What Are The Benefits Of Performance Management For You And Your Team?
| Did you know that Challenge Consulting provides workshops on Managing Employee Performance? This half-day workshop is designed for team leaders, supervisors and new managers who would like to learn or enhance the skills required to manage performance effectively. It provides a comprehensive introduction to the elements of an integrated performance management programme, as well as practical tools to turn the theory to reality. For more information, click here. |
Performance management involves many roles. You must be a communicator, a leader, a role model, and a collaborator. Each individual member of the team should understand exactly what their responsibilities and expectations are, and as their supervisor, you should work to help them reach those goals.
Some people find performance management to be a difficult role to play. Some people in particular have difficulty when it comes to evaluating performance. But when it’s done well, performance management is about partnership and motivation. If it’s done from this perspective, there is nothing to be uncomfortable about. When this perspective is shared with your employees and they learn to see it that way, performance management becomes a powerful tool that helps your team to become more successful. Let’s make sure the benefits of performance management are clear:
• When roles and responsibilities are clear, motivation is increased. If your team members know what they are supposed to be doing, there is no loss of motion due to confusion or uncertainty. Instead, a motivated individual will be in action, and a team full of motivated individuals will feed off of each other and help keep that motivation going.
• When expectations are clear, employees are more likely to take ownership of their work and to be committed to the expected outcomes. They will be more likely to be willing to take risks, to put in extra effort, and to view their own role as that of a partnership with you and with the rest of the team.
• When goals are clear and being pursued, your team members each will be able to contribute to team effectiveness. Without performance management, a team can’t be expected to be effective. Without it, they can be expected to flounder.
• Performance management also helps you to develop your team members. You can use it to stretch their capabilities, to challenge them to step outside of their comfort zone. Doing so will provide opportunities for individual growth, which in turn will help to fuel their enthusiasm for their job.
• Helping them to grow and develop will help you to progress the individuals through the company. You can be building on strengths that the company needs – both in your division and in other areas.
• A solid, well-formed performance management process gives you a powerful tool for addressing poor performance issues, should they arise. If you and your employee have agreed upon what their duties and responsibilities are, then you have something to refer to when they are not holding up their end of the agreement.
These benefits have all been listed from the point of view of the supervisor. But just as important is finding a way to communicate the benefits of performance management to your employees. What are some of the benefits for the employee of well-structured and well-implemented performance management process?
• Security in knowing they are doing the job they way you want it done
• A clear understanding of what you expect and what the corresponding rewards or consequences will be
• A framework for gauging their own performance
• A continuing conversation with you regarding how to improve their skills and performance
• Knowing that they have the ability to determine their own success by following the performance plan you have set in place
These benefits are fully attainable for your team members – provided you have laid the foundation of a fair, consistent, clear, and achievable performance management plan. What would you need to hear or see from your own coach in order to see performance management and performance evaluation as benefits in your own job performance? Or another way of asking yourself this question is to consider what actions from your own supervisor would ruin the possibility that you could see the benefits of the process? Your actions (or lack thereof) will determine the attitude that your team members have towards the performance management process.
