What is performance management and how can it benefit your business?

As a business owner or manager, you’ll have probably heard the term ‘performance management’ thrown around in a bunch of business meetings. If you’re not familiar with the term, you may find yourself wondering what it’s about, and why you should be implementing it in your business.

Well, that’s what we’re here for—to guide you through the ins and outs of performance management and what it means for you on the HR front.

We’re going to cover everything from the benefits to the responsibilities surrounding this discipline, so you’re fully equipped to tackle it head-on from here on out.

What is performance management?

Performance management is the people-focused practice of optimizing every aspect of your business that is responsible for delivering results. The ultimate objective of performance management is to enable every person and every process to work to a top-of-the-game level. It can seem like a daunting process, but with the right tools, it doesn’t have to be.

In the past, this may have involved paper-based timesheets and shift plans or face-to-face appraisals with your staff and lists of objectives for them to work towards thereafter.

There’s not much wrong with such approaches and they’ve worked for some teams, but the modern business world demands more than that from market leaders—organizations need to be agile and able to get their eyes on insights immediately.

These days, performance management must be a component of a business’s approach to digital transformation, from the automation of manual tasks to app-based information that’s available at a moment’s notice.

It’s about making things quicker, easier and more efficient across every department of the modern-day organization. 

Why is performance management important?

Your people are your biggest asset, so imagine being able to turn up the dial on their performance with a few new tools, features and processes. It’s an employers’ dream scenario, is it not?

Plug the right tools into the right parts of your organization and you’ll see productivity and engagement on an upward trajectory before you know it.

Think about it: more efficient shift and schedule planning means more time saved every month. Simpler time tracking from onsite or remote staff means more accurate payroll information for every pay period. Cloud-based document storage means less time wasted hunting around for documents or merging duplicates.

Ultimately, better performance management makes for: 

• Streamlined processes and empowered people

• Improved productivity as an organization

• Greater engagement from your employees

• Higher retention rates of talented staff

• More data-driven decisions to make everyday HR life easier

Performance management is important because it not only makes your employees’ lives easier, but it also makes your organization’s goals more achievable.

It saves time, effort and resources across the board so you can concentrate on more strategic tasks—and perhaps even squeeze in a couple more coffees. 

Whose responsibility is performance management?

In many ways, the responsibility for managing performance levels across your business doesn’t change with the implementation of modern HR software. It’s still everyone’s responsibility to perform, but it’s made significantly easier when you can migrate everything online and say goodbye to manual and paper-based processes.

Managers and business owners alike can maximize the performance of a business by managing staff vacations, absences and sicknesses from one user-friendly platform.

Individual employees can maximize performance by clocking in and clocking out at the right times and making it known when they’re not available for a shift.

Senior team managers can maximize performance by engaging and motivating staff through an employee recognition platform that celebrates success.

On the whole, a more modern approach to performance management improves communication between all levels of an organization, so there’s a much higher chance of boosting trust, transparency and accountability—things that disparate teams working out of sync with one another will never achieve.

When every contribution towards the efficient running of a business can happen within one HR platform, you can start to see the longer-term effects it can have on performance. Time saved is time gained to focus on other areas for growth.

What are the benefits of performance management for modern organizations?

Businesses across Canada stand to gain from performance management if they aim for a result that’s greater than the sum of its parts. That is to say that if everyone pulls in the same direction on a platform that makes working life easier across the board, everyone reaps the rewards of the success that will follow. 

Performance management can bring a range of benefits to businesses in any industry. It can:

• Help boost individual and team performance when people are empowered to manage their own time better.

• Align employee goals with overall business objectives by enabling company-wide upskilling and offering a centralized place for HRs to manage progress.

• Nurture a culture of continuous improvement thanks to the ease with which top performers can be identified and rewarded.

It’s the solution to all the HR headaches you’ve gotten used to over the years—now you can make them a thing of the past and collective success a thing of the future.

Get help with your performance management

If you’re looking to get moving with performance management for your business, you’re in the right place.

With BrightHR, not only do you get access to HR software that streamlines people management, but you can also enjoy employment relations advice on demand—24 hours a day, 365 days a year—and an HR document library that will slash your admin time.

Get started on performance management and book a demo of the BrightHR platform today.