Lucinda Carney is a business psychologist and founder of Advance Change Ltd and Actus™ performance management software. She believes that fellow HR professionals can do more to support businesses in pulling out of recession by refocusing managers on the essentials. In this blog post she explains the link between employee performance management and business profitability and shares 10 top tips for improving performance in your business.

Through our discussions with colleagues and customers, it seems that too many businesses been so focused on managing process and cost cutting that their managers have become disconnected from their people. This is exacerbated by the fact that fewer people are doing more and managers are having to deal with information overload and multiple priorities. It is a recipe for stress but, even more worrying, it makes the act of effective performance management fall to the bottom of the pile.

Managing human beings effectively is not an exact science, yet doing this well is what great people managers do naturally. However, even great managers are struggling to spend quality time setting objectives, holding regular 1 to 1’s, giving feedback and generally communicating with their people.

Research shows companies that manage performance effectively are 20% more profitable than those that don’t. Too many businesses see managing performance as a luxury and dismiss it as an HR process when it could be the key to accelerated profitability, to say nothing of motivation and retention of key staff.

There have never been more excuses for managers to avoid engaging in human contact in the workplace. This can result in managers prioritising tasks over people and starting to see 1 to 1’s or appraisals as a chore that stops them doing their ‘day job’. We believe that for businesses to achieve sustainable growth, performance management MUST be seen as business as usual for people managers.

Our 10 top tips for driving a high performance culture through your people: 

1. Highlight the importance of people management as a core management responsibility
2. Recruit managers with the ‘people gene’; the best engineer or salesman does not necessarily make the best manager
3. Set clear company expectations for Best Practice Management activities such as monthly 1 to 1’s, regular feedback and enforce/recognise good practice

4.  Encourage a coaching culture where managers collaborate and involve employees in solving problems and empower them to be self reliant
5.  Ensure that business goals are clearly communicated and all employees have SMART objectives early in the business year
6. Encourage a learning culture using on the job learning, information and collaboration for people to learn and grow from each other
7. Embed appraisal as a regular & meaningful strategic activity
8. Ensure senior managers are visible, seen as consistent and communicate regularly both formally and informally with staff

9. Consider benchmarking current engagement levels and targeting line managers to put in place actions to improve them
10. Keep a balance in emphasis between financials, process & compliance and human interactions. Consider use of the balanced scorecard for this

We recently launched Actus™ performance management software which is specifically designed to embed year round performance management activity within a business. We feel our role, and that of other HR colleagues is to help businesses increase profitability through better people management it is as simple as that!