A lot has been happening in the world of HR recently, particularly with the focus on the Government’s Employment Rights Bill roadmap which was published in July. However, aside from that normal day-to-day people management continues on. So as a change of pace, this blog will cover something a little different, performance management, target setting and holding difficult conversations.
What is performance management?
There’s no hard and fast definition of what performance management is, but it’s generally acknowledged as being a tool which is designed to maximise the value that employees create.
Why is it important?
Good performance management aims to maintain and improve employee performance. It should allow employees to see the link between what they do day-to-day with the wider business goals. Good performance management also holds people to account with clear links to rewards, career progression and, in some cases, the end of an employee’s employment.
At its best, good performance management should centre on a two-way discussion with regular, open and supportive feedback ensuring individual learning and development is managed successfully and the organisation grows as a result.
How to set Objectives for your team
For most businesses these are expressed as Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). However, they can also be ongoing quality standards or tasks to completed in a specific timeframe. Regardless of which method is chosen, it is essential to ensure ‘employee buy-in’ for them to be effective. However, this does not mean that employees set their own objectives.
The most effective KPI’s generally follow the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound). However, where an individual’s day to day tasks are more complex in nature or relay heavily on teamwork, KPI’s which focus on learning outcomes or behaviours make better objectives.
What steps can you take to improve your performance management review system?
Whilst assisting one of our clients with its strategic HR review, we identified performance management as a key factor in ensuring that the business returned to profit. Our client had well-defined strategic objectives, but these had not filtered down beyond the Senior Management Team resulting in a disconnect between everyone’s day to day work and the overall goals of the organisation. In turn this had contributed to a lack of focus on those tasks that the organisation needed to carry out consistently to achieve those goals. The organisation also struggled with its then performance review system, which made both managers and employees reluctant to participate in the process.
What did we do? We carried out a job description and performance management process review
Our process started with a job description review to ensure that the day-to-day tasks everyone carried out were still reflective of what individuals did or needed to do. As the performance management process had not been engaged with effectively beforehand, we also recommended that our client’s senior leadership and middle management would benefit from performance management training. The training we provided included: –
- An outline of the performance management cycle
- How to encourage open and developmental conversations and good performance in their teams – the essence of being a good leader
- Coaching and mentoring
- What effective performance targets/KPI’s are and the criteria needed to set them. This element of the training involved a specific task where the senior leadership team worked to build an outline of what their department KPI’s should be.
- How to effectively handle under performance and the skills needed for having those difficult conversations.
As our client had already identified problems with the way its current performance management procedure was set-up within its HR information system, we also worked with them to create a more comprehensive, but user-friendly performance management review.
To make the process as clear as possible, we also provided our client with a comprehensive performance management guide, which dealt with how often performance management reviews would take place and what actions employees and their managers needed to take prior to any performance review meeting.
Training managers in how to have difficult conversations
It’s a sad but true fact that at some point, employers will have to deal with an under-performing employee regardless of how well you embed your strategic objectives and performance management cycles into all levels of your business.
Managing under-performing can feel like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be, if you and your managers are equipped with the skills to be able to hold difficult conversations. The recent training we have provided for our clients covered the reasons why it’s important to hold difficult conversations, emotional intelligence and knowing when to step back as well as an in-depth review of the importance of the language that works most effectively during those conversations, especially when dealing with a defensive employee.
And finally…avoiding sexual harassment in the workplace and ban on NDA’s – the impact
Whilst this time we aren’t focusing on the changes that the Employment Rights Bill will bring, we do think that the upcoming changes to how employers deal with sexual harassment is worth a special mention.
Earlier in the summer the biggest news was that the Employment Rights Bill was going to place a ban on NDA’s where harassment or discrimination had been the source of an employee’s complaint.
What has slipped more quietly under the radar is that from October next year, employers will be required to take ‘all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace’. This includes the requirement to take all reasonable steps to prevent third party harassment.
The changes mean that employers will be held responsible for harassment by third parties and it will no longer be enough for employers to simply point to their basic harassment policy when defending themselves against those claims.
HRCentral can provide bespoke training and more comprehensive policies which will help you ensure that you are taking all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment in your workplace.
