Performance management has been changing over these years from traditional annual reviews to periodic and continuous feedback.
We, being a software tool provider, are able to experience the changes in customer (managers, HR and employees) expectations on their performance management software.
Initially, it was mere, year-end review automation to categorize the employees into various ratings; then organizations started moving away from bell curves, ratings and showing interest on goals and achievement. Now more focus is shown on quarterly and monthly reviews before the annual appraisals are conducted.
It is fact that highly engaged employees will perform better; feedback and developmental inputs will help employees work better and be more productive than mere rating them on their skills and categorizing.
Hence, PMS concepts and tools have started including engagement along with performance.
Performance management applications will focus more on Continuous Feedback which will be focused on coaching / mentoring model rather than year-end reviews.
We see more focus coming on Integrated Performance, Engagement, Analytics during this year.
Artificial Intelligence and chatbots will play a key role in making performance and engagement mainstream; it will influence people behaviour to drive higher engagement and productivity.
Real-time Continuous Feedback to build trust and collaboration among teams
We all know, Year-end appraisal with the bell curve is considered as the heart of traditional performance management software so far.
The Nextgen PMS applications such as Synergita focus more on providing inputs on a continuous basis which will help in mentoring employees rather than reviewing the performance.
Appreciation, Thank you, Spot awards can be given throughout the year.
This helps in motivating employees and also brings in a cordial, engaging atmosphere.
Feedback will be given then and there to employees on what and how to focus on development areas. This will result in overall organizations productivity being increased continually.
The major difference will be that there are no more year-end shocks waiting for either managers or employees themselves.
Employees will also have the freedom to express their views on their career interest and feedback on the project environment whenever required.
Chatbots
Almost every application that we use is going to embed bots.
These will help in increasing the productivity of people, increase the usage of the software, etc.
People can simply ask the chatbot to know their goal status, upcoming training, etc.
This can drastically increase the productivity of employees and managers.
Predictive Analytics
The aspirations of the company’s growth and employee’s skill can be realized by the management only when they get the overall picture of the company goal’s progress.
An organization which strives to grow higher will need inputs like Strength and weakness of its employees, average performance growth/dip of its talent when compared to previous years, the group of employees who achieve the goals faster, general competency lagging organization-wide for which training has to be planned etc.
Predictive analytics can help managers and HR take decisions based on the trend; they can become more agile.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence helps in predicting employee performance based on multiple factors like feedback history and goal progress.
Systems with AI can also recognize the sudden drop in performance and provide necessary inputs to the stakeholders.
The software can suggest the kind of development training that employee would need, suggest appropriate learning materials, suggest appropriate career track, etc. based on employee aspirations, performance and continuous feedback.
Also, AI and Machine Learning can do sentimental analysis on employee and manager’s feedback & comments.
This can help in finetuning the feedback to be more positive oriented and avoid any biases or uncomfortable situations.
It will help HR to reduce any potential manager-employee conflicts as well.
AI can also help in driving some of the cultural changes.
For example, nudging the managers to provide feedback at right time for the employees, providing a comparison between managers, etc. This will help in influencing the manager behaviour to be employee friendly.
With multiple touch points around employee work, performance, continuous feedback, etc., more data points would be available for HR. With AI, they can drive cultural transformation effectively.
Gamification
Gamification has an important advantage in performance management systems in increasing the productivity of the organization.
It helps the employees understand where they stand currently and how far have they achieved goals in a narrative and acceptable way.
Rather than feedbacks from People managers, visual and progressive representations of goal achievement make it easier and interesting for employees to know their achievement and performance.
Overall, these new changes will make the employee experience better in the organization.
These will help in increasing collaboration, bringing in a higher level of job satisfaction for people and make the organization – a great place to work.
[guestpost]This is a guest post by Sridhar Mahalingam, Product Manager at www.synergita.com. A passionate product leader with over 10 years of experience in SaaS product development and UX. Extensive experience managing end-to-end SaaS product lifecycles. Holding Bachelor of Engineering – Electronics and communication at Anna University. Synergita is an award-winning, continuous feedback based employee performance and engagement software with 100+ customers.[/guestpost]
