Taking care of your employees is a significant part of managing the human element of your business. The annual review process, feedback, check-ins, and other tools exist to help managers work with their employees and manage their performance. But there’s another process that works a little bit more efficiently: continuous performance management, or CPM. In CPM, you evaluate employees on an ongoing basis instead of at six-month intervals or after each project. This gives you insight into their day-to-day performance and can help you assess them better over time, and reward them when needed for a job well done. Here are five reasons why you should use continuous performance management:
FeedbackÂ
Feedback is one of the most important parts of performance management in any capacity, but it’s even more important in CPM. Feedback is a two-way process that should make employees feel valued. While feedback can be both positive and negative, it’s best to use it constructively. Negative feedback can be powerful to help people grow, but it shouldn’t be designed to make them feel bad. In turn, positive feedback shouldn’t be a constant stream of praise but instead include some suggestions for continuing high performance. Consider implementing 360-degree feedback, which is feedback from everybody that a person works with, to get the most out of this part of the CPM process. Feedback is valuable for establishing whether or not goals have been met or if further goal setting/training might be required. Feedback can be formal or informal, but it needs to happen regularly for CPM to work effectively.
ConsistencyÂ
Consistency is a key to success, progress, and growth in any industry. It also helps employees stay happy in their job and life. You might think that the only way to ensure consistency is by having the same people do everything all the time—but that’s pretty far off the mark. Continuous performance management means everyone gets treated the same way no matter what. Whether it’s how often employees receive performance reviews or how their review process works, it won’t change depending on who is doing the reviewing or being reviewed. A comprehensive continuous performance management process offers several advantages over traditional reviews. It’s consistent for employees and companies alike, making it an integral part of the employee experience at any organization.
Goals
Another key benefit of CPM is the ability to set and track goals effectively. Goals are part of the overall process and require not only consistent implementation but regular monitoring. Goals are useful for setting benchmarks, motivating employees, creating engagement, and ultimately increasing employee satisfaction while maintaining the company’s mission. Goals should be SMART, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. They should also be based on the needs of the business or department. It’s vital to ensure employees understand how their goals contribute to the bigger picture, so they remain engaged and achieve success with the company throughout their careers.
Motivation
Motivation and keeping employees motivated can be a real challenge in any industry. Sometimes employees become complacent, lose motivation, or simply don’t want to work on certain projects. This attitude can be caused by several factors, including poor management and a lack of consistent performance evaluation. Getting employees back on track is critical. Constantly providing them with growth opportunities, new challenges, and opportunities to thrive will help avoid burnout. Part of a CPM system is to make sure that your employees remain focused on their goals, stay engaged, and perform at high levels as much as possible.
EngagementÂ
People are your greatest asset. They’re also your most important resource. It’s true in any organization and it should be true even in yours, especially if you want them to perform at high levels. High engagement leads to better retention, which in turn leads to happier employees, better morale, and even higher productivity. Employees who work at companies that value them stay engaged. Retention can be a big, costly problem. Recruiting, hiring, training, and working with staff costs money. When they leave, you have to start the process all over again ultimately leading to higher costs. When you engage your employees and help them feel valued, you create an environment of cooperation and collaboration. If everyone feels like they have an equal voice and that they matter, they’ll do better overall. CPM helps you do this very well. While it may not be a perfect system, CPM processes can help you improve your team’s performance and engage your employees in meaningful ways for a long time to come.