedded within the corporate culture.
Myth 2: Running an Engagement Survey Creates Engaged Employees
There is a clear, proven link between employee engagement and company performance. Yet too few companies are actually using the results of annual employee engagement surveys to create actionable plans or changes within the organisation. As a result, most employees’ perception of such surveys can be negative.
By analysing survey results, assessing trends and anecdotal comments, organisations can gain far more insight into the true issues affecting employees.
On the basis employee engagement is directly linked to understanding the extent to which employee commitment, both emotional and intellectual exists relative to accomplishing the work, mission, and vision of the organisation, you can quickly establish how important engaged employees are to the financial success of an organisation.
Understanding the feedback from the survey enables an organisation to create agreed actions with measureable outcomes to build a workforce that cares about the on-going success of the business.
For example, if it is agreed that pay is a de-motivator for most employees where there is a perception through survey analysis that they feel underpaid spending time explaining the way the pay structure is decided is proven to reinforce commitment to the organisation.
Demonstrating how good performance can result in better pay and/or promotion is, however, often a light bulb moment for employees that prompts an upswing in engagement and fosters a greater commitment to care about the success of the organisation.
Myth 3: Good Managers are a Soft Touch
Consistently research cites bad line management as one of the major reasons that employees leave employers. Poor management skills lead to inconsistency and a lack of fairness that can rapidly disenfranchise employees.
Yet many managers feel ill equipped to address poor performance and are therefore perceived as a ‘soft touch’, leaving other, better higher performing and engaged individuals within the team feeling disengaged.
Furthermore, many individuals do not perceive people management or performance management as part of their role as a line manager, but as a distinct role that HR performs on their behalf.
Providing training and coaching to enable managers to manage transforms employee communication, increases confidence and creates a more equable working environment.
Myth 4: It is all about Technology
Over the past decade, the evolution of self-service HR software has resulted in many of the functions previously carried out by HR to be undertaken using web enabled technology by line managers.
Done well, this approach can lead to simple processes that ensure managers and employees have immediate access to essential information – from performance goals, recent reward adjustments to generic employment information related to individual employees.
Badly done, and line managers feel they are simply adding HR tasks to their existing roles with no benefit whatsoever.
It is essential to put in place the right business processes to support the new approach and implement effective change management. For example, if managers are now tasked with the creation of annual letters to employees outlining the outcome of the pay review, that process must be intuitive and seamless.
It is simple processes, backed up by technology and combined with training in communicating and engaging with employees, that will support effective employee management.
Myth 5: It is all about the money
Reward is important, in some industries more than others, but in many cases money can actually de-motivate rather than motivate staff. Pay needs to be perceived to be fair and individuals must be confident their pay is in line with their expectations of what colleagues and peers are earning for similar types of work.
Obviously, different industries foster different approaches to reward. Many technology companies offer famously relaxed working environments with the often quoted opportunity to bring your dog to work, very flexible working hours and in-house leisure facilities.
This is in direct contrast to some financial institutions where the focus is on financial reward with little expectation of loyalty or employee longevity.
The key for the vast majority of organisations is to find a balance and combine a working environment with career development and fair reward to deliver true employee motivation and therefore performance.
Marc Bishop is director of reward consulting at HR software and services provider, plusHR.
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One Response
great post
Managers can often be labelled as having a soft touch by those who are misunderstand certain leadership qualities and the way that they are displayed by different individuals. But it is important that performance management and people management is not simply left to the HR department. Mission statements should reflect the culture within an organisation which for many is not properly adopted by the stakeholders involved because a lack of communication from top to bottom prevents that from happening.
David Evans, commercial director at accessplanit, specialist in learning management system and training administration software.