Using social goals as part of your performance management process

There’s no doubt that setting goals is a vital component of the performance appraisal process. Goals can give employees direction, they can be used as a performance indicator as well as act as a tool for motivation. But with the accelerating speed of change in organisations and the demand for quick responses and continuous feedback, annual goals can quickly become obsolete. So should we be re-thinking the way we use goals as part of the performance appraisal process?

By using a more collaborative approach, empowering employees and changing from a culture of top-down control, some organisations are moving towards more transparent and agile systems to improve performance and accomplish workloads.

So how can goals be used collaboratively? Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham, the two most recognised academic researchers on goal setting, have stated in their research that “Making a public commitment to a goal enhances personal commitment.”

Making a goal public or social will certainly encourage collaboration among team members and open communication between colleagues. Social goals allow employees to work in real-time by sharing work amongst peers, managers and teams. Goals are shared and worked on collaboratively across teams and the organisation. Individual performance is monitored in real-time and has direct relevance to results.  Teams can rally around objectives in an easy, open and social way. This helps teams to stay focused on what really matters and encourages individuals to work towards driving the key targets that impact the business.

There are a number of new and innovative social performance management platforms on the market now. These systems fully embrace the concept of collaborative, social goals. WorkSimple’s platform allows individuals and teams “to set relevant goals that impact work happening on a daily basis.” The platform provides a news stream which enables individuals to view what their peers are working on and see how their own work fits into the bigger picture.

Rypple, which has recently been acquired by Sales Force describe their approach to social goals - “you can inspire your team to set challenging objectives — and actually accomplish them. Objectives and key results achieved are showcased on individual profile pages so people know where they stand and what’s expected of them….. Share your goals publicly on Rypple and access resources from across the company. People in your organisation can join goals — and invite others to collaborate with them. Teams aligned around achieving the right objectives work better together and more effectively.”

So adopting a social approach to performance management can certainly help companies to align goals in real time in addition to making them highly focused.  Ultimately, the workforce feels more engaged, more in touch with where the business is heading and more empowered to engage in its success.

Is it time to re-think your performance appraisal process?

Could a business improve its organisational performance without using an annual appraisal process? Could performance management ever change from being a top down to a bottom up process?  Could you afford to abandon performance reviews altogether?  Some interesting questions but we can’t get away from one fact; employees need to know where they stand and organisations need to know how employees are doing. But, how would we achieve this without the performance appraisal?

In many organisations a performance appraisal is currently used for a number of reasons; giving feedback, coaching, setting goals, setting pay rises and bonuses, measuring performance, identifying training and development needs, boosting motivation and providing recognition. All this important information lumped into one end of year formal meeting . Often this meeting is met with dread, fear, anxiety or disillusionment by employee and sometimes even manager.  An hour’s formal meeting is seemingly all it takes to analyse one year of an employee’s hard work, create a learning and development plan, set objectives for the following year and even sometimes set bonus or pay rise. Often the information used is calculated using unreliable ratings or out of date statistics gathered from employee, manager and sometimes, if using 360 degree feedback, other team members.  Not forgetting that the success of the meeting relies on the fact that the manager is a good coach and the employee is receptive. In a matter of minutes, a previously motivated employee could turn into a shrinking violet. So, what’s the alternative or is there one?

It’s true people need and want to know how they’re doing and understand the information that may influence their career development or pay but is it really necessary to discuss so much and place so much emphasis on one or two meetings a year? This not only puts pressure on the ability of the manager but also on the relationship between the employee and the manager.

With this in mind, I think the first step in the journey to re-thinking your appraisal process should be to consider an appraisal as a number of different processes.  These processes could be divided into goals, coaching and development, feedback and recognition, remuneration, and motivation for example.

Over the next week or so my blog will take each of these processes individually and look at how they could be implemented differently and more creatively to eventually negate the need for an annual review.