Share the Love with Your Performance Management System This Valentine’s

Our Clear Review team is here to show you how to adapt your per­for­mance man­age­ment sys­tem to express your admi­ra­tion and appre­ci­a­tion this Valentine’s Day!

Despite the ever-flex­i­ble nature of the work­place, most of us still spend eight hours a day at work, five days a week. If we are engaged employ­ees, we com­mit our­selves to our goals, our roles and our com­pa­nies. That’s a sub­stan­tial rela­tion­ship by anyone’s standards.

Like any rela­tion­ship, the ded­i­ca­tion and effort need to work both ways. Rather than tak­ing your employ­ees for grant­ed, there are ways of using your per­for­mance man­age­ment sys­tem to encour­age your employ­ees and to show them you’re all on the same team. Fol­low our tips and tricks below and you’ll be reward­ed by faith­ful, loy­al employ­ees who will put in that extra mile for the years to come.

Be clear on com­pa­ny direc­tion, pri­or­i­ties and values

No rela­tion­ship is going to suc­ceed if it doesn’t have a sol­id foun­da­tion. Every­one involved needs to have a good under­stand­ing of where things are going and what is impor­tant in the rela­tion­ship. For an organ­i­sa­tion, this all comes down to uni­fied objec­tives, with trans­paren­cy regard­ing organ­i­sa­tion­al and com­pa­ny val­ues.

Your com­pa­ny needs to be clear about its val­ues and you need to incor­po­rate these val­ues into every­day work life. It’s impor­tant that you and your employ­ees share these same val­ues, whether they be hon­esty, inno­va­tion or cre­ativ­i­ty. These val­ues will deter­mine how an employ­ee behaves and how they approach their objectives.

Sim­i­lar­ly, a high degree of trans­paren­cy is required with regards to com­pa­ny objec­tives and organ­i­sa­tion­al goals. Employ­ees need to know where the com­pa­ny is head­ed, what issues it is fac­ing and how their roles fac­tor into the over­all direc­tion of the busi­ness. This gives every­one a sense of pur­pose and uni­fies your employ­ees, which is the cor­ner­stone of a hap­py relationship.

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Devel­op a mutu­al under­stand­ing regard­ing SMART objectives

Once an employ­ee tru­ly under­stands the direc­tion and goals of a com­pa­ny, they are then able to care­ful­ly and dili­gent­ly cre­ate their own SMART objec­tives by align­ing them upwards. It was once the accept­ed strat­e­gy to trick­le objec­tives down, but this sys­tem is gen­er­al­ly accept­ed to be inef­fi­cient in a mod­ern, busy work­ing envi­ron­ment. Those at the top don’t always nec­es­sar­i­ly have an in-depth knowl­edge or under­stand­ing of what employ­ees low­er down the lad­der deal with on a dai­ly basis, so they aren’t in the best posi­tion to assign mean­ing­ful, con­struc­tive objectives.

How­ev­er, if an employ­ee under­stands what their com­pa­ny is try­ing to accom­plish, under­stands how their role can influ­ence and impact these goals and has a sol­id SMART objec­tives def­i­n­i­tion, they will be able to work with their man­ag­er to define their own SMART goals. This way, employ­ees will have greater auton­o­my and receive a sense of inde­pen­dence and own­er­ship over their work, which will leave them feel­ing far more enam­oured of their trust­ing organisation.

Show your employ­ees appre­ci­a­tion with your per­for­mance man­age­ment system

If you took your sig­nif­i­cant oth­er for grant­ed and nev­er expressed your thanks for the things they did or what they put up with, it’s unlike­ly the rela­tion­ship would last long. Appre­ci­a­tion shouldn’t be reserved for Valentine’s Day or oth­er spe­cial occa­sions; it should be some­thing that is habit­u­al­ly delivered.

How recog­nised do your employ­ees feel? When was the last time you gave them a heart­felt con­grat­u­la­tions for their work, or a sim­ple ​‘thank you’ for their efforts? This is a crit­i­cal per­for­mance man­age­ment con­sid­er­a­tion that you shouldn’t over­look, par­tic­u­lar­ly when you con­sid­er there are many cost-effi­cient ways of recog­nis­ing employ­ees. Even the small­est ges­tures can make a real dif­fer­ence to both per­for­mance and com­mit­ment levels.

Incor­po­rate reg­u­lar, mean­ing­ful one-to-ones

Accord­ing to Psy­chol­o­gy Today, com­mu­ni­ca­tion is one of the sev­en keys to a suc­cess­ful long-term rela­tion­ship. How­ev­er, there are two things you need to remem­ber with regards to com­mu­ni­ca­tion. First of all, it needs to be reg­u­lar — a decent, heart­felt con­ver­sa­tion once a year just won’t cut it. Sec­ond­ly, the con­tent of your con­ver­sa­tions count. These dis­cus­sions need to be mean­ing­ful, and every­one involved needs to leave the con­ver­sa­tion feel­ing uplift­ed and motivated.

Now that com­pa­nies are aban­don­ing annu­al appraisals for reg­u­lar per­for­mance dis­cus­sions, there is more of a focus on mean­ing­ful feed­back and dis­cus­sion, which is great for employ­ee-man­ag­er rela­tion­ships. If you are new to con­tin­u­ous per­for­mance man­age­ment, it is under­stand­able that you will need some guide­lines on how to get start­ed. This is why we at Clear Review have writ­ten a free eBook on how to adopt the lat­est per­for­mance man­age­ment approach­es.

Give employ­ees what they deserve — qual­i­ty employ­ee appraisal software

Your employ­ees are the most impor­tant part of your busi­ness. What would you do with­out them? They dri­ve your com­pa­ny for­ward and, as such, they deserve tech­nol­o­gy that isn’t clunky or com­pli­cat­ed. They should have access to effec­tive employ­ee appraisal soft­ware that is easy to use and that will make a long-last­ing impact on their per­for­mance. This is where Clear Review per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware can step in. We pride our­selves on sim­plic­i­ty and fea­tures that gen­uine­ly improve employ­ee per­for­mance and engagement.

By invest­ing in our soft­ware, you show your employ­ees that you care about them and you are inter­est­ed in improv­ing as a team while enjoy­ing a long, hap­py future together.

Clear Review HR per­for­mance review soft­ware is used by notable com­pa­nies all over the world. We strive toward sim­plic­i­ty in all areas and we know that fea­ture-rich, com­pli­cat­ed sys­tems can do more harm than good. To find out more, get in touch today and we’ll be hap­py to help you.