Performance Management Tools During Covid

Businesses are adopting new ways of working. As part of these new changes, they have to take into consideration the managing of teams performance amidst Covid-19. With remote working becoming big in most organizations, the widening of productivity gaps is increasing and this presents a huge problem. 

In its essence, performance management is an ongoing process. It involves a relationship between an employee and a supervisor. The main goal is to continuously appraise employees, ensuring that they are working effectively working while creating healthy work relationships. 

Traditionally, businesses used manual record-keeping systems to manage employee performance. These systems involved the use of spreadsheets combined with old technology e.g. fax machines and administrative personnel.

Spreadsheets helped with data recording, while the old technology sent information across departments and organizations leaving administrative personnel with the task of data entry, verification and analysis.

In such scenarios, managing team performance was time-consuming. But, over the years changes in technology has improved performance management making it automated.  

So how do you ensure that the tools you are using for performance management are good for you?

It’s quite simple. 

Comprehensive performance management tools enable a business to keep track of its teams in an effective manner improving overall performance. With a variety of tools available, as a business you should look out for these 4 innovative features:

• Ability to break down KPIs by Department.
• Ability to break down KPIs by Employee.
• The availability of an inbuilt Appraisal System.  
• An automated Leave management System.

1. Ability to break down KPIs by Department

Each business has different departments that are crucial to its operation.

Under these departments performance is measured under 2 key metrics:

1. KPIs
2. OKRs

KPIs or key performance indicators are a measurement of output for projects already set in place. For example, sales departments are responsible for the growth of revenue. Depending on the organization the KPI could look something like: "Grow annual revenue by 20% over the next quarter"

OKRs or Objective Key Results are designed to look at the bigger picture. Their main objectives are to motivate teams urging them to perform better across the board. For example, a tech department might set an OKR like: "Build a new financial system by 2nd July reducing the rate of bugs by 50% on the first test"

When it comes to managing teams performance amidst Covid-19, it is important to ensure that all departments are working efficiently. Because it is within this framework that a business will achieve and measure growth.

To achieve this, what you need is a performance management tool that captures and tracks goals across all departments, centralizes all records and gives automated reports upon request. Especially when managing team performance amidst Covid-19, this is an invaluable asset.

2. Ability to break down KPIs by Employee

Achieving team targets feels great! It gives everyone a sense of purpose and the euphoria of working together as one to achieve a common goal is unbeatable.

However, while working as a team is important, each employee is an individual with their own targets to meet. Meaning, organizations should be continuously tracking the performance and output of each employee.

If not properly executed, resentment could easily build among team members more so those that feel they unfairly contribute more to the team's output.

As a result, managing teams amidst Covid-19, organizations need a set of performance management tools, that allow managers to monitor the performance and outputs of individual employees making necessary changes along the way.

3. The availability of an inbuilt Appraisal System

It is important to give employees a chance to appraise their own performance. This allows employees to determine whether they have aligned their day-to-day work with the strategic objectives of the company.

Normally, companies use a scorecard that requires physical input from both the employee and the manager. Now, imagine an organization that has a considerable number of employees e.g. 50-100. It becomes an administrative nightmare for managers to collect all this information and tally them individually.

This would also mean that there are multiple records from different employees creating a database nightmare especially if there is no automated system in place to centralize all the records.

Organization while managing teams amidst Covid-19 need performance management tools that streamline the process while still providing ease of use for both parties. As a result, those tools should have a two-step system:

1. Employee Self-appraisal

An employee can simply log in to the tool, fill out their scorecard and submit it to their supervisors. They do not have to follow up with emails or attachments as these are automatically recorded onto the system.

2. Supervisor Appraisal

After an employee successfully fills out their appraisal, the supervisor can then log in to the tool and fill out their appraisal. As the tool should include a centralized database, it takes out the headache of having to deal with multiple files.

The two-step system allows for fair appraisal and gives an overview of what needs to be done in order to align with strategic objectives. 

4. An automated Leave management System.

One of the pain points for managing team performance amidst Covid-19is having to deal with leave days. With a team that works hard, it is important to consider rest days and time off.

Manually, the process is hectic. Management teams need to collate with different departments and often there might be overlap if they work with large teams. Such overlaps could result in poor productivity in cases where two essential people in a department have leaves approved at the same time.  It is also possible for management to miscalculate leave days and award an employee more leave days than they are entitled to.

A good performance management tool gives users the facility of having an automated leave management system to take care of the process. Especially a tool that has an all in one dashboard where users can see everything at a glance avoiding overlapping errors and can track the available leave days of each employee.

Such tools are helpful in 3 ways:

1. They reduce the amount of repetitive administrative work.
2. They offer easy application and approval methods.
3. They offer centralized record-keeping for administrative purposes.  

Final Thoughts

It's clear that improving performance management is an important process and with the availability of technology, companies no longer have to undertake tedious methods.

As we navigate through the waters of managing team performance amidst Covid-19 , let’s make the process easier for you. Talk to us today.