Culture

The Perfect Marriage

Introducing our Culture to Automated Performance Management, Our unique culture and values are the strength of our small business. The idea of introducing formal processes for performance and goal management may seem as odds with cultural elements that define your small business today. This does not need to be the case. Actually, effective performance management processes teamed with a strong organizational culture creates the perfect marriage. The right Combination of people and process can reinforce each others strengths, improve productivity, increase engagement and deepen commitment. Before walking to our performance management process down the automation aisle, Heights consider these three steps to ensure a successful union: Truth, Time and Tone.

Truth: Serve It Straight Up

We have surrounded ourself with the best and the brightest talent we can find. Our employees deserve and expect truthful and balanced feedback in return for their contributions. Because of the dynamic nature of business today, a paper-based performance system can simply no longer provide the critical flexibility to capture and effectively measure matrix goals and projects. Automating the performance process makes it easier to offer organizations, managers and employees a true look at performance, with an emphasis on three key points.

1.Honesty: The core attribute of any performance management process is that it provides highly personalized coaching. Based on progress toward objective goals, a manager can provide clear feedback to employees with an emphasis on development. While most employees welcome positive comments and kudos, many bristle when receiving constructive coaching or may view suggestions for improvement as biased or vague. By incorporating 360-degree or multi-rater performance feedback into your automated process, employees will more thoughtfully consider and quickly implement suggestions for performance improvement.

2. Fairness: Calibrating performance appraisals and ratings across work groups or functional department is difficult to achieve. Especially in small companies with close work cultures that encourage openness, employees may be more apt to share their personal performance feedback discussions and ratings with others. Because software-based appraisals from automated performance management tools focus more on results and actions  rather than personality traits  they are generally regarded by employees to be more objective than paper-based evaluations.

3. Consistency: Lets face it not all managers relish the idea of the annual performance appraisal process. Using any manual process carries an inherent risk of managers cutting or condensing feedback forms to fit there. Idea of a manageable minimum  format. There are many reasons to ensure that a uniform process is followed to ensure credibility and compliance now, with automated Web-based forms, you can control who can (and cant) make changes to your review forms. And once your manager start using forms developed specifically for your culture and process, automated writing tools guarantee consistency across the board.

Time: The Ultimate Performance Aggregator

Automating the performance process allows your managers and employees to:

• Free up time. When was the last time you gave your managers a little extra free time on their calendars. Automating your paper-based process to an online, fully integrated performance management software. System means your managers are able to provide better feedback with 62 percent less cycle time. Your Managers and employees spend less time on the appraisal process and more time actually improving Performance while they are focusing on key priorities aligned with your business strategy.
• Talk about performance more frequently. Even if you have adopted a SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) goal format in your manual process today, chances are there is little discipline in Managing to individual goal deadlines and even less real-time follow-up and feedback involved. Streamlining your goal planning process through Web-based automation allows for increased goal visibility and alignment across the company and gives you real-time flexibility to adjust goals to the dynamic nature of your business.
• Streamline workflow. Your employee is in one city, but his manager is in another and legal requires original Signatures for approval  tough to deliver under tight deadlines in a paper-based performance review Process. Cascading of top-line goals to front line workers, bringing visibility to cross-functional project Stakeholders, reviewing forms, routing for multiple approvals and retaining records to support compliance Requirements are all possible instantly and effortlessly through automation.
• Jump-start reviews. What happens when managers know what they want to say but are just not sure how to get started? Valuable time is lost. If you are providing simple paper-based review forms, there is no getting around the dreaded blank page syndrome. Take advantage of built-in writing and coaching assistants made available through automation and be assured of acceptable use of feedback language through built-in Legal scan features and functionality.
• Magnify metrics. Realizing that results are falling short of targets after deadlines have passed does little for Bottom-line results or credibility. Keeping a sharp focus on projects, deadlines and development needs is challenging when paper forms are filed away. Best practices recommend that to be of value, information must be frequently collected and aggregated through company-wide dashboards available for any time reporting, allowing employees the opportunity for course-correction.

Tone: Speak in Your Company’s Native Language

Performance feedback should mirror internal communication styles and the unique dialect within your company in order to resonate as effective and authentic. Using automation, its easier for an organization to have a common language to talk about performance and improvement.

• Set the tone: Absent a formalized process, managers are often left to their own devices and abilities in crafting performance messaging. Adopting an automated approach to providing ongoing, real-time feedback commits consistency to culture and easily standardizes format and quality of performance reviews.
• Establish consistency: Ensure that consistent communication styles and approaches are carried throughout the entire performance management process by providing an automated framework for displaying top-level strategic goals, reinforcing core values and interpersonal behaviors, connecting cross-functional projects and assignments and informing individuals of expectations  all while using language that fits our work group and culture.
• Boost engagement: When employees are introduced to behavior-based competencies that support culture, Strategy and results in a manner that is internally consistent and understandable, there is a much higher likelihood they all realize how their efforts fit into the big picture. Harnessing the power of automation ensures that our employees will be able to see not only the what that is important in their role, but the as well.

As your business matures, take hold of the automation momentum and layer on more sophisticated functionality that is ready to grow with you at the right pace and at the right time:

• Create visibility and tap into bench marked insight to identify anticipate and bridge talent gaps.
• Identify desired competencies proven to succeed in our organization and create succession and development plans.
• Reinforce our culture by hiring right, right from the start, with fully integrated recruitment management tools.
• Accelerate understanding and use of strategic talent information through robust workforce planning and Analytics tools.