Of the many things described by the term "Performance Management," one flavor is all about the "human" or "human resources" aspects of getting better results. There are lots of "Human Capital Management" (HCM) vendors, lots of hype, some good blogs, and just maybe some real results.
Many of these vendors describe their personal goal management modules as "performance management." They may even let you link a goal or two to a list of corporate strategy statements, but be wary of people who have this approach in mind when they discuss performance management.
The HCM approach differs greatly from the "strategy execution" approach to performance that we espouse, which entails a much more rigorous approach to aligning people to corporate strategy.
Yes, I know things like talent management and compensation management (especially) can be really tricky, but from what I'm seeing, most of the action in this Human Capital space is around automating reviews and managing employees' personal goals. And they tend to be fairly simple applications in this regard.
In addition to this skepticism I have about the degree of linkage and strategic alignment most HCM vendors can provide, what I find myself scratching my head about the most is the functionality many of them tout to expedite and automate the employee review process.
Thinking about employee reviews brings me back to my first job out of grad school. I worked for a prickly old tech VP (IBM big iron in those days) who didn't care much for HR policies. One December morning, after 8 months on the job, he came to me and said we had to complete my yearly evaluation. He asked me to make a list of the top 7 things I had done during the year and those, magically, became my goals for the year just passed! Hate to say it, but I've seen that scenario play out a lot.
As an employee, I felt somewhat cheated because my "evaluation" wasn't based on real goals. It was basically reverse engineered based on things I had already done. Most managers I had subsequently didn't put much more effort into my reviews, just giving me a number on the 1-5 poor to outstanding scale.
I do remember one manager who really did it right and you could tell she put A LOT of time and thought into her comments. I had a great amount of respect for and loyalty to her, which impacted what we were able to achieve.
So, back to that feature many HCM vendors are promoting: it lets managers pick pre-written phrases from boiler-plate commentary to assemble yearly (or quarterly) reviews. NOW YOU CAN DRAG AND DROP YOUR COMMENTS FROM HR APPROVED CONSISTENT LANGUAGE! YOU CAN WRITE YOUR REVIEWS IN ONE HALF OF THE TIME! IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF FEEDBACK WITH WRITING AND COACHING TOOLS!
Their argument is that it makes it quicker and easier if you have lots of reviews to do, which sounds great on the surface. I've even heard from some HR decision makers who think this is a wonderful idea, which strikes me as sad.
Forgive me, but I think this is important enough stuff that managers shouldn't get off the hook. They should put time and thought into creating some good, thoughtful comments specific to the performance of the person at hand.
I mean, come on, if this trend continues the software will play a game of twenty questions and automatically write the review:
Computer: Is Bob smith a cheerful person? (Y/N) N
Computer: Is Bob Smith a smart person? Y
Computer: Rate Bob on how many of her/his goals he competed (1-5 with 5 being all)? 4
Computer: Rate Bob on how ambitious s/he is (1-5, with 5 being very)? 2
Computer: Processing Bob Smith's review.......
Bob Smith had a pretty good year this year, meeting most of his or her goals. Although not every goal was achieved, Bob Smith did a very good job in hitting the vast majority of the goals set for him or her at the beginning of the year.
Although Bob Smith is very bright, s/he sometimes can't take full advantage of his or her intelligence because people just don't feel comfortable around him or her. Bob Smith does not appear to be cheerful most of the time. Even though this didn't keep Bob Smith from hitting most of his or her goals, he or she could have done better if he or she was more cheerful.
Bob Smith could also be a bit more ambitious...
And this would be progress? How would the employee react if he learned that his review had been compiled this way? I've got to believe he'd feel at least as cheated as I did by my first boss (at least he let me write my own review, instead of letting software do it!)
Yes, it might mean some extra work, but wouldn't it be time well invested (for both Bob Smith and the corporation) to think about how to truly link Bob Smith's personal goals to the company's goals and review progress in a thoughtful, constructive manner?
This is what the "strategy execution" flavor of performance management entails. Truly empowering individuals to understand and contribute to the corporate strategic goals.
Link Bob Smith's yearly and quarterly goals to the areas on his department's Balanced Scorecard to which he can contribute. During his reviews, talk about his training and development achievements in parallel with the results of strategic metrics and initiatives he's being asked to improve.
This gives Bob Smith (and his manager) the ability to actually see how his job relates to the success of the organization. Now that sounds like progress. But hey, I guess I'm just becoming one of those prickly old tech guys.
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