Making performance appraisal a continuous and simple process can take the stress out of performance management

Three factors for measuring employee performance

While continuous performance tracking is a good idea and can provide instant feedback to employees stimulating instant results and change of course at work, an organisation has to consider a few aspects prior to jumping on the 'ditch the annual review' bandwagon.

Each organisation, depending on its size and line of speciality, can have an individual method of performance tracking and evaluation; yet, it is important not to lose the sight of the key elements that underline the task of measuring employees' performance:

Set strong individual goals and align them with company strategy

Promoting individuality and enhancing the performance of each employee is one of the main intentions of performance tracking next to creating an environment of growth within the organisation.

However, it is also important to see that the individual growth target of each employee is well aligned with the overall company strategy and the future goals of others.

While a company should invest time and energy to make sure that all its employees are on the same page when it comes to the overall company strategy, it is also essential to have each employee planning their future goals in alignment with the future strategies of the overall organisation.

Each and every employee would like to feel and know that they are making a great contribution to the organisation and letting them know where they fit in the larger picture helps them to maintain mid and long term personal career goals that would enable them to grow within the organisation.

The process of setting individual goals should involve both the employee and the manager to create a dual way flow of information. The goals should be challenging and should include development plans that would enhance individual skills and responsibilities as well as the organisational growth.

Using a comprehensive task management tool like OPPTIMO to schedule individual tasks ahead and comparing them with the responsibilities of the whole team and organisation improves the transparency of a project and provides the team members with a clear picture of the flow of work.

Include frequent opportunities for feedback

Making an employee wait a whole year for feedback on a task or a project that was completed three quarters back can only procrastinate growth and deter development.

Rather than having a team leader or a manager gather data at an annual or a half year assessment and provide an annual and quarterly evaluation to the awaiting employees, it is best to develop a system that provides continuous assessment at the completion of each task.

Through the use of a people management software that gathers and provides performance data in real time, team leaders and managers can now provide instant feedback on each team member's performance, correcting flaws and weaknesses as the project develops.

Keep it simple

While creating a high performance culture at your organisation can be a lengthy and complicated process, providing a continuous performance evaluation doesn't have to be.

Getting rid of many complicated and arduous administrative red tape and replacing them with flexible steps can reduce the stress involving the performance evaluation. It is a good idea to get rid of the long lists of forms that need to be filled and intricate and complicate ratings that require to be calculated prior to an employee evaluation. Not only these methods discourage constant performance evaluation, but, they also make performance evaluation a stressful process to the management and employees.

Many leading tech companies have also been adopting a flat structure to eliminate bureaucracy and related loss of time.

Having given each employee the best role they can perform and adapt to, these organisations depend on a highly transparent process that involves team work, high individual performance and seamless communication to achieve exceptional results and effective efficiency.

Although there is no 'one-size fits all' that provides an instant solution to all the performance and talent management issues a firm is facing, never losing sight of the important aspects of performance management can keep the sails high for an organisation and its employees.