Skip to Main Content
Topic
Filter By +
Topic +

How Strong Performance Management Defines Your Future Success

Recent and emerging challenges have reshaped the way we perceive work, including the relationship between employees and their employers. This shift means HR professionals not only need to manage the success of their current workforce, but also prepare to accommodate the next generation of talent.

A study from Pew Research Center finds by 2025, the majority of baby boomers will be retirement age. In their absence, millennials — who make up the bulk of U.S. workers — will gradually fill vacated management positions. Gen Z, in turn, will move into newly available entry- and intermediate-level positions.

This generational shift brings an influx of differing perspectives, cultures and ideas, compelling organizations to enhance their diversity and inclusion strategies. At the same time, employers have to identify and exceed the expectations of their evolving workforce to ensure their performance and talent management initiatives propel success.

Initiatives like unconventional benefits to accommodate a wider array of lifestyles are great, but getting ahead of your employees’ needs means dialing in on what drives their development.

Pinpointing motivation

If the Great Resignation has made anything clear, it’s this: Today’s employee wants more than a paycheck; they need a platform to ignite their career.

According to McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm, “employees expect their jobs to bring a sense of purpose to their lives.” And purpose is defined by more than just compensation. This isn’t to suggest emerging talent don’t care if the quality and value of their work is reflected in their pay. But it does mean addressing their concerns requires a more holistic approach.

Performance Management desktop product screen

For example, a study from Gallup reveals 87% of millennials consider professional growth and development opportunities crucial to their roles. And in a separate, international Gallup survey, 70% of employees across four countries don’t believe their performance is managed in a way that meaningfully motivates them.

The data presents a steep challenge to engagement. But it also reveals an opening for HR professionals to contemplate, deploy and sustain an adaptive and proactive experience built with their employees’ long-term journey in mind.

Fine-tuning feedback

Enhancing performance management requires us to understand where many current employee feedback strategies are lacking. And overcoming the employee engagement crisis requires us to understand and address every possible obstacle.

According to a Gallup study of millennials in the workplace:

  • 30% feel they’re engaged at work
  • 55% claim they’re not engaged
  • 15% believe they’re actively disengaged

While providing more feedback is a good start, it becomes meaningful when it’s informed by the needs of employees. If operations make regular, face-to-face interactions difficult, a powerful survey tool helps HR ask questions and gather answers about engagement.

After all, a more informed performance review process brings clarity to employees’ futures with their employers.

Leveraging technology

Another huge step in building better performance management involves refocusing on the employee, rather than the process. Luckily, the right technology helps accomplish this.

The emerging generation of talent has grown uniquely accustomed to the convenience and control consumer-grade technology provides. However, this functionality isn’t exclusive to the systems they use in their personal lives; it can enhance the trajectory of an employee’s career, too!

An effective performance management tool allows employees to access their:

  • prior assessments
  • coaching journal
  • skills to refine
  • goals
  • and more

Empowering employees to manage their own performance — be it through 360, manager or self-reviews — makes it easier to align their professional and personal goals with those of the entire organization.

And when an employee is ready to advance their position, a compensation management tool helps managers award them fairly while staying within budget through the use of real-time, customizable reports.

Learn how Paycom’s single software can help streamline performance management and boost engagement in your business.

DISCLAIMER: The information provided herein does not constitute the provision of legal advice, tax advice, accounting services or professional consulting of any kind. The information provided herein should not be used as a substitute for consultation with professional legal, tax, accounting or other professional advisers. Before making any decision or taking any action, you should consult a professional adviser who has been provided with all pertinent facts relevant to your particular situation and for your particular state(s) of operation.