New beginnings…new performance management process

New beginnings for your performance management process

For me, September feels like new beginnings, presumably because I still have children in education so I feel that my work energy is more connected to the school term than the calendar year. However, the reality is that it doesn’t really matter whether you align with school terms or semesters, the seasons or business quarters. It is natural for our energy and focus to ebb and flow over the course of a 12 month cycle and we need to create opportunities to recharge, refocus and reignite our motivation to deliver or achieve.

Many of us are aware that an annual performance management cycle really isn’t terribly effective, yet what do you replace it with when the term ‘continuous conversations’ really isn’t terribly meaningful, practical or measurable? One approach that we have taken with many of our clients is that of aligning the annual performance management cycle with quarters of the year (or 3 semesters in higher education). The trick is however, to break down the annual review into discrete chunks that result in more meaningful conversations at different points in time rather than expect people to have three or four ‘mini-appraisals’ which makes them feel like the appraisal workload has quadrupled rather than reduced. If they feel that is the case, then motivation and quality of conversations will decline.

When you think about it, squeezing discussion about last years performance; next years goals; current development needs; future career aspirations; behaviours against competencies or values and now wellbeing and EDI all into one annual conversation is completely impractical, yet that’s what many organisations are still trying to do.

If you want to re-think performance management or appraisal in your organisations I have developed lots of free resources including webinars, infographics and white papers. You can download some or all of them here: Free Appraisal Resources.

Do let me know your thoughts and how you get on and if you would like to know more about how Actus Performance Management Software can help you to re-energise your annual appraisal process, why not sign up for the open demo that I will be hosting on the 20th Sept 2023: Actus Open Demo.