RESOLUTION OR RESOLVE?

Which do you have?

A RESOLUTION is a decision to do or not do something.

RESOLVE is a firm determination to do something.

Resolution is wishful thinking. A fleeting moment in time.

Resolve involves ongoing action with a fixed purpose. A dedication to the process.

Anyone can make a resolution. Not everyone has resolve.

if you resolve to do one thing this year – this, is it.

Improve the way you measure employee performance, especially in the world of remote work.

According to GetApp, more than 40% of newly remote workers say their employer hasn’t changed how their performance is measured - adding further strain to an already disjointed process.

Even before the pandemic, less than one in five HR leaders believed that performance management was effective at achieving its objective according to Gartner. This must be a concern. If the process was broken before the pandemic, failure to act now will destroy it.  Leaders must have the resolve to change how they handle the performance management of a remote workforce. If they don’t, trust will disintegrate, employee engagement will fall, and employees will walk out of the door.

Resolve to do the following.

Performance not productivity

According to Tim Minahan writing for HBR, employees want to be measured on the value they deliver, not the volume they deliver. We know this is an issue as productivity paranoia is rife. Despite research informing us that employees working remotely are just as productive, if not more so than when they were in the office, bosses do not believe they are being productive because they are out of sight. The crazy thing is that even when they could see them at a desk, they did not know if they were being productive.

The fear was evident when the global demand for employee surveillance software increased by 80% in March 2022. The demand is monitored by top10vpn and the demand has continued to increase up until today even as many employees have returned to the office 

Productivity is a poor indicator of performance. The number of hours an employee is at a desk does not correlate with the outcomes they deliver that contribute to the organisation.

Performance must be measured based on outcomes and value-add.

Tim shares the results of a Citrix study.

“In the future, companies will need to rethink how they measure productivity because traditional metrics — and views that real work can’t get done outside the office — will no longer cut it. According to the study, today’s employees want to be measured on the value they deliver, not the volume. And they expect to be given the space and trust they need to do their very best work, wherever they happen to be.

• 86% of employees said they would prefer to work for a company that prioritizes outcomes over output. What does this mean? New employees want to work for a company that cares less about the qualified work output they can produce, and more about the impact they can deliver to the business in a holistic sense.

• But there is a gap here, with just 69% of HR directors saying that their company currently operates in this way, and only half of HR directors saying that their organization would be more productive as a whole if employees felt that their employer/senior management team trusted them to get the job done without monitoring their progress.

Forward-thinking companies will focus on closing this gap and will design people-centric experiences that give employees the space they need to unlock their full potential and deliver transformative results.”

Clarity not confusion

When setting goals for employees to achieve, there must be clarity, collaboration, and alignment.

According to Gallup (2021), only 6 in 10 U.S. employees know what is expected of them at work.

Every employee must have complete clarity about what is expected of them. When you can read the body language it can be easier to determine if there is understanding. When employees are working remotely, this can be more difficult. Leaders must get employees to repeat back what they have heard to ensure understanding and where there is a misunderstanding, clarification can be provided.

Goals and outcomes should be co-created and agreed on. The leader and the employee should discuss:

·       Outcomes to be achieved

·       Timeframes

·       Perceived obstacles and blockers

·       Factors that will support the achievement of outcomes

·       Ways in which the outcomes will be measured

When goals and outcomes are co-created, employees have skin in the game. There is intrinsic motivation because they are active participants. Discussion can take place about career paths, learning and development needs, and areas for growth so that the goals can support the employee’s growth aspirations while delivering on the business outcomes the leader needs to achieve.

Equity not exclusion

Every leader must be aware of proximity bias. Proximity bias is when managers place a higher value on the work, they can physically see someone doing while discounting work that is being done out of sight.

Everyone must be treated and evaluated equally. There must be a level playing field.

A mistake to avoid when looking to improve the performance management process is to do so for the remote part of the workforce, as that is often the new contingent. Leaders must not develop a new system for one part of the workforce based on new measurements, and then continue to assess the rest of the workforce using the old system. That is like trying to compare apples with oranges and it is unfair and inequitable.

Employees working remotely should get as much one-on-one time with their leader as other employees.

Research by Ioana C. Cristea and Paul M. Leonardi in 2019 found the following.

“Research shows that displaying face time—being observed by others at work—leads to many positive outcomes for employees. Drawing on this prior work, we argue that face time helps employees to receive better work and leads to career advancement because it is a strong signal of their commitment to their job, their team, and their organization. But when employees are geographically distributed from managers who control the assignment of work, they are often unable to display face time. “

All leaders across disciplines must work together to ensure that work allocation is equal across all employees instead of assigning the less visible employee the less interesting work. Leaders must intentionally allocate work equally across all employees and encourage cross-location collaboration. Employees can then be evaluated on a level playing field.

Efficacy not exception

Another reason that performance should be assessed regularly and frequently is so that trends can be looked at. There may be variations in employee performance for many reasons that could be personal or professional or both. These variations should not result in an overreaction. 

If an employee’s performance varies from expectations, leaders should pay attention, ask questions, and determine what support or assistance they can offer. We must remember that we are humans, not robots, so performance will never be perfectly consistent.

Performance should also be based on two things: results and behaviour. Management should not reward employees who achieve great results but break all the rules to do so. Neither should it reward the exceptional behaviour of employees who never deliver results.

There could be a temptation for some managers in a remote environment, to focus just on results. They are easier to see than behaviour. Leaders must create an environment in which bad behaviour is called out, so they get to know about it. This is where trust, respect, psychological safety, and team agreements come into play. Every employee feels safe to call out the behaviour of another employee without fear of repercussion or retaliation. Every employee knows that if they behave badly, their behaviour will be called out. Not because of any individual grievance or interpersonal discord, but because that is how the team have agreed to operate.

Regular not random

Performance should be assessed on a regular basis. Performance that is discussed once a year at the annual performance review is an absolute waste of time. Neither party has a clear picture of performance over a 12-month period, and it could often be too late for the employee to make a change in direction and/or behaviour. Informing an employee that they need to improve their communication skills based on an event that happened 9 months ago precludes the employee from making immediate changes.

Performance assessment/measurement/review/evaluation should not be an event, it should be an ongoing process. Employees can get timely and contextual feedback on their performance and leaders can provide timely and constructive support to remove roadblocks and provide additional guidance where necessary.

Performance discussions should be a coaching opportunity to lead the employee to identify the gaps in their performance and determine ways in which to address the gaps.

Organisations that retain the formal performance review process as it drives promotions, rewards, salary increases etc. should treat it as the overarching cap across the many feedback sessions that have taken place during the year. The regularity of the feedback sessions should be such that it helps employees feel motivated, connected, supported, and engaged. I would suggest a weekly or bi-weekly cadence but no less than monthly.

Summary

Performance management can be one of the toughest things for organisations to get right but that is not an excuse for them not to do it 

It is a sad indictment of the leadership in our organisations when the HR professionals themselves believe the process is broken.

This is the process that can change careers, learning and development opportunities, growth paths, employee motivation and engagement.

The fact that we have added the need to evaluate employees who are out of sight cannot be treated as an excuse not to fix the broken system before it disintegrates altogether.

Do you have resolve?