The Easiest Plan to Strategic Performance Management

What is Strategic Performance Management

In a simple definition, it is a detailed approach or plan designed to help businesses achieve their goals. 

According to Bernard Marr, it entails all the methods, indicators, and frameworks needed to create a strategy that helps the employees of an organization gain insights in order to refine their learning and thought process to make the right decisions that will grow the organization.

Strategic performance management basically has to do with achieving success by combining the right people with the right processes and set of tools to enable them to succeed. In a single equation, this means 

People x Process = Profit.

The whole idea starts with outlining the company's vision. Once this is established, strategic performance management services are then used to get everyone in the company on board to help achieve those goals. 

Therefore, lots of communication tools are applied with teams and meetings scheduled to make sure everyone follows through. Everything done in this process makes sure that information is communicated across different levels of the organization.

To create strategic performance management, there are several things you can do that falls under this scope of resources;

• Setting expectations for performance with outlined plan to meet these expectations
• Employee performance monitoring via meetings and check-ins
• Rewards for good performance as well as addressing bad performance
• Continuous capacity development for optimal performance.

Now that we’ve listed all that falls under performance management, let’s discuss the few tips or strategies that can help you plan and carry out strategic performance management in your company.

Definition and Communication of Company Goals and Expectations

To achieve strategic performance management, the first step you should take is to outline your company goals and the performance expectations you want each employee to meet up with in reference to those goals. 

When goals are not clearly stated, employees are usually confused about what to do and most times fail to come forward to ask questions. So, they tend to act in ways that might affect the growth and performance of the company negatively. 

To avoid this, it is important that goals are defined and properly communicated. This can be done using charts in the office, goal-tracking software, emails, memo or meetings. When you communicate these goals, repeat them until it sinks in. 

Provide visuals, so they can have a reference and conduct meetings to check their progress towards those goals.

Provide your employees with frequent performance feedback

Defining your goals and clearly communicating them is not enough to build strategic performance management for your business. There’s a need to keep frequent tabs on your employees individually by letting them know through feedback, the impact of their performance on the overall company performance or goals. 

This positive feedback is important as it reinforces positive behaviors and strong skill sets and also reveals areas or paths for improvement.

In most companies, this type of feedback to employees is only done during annual company reviews. This is wrong. Employee feedback should be a frequent activity done through your managers or support team. 

This is important as employees who receive regular feedback are more likely to be engaged in their work when compared to those that receive theirs annually.

Frequent feedbacks are also important as it can help to build trust and encourages honesty between your employees and their managers thereby increasing their levels of performance. 

To achieve this, you can make use of free tools like survey monkey, google forms, email requests, or paid performance software.

Make use of Peer Reviews

Another strategy that can help you achieve strategic performance management with your employees is the use of peer reviews. This involves coworkers praising each other for a job well done, highlighting the positive aspects of their performance, and also suggesting improvements. 

This type of exercise can help build teams with better communication and self-improvement by watching themselves. 

This can be made effective through a feature found on most performance management software. With this, employees should be made to participate by making sure that they respond to all claims, concerns, and praises.

Employee Rewards and Preemptive Management

This is another part of a strategic performance management plan that guarantees positive results in workplaces. This involves starting all your employees on the same footing by making sure that everyone knows what is expected of them, and how to meet those expectations. 

These expectations will eliminate the need for guesswork or consequences.

With the individual goals and expectations clearly defined, a reward system and incentives should also be established to show your employees that you care and appreciate their efforts and performance. 

It doesn’t stop here; you should also employ a strong measure that will help managers or support teams discover slipping employees early enough. Feedback should be provided to these employees regarding their performance, with appropriate suggestions on how they can improve.

Regular Meetings for Discussion of Outcomes and Results

It is very important to meet with your team in order to appraise their performance and efforts towards achieving the defined goals and objectives. 

Widely known as progress meetings or progress reports, these meetings which can be conducted weekly, monthly, or even more frequently as you deem fit will help your team get accurate progress feedback and also know what to do to move forward.

When conducting these meetings (which must be made mandatory for all employees), make sure you have a clearly outlined agenda that includes these objectives;

• Appraising team efforts
• Peer reviews
• Plans for the next phase of projects
• Recognition of team members who met up with their expectations
• Outlining areas that need more work
• Evaluation of Company Data; Revenue, marketing, customer involvement, etc.

This meeting should serve as an avenue to address relevant issues to the company’s performance and progress. To achieve strategic performance management, this meeting should never be underrated or done just for the meeting’s sake. 

If things look smooth, employees seem to be acting accordingly with the feedback provided and the company seems to be on the positive track, there won’t be any need to hold these meetings frequently. Rather, they should be done at different checkpoints or quarterly throughout the year.

Employees are one of the greatest assets you have as a company. Therefore, you should concentrate on them, encourage them, and recognize their abilities and efforts in making the most of them. 

Create a successful working environment for them, communicate your company goals and vision properly and you can watch them help you build those visions and expectations leading to company success and higher profits.

These strategies or plans for achieving strategic performance management listed above look easy but many companies have unconsciously neglected them in their line of business. However, strategic performance management is feasible when you implement them.

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