A lot of useful reports and analytics can be generated from a performance management system. While some of them might be simple reports that would be useful while administering the appraisals, others might be useful to plan the training & development, succession planning and so on.
Mentioned below are a few useful analytics:
1) Status of appraisal:
This is an indispensable report to HR. During an on-going appraisal, HR would like to know whether the appraisal is going as per the schedule, and follow-up with people who are not completing within the deadline. This report will help HR to present to management the status of the appraisal, at any given point in time.
2) Rating distribution chart:
Once the appraisal is completed, management would like to see how the rating is distributed across employees. In other words, they would like to know the % of employees who are top performers, good performers, below average performers and so on. While top performers can be groomed as leaders, average performers and non-performers can be put under a performance improvement plan and closely trained and monitored for improving their performance.
3) Training Needs Report:
During appraisal discussions, managers and employees agree to training that is needed for an employee. A report that displays the overall training needs for the entire organization would be a good input to the training team. This will be used by them to plan the training sessions for the employees.
4) Strengths and weakness report:
It would be nice for an organization to know the strengths of their employees as well their weaknesses. This will help them to promote and build on their strengths and arrange necessary training sessions to improve the areas of weakness. Data from performance management system will provide this useful analytics. For instance, if communication skill is a weakness for trainees within an organization it may not be a major concern, but if it is a weakness for project leaders, then this would definitely have to be looked into.
5) 9 quadrant analysis:
A 9 quadrant analysis buckets employees in 9 different quadrants or boxes, based on their potential and performance. A person with good potential as well as performs well will be star performers, while a good potential but an average performer may be bucketed as Talented and so on.. All people with good potential can be looked into and groomed for succession planning. Also, based on this report organizations can look into reasons why some good potential employees don’t perform well.
6) Gap Analysis Report:
This would be a useful analytics for organizations that run a 360 appraisal. This report will let them know the gap in rating between different respondent groups – for instance the difference between a manager rating vs peer rating vs self rating. At an overall organization level also they would be able to find out if self rating has always been higher compared to others rating and so on.
7) Performance Improvement Plan status:
If an organization initiates performance improvement plans for below-average employees, a performance improvement plan status can be obtained to see whether these employees are improving.
8) Rating comparison report:
A manager would find it useful to compare the rating between two or more employees. This report will not only show the overall rating difference, but can also go to a finer detail level by knowing the areas of strengths/ weakness of each employee. A manager can use this data to assign their tasks.
It is clear that performance management data will be very useful for an organization if it is nicely analysed and represented and is readily available (on a click). Just to summarize, an organization can use these analytics for effectively administering an appraisal, arriving at increment calculations/ compensation management, succession planning, training and learning, talent planning and so on.