As companies prepare to compete in the 21st century, their ability to innovate and create value has become increasingly more valuable than the sheer numbers on the balance sheet. Technology companies that did not generate revenue are valued more now than ever. It is no wonder why many companies invest heavily in performance management system as we slowly realized that humans are the core of organizations, not for the functioning of organization's operation but due to our ability to think. The performance management system in the 21st century is thus designed to bring out the best of every individual, or is it not?
Many would agree that in order to develop a effective performance management system, companies need to identify the key expected results, translated into departments' objectives and individual targets. This will help to align every individual to the company's goals. Through understanding how their efforts contribute to the bigger picture, employees have a higher sense of involvement in the company's achievements. However, this is usually not consistently implemented across the entire organization with employees failing to understand how their work link to the company's success or even their personal success. The misalignment is mainly due to the lack of proper communication strategy within the company.
A good performance communication plan should establish agenda, frequent, timely to reinforce the objectives, transparent and objective-oriented. Besides communicating the objectives and establishing targets for the year during the annual performance review, managers should also conduct periodic performance review to recognize outstanding performance and feedback on areas of improvement. It is also for managers to understand the thoughts behind the action and clarify any concerns of the employees.
This periodic communication removes doubts, distrusts, and develops long lasting relationships with your employees. Motivation is like an asset, it depreciates over time. A timely talk would help in rekindling the passion for the work as well as ensuring employees are on the same page as their managers. This may be time consuming but necessary. As mentioned in the post "Managers are the key to performance management", the secret to high performance is autonomy, mastery and purpose. All of which requires an effective communication system to work, be it finding the purpose of work, establishing expectations and career milestones or giving autonomy to independent workers.
In order to ensure proper communication and performance management procedures are carried out, there had to be certain measures in place. This is also to resolve some of the issues with current performance management system. Some of these setbacks includes the failure of managers to effectively communicate objectives, performance criteria and expectations and the inability to quantify all expectations to measurable targets. One of the ways to reduce these concerns is for a third party to communicate directly to the employees on their understanding of objectives, evaluation criteria and the ratings indicators, comparing it to the standards set by the managers. Another would be to provide an alternative communication channel for the employees to express their concerns.
Good communication system promotes understanding and motivates employees while ineffective communication creates misunderstandings and management issues. How do you suggest improving the communication in the workplace? What are the measures that you had put in place? Comment below and let me know.
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