5 Talent Management Practices That Support High Performance
When it comes to talking about talent management, a lot of times the focus is on the basics of the process. But enabling high performance means organizations need to find ways to go beyond the basics of observing, measuring and tracking performance; giving effective feedback; conducting a performance appraisal meeting; and coaching to sustain performance throughout the year.
Organizations or even individual managers can easily adopt any or all of these practices to help them maximize the value of their talent management process.
1. Conduct Self-Assessments To Get Your Employees’ Perspective
A fairly simple practice to implement at an individual or organizational level is employee self-assessment. You can either use the same form. you do for your regular performance appraisal, or create a slightly modified version. The purpose of the self-assessment is to get your employee’s perspective on their performance. This is a powerful way to give them a voice in the process and help them feel more engaged. Managers unfamiliar with the practice often worry that employees will give themselves glowing reviews and ratings, making the performance appraisal meeting more difficult; however, experience shows the opposite tends to be true. When we evaluate ourselves, we tend to be much harsher than others. Getting your employee’s perspective is an invaluable way to get more information on their performance and to prepare yourself for the performance appraisal meeting. It allows you to be ready to address differences in opinion or perspective, and gain insight into expectations.
2. Seek the Opinion and Experience of Others with 360 Degree Reviews
One way to make your employee’s performance review broader and more objective is to solicit feedback from others. Multirater feedback can help managers avoid bias, get a different perspective on their employee’s performance and better identify areas that need coaching or development. You should consider collecting feedback from other managers, peers, subordinates, even customers – anyone who works with the employee on a regular basis and can give you insight into their performance. While it’s often used in the context of leadership development, managers often fail to take advantage of this powerful tool for their talent management process.
3. Give Goals a Larger Context by Aligning Them with the Organization’s Goals
While it’s important to assign your employee goals as part of the talent management process, it’s even more powerful to give these goals a larger context. This helps your employee understand why their work is important and how it contributes to the larger organization’s success. While traditionally, managers have tried to accomplish this by linking employee goals to their own, a much more powerful practice is to align or link them to higher-level departmental, divisional, or organizational goals.
4. Help Your Employees Improve and Succeed with Development Plans
Companies often do development planning separately from their performance management process, if they do it at all. But development planning is much more powerful when it’s an integral part of the performance management process. The performance review meeting is typically the prime time when managers and employees discuss performance deficiencies. Identifying training activities to address these deficiencies during the meeting, and documenting it in the performance appraisal form. helps to communicate both the manager’s and the organization’s commitment to the employee, and their expectations for improvement. It also gives the employee a clear context for their learning.
5. Implement Pay for Performance to Reward Good Performance
One final practice that helps expand the value and impact of your talent management process is pay-for-performance. Performance ratings should be a known and visible factor in determining employee rewards and compensation. Integrating your performance management process with your compensation management helps employees feel that compensation practices are fair and empowers them. This practice applies to more than just merit increases and bonuses; any form. of employee reward or recognition should be integrated with your talent management process and serve to reinforce desired behavior. and performance.
Taking Talent Management to the Next Level
Talent management should be much more than a process for documenting and delivering feedback and coaching. When expanded beyond the basics, it becomes a powerful tool for helping your employees develop further and achieve their full potential. In so doing, they increase their value to the organization and help drive organization success.
About the Author / Halogen Software
Steven Reid is Public Relations Specialist for Halogen Software. With over 1500 customers world wide, Halogen Software has established itself as the leading provider of employee performance and talent management solutions. Founded in 2001, Halogen offers powerful, easy-to-use, and affordable web-based software that dramatically improves HR and line-manager productivity.