Evolution of Performance Management
13th June 2018
Connected conversations are part of a movement in business, especially in the areas of HR and professional development, towards a view that the traditional performance review isn’t fit for purpose – for either employees or employers.
In fact, scientific research has shown that traditional performance reviews demotivates people and doesn’t improve employee performance. According to Gallup, only 29% of employees agree that the performance reviews they receive are fair, and just 26% agree that they are accurate.
There are now a range of major organisations like Deloitte, Microsoft and Netflix who have dropped their annual appraisal process and have moved to other ways of motivating and reviewing their employees’ performance.
People want feedback for performance and improvement, but they don’t want feedback that simply says how you should do better in these areas.
That’s where Connected Conversations comes in.
What are Connected Conversations?
Connected Conversations is a process of continued conversations over a period of time that sees performance management for employees evolve over time, rather than as a one-off event that takes place annually.
As David Marshall, founder of Marshall E-Learning explains:
“Using Connected Conversations, you can work out what energises your employees and focus on improving their performance. The advantage is that this takes place on a continual basis, not isolated to a one-off appraisal once a quarter – or event once a year. Once you know the strengths of your employees and what energises them, you can then focus their work on their areas.”
David Smith, a former HR Director at Asda, said that effective organisation in the 21st Century will be those who train their leaders to conduct effective coaching conversations that stimulate and encourage higher performance.
Connected Conversations is the way to achieve this improved performance without resorting to outdated and ineffective formal appraisals or annual reviews.
What is the background to Connected Conversations?
The Conversations Conversations model came out of Marshall E-Learning’s work with University College London, where they wanted a performance appraisal for their employees, but to use an alternative model that was more in line with modern research around how appraisals should work.
One of the key elements underpinning the Connected Conversations model is the Intelligent Career theory, where if you want to help people manage their carers, these are the things they need to know:
- What’s important to them
- What do they like going and are good at
- Knowing whom? Does your network know of your aspirations and is what you’re trying to achieve in line with what people say about you
If organisations want to motivate employees, they need to sculpt employee performance around these key points from the Intelligent Career theory. Connected Conversations uses these to create an employee-centric approach.
Why should companies adopt the Connected Conversations approach?
Michael Moran, CEO of 10Eighty – specialists in career management and help companies increase employee engagement – explains the advantages of implementing a Connected Conversations approach:
“The old fashioned way of performance reviews and setting targets isn’t working. It’s better to be agile and use connected conversations – giving people feedback on a regular basis and more regularly. We’ve found that for companies that adopt a Connected Conversations approach, their employees are more motivated, stick at task longer and are more resilient.”
“Connected Conversations is all about playing to people’s strengths. If you want to encourage people to improve their performance, to stay at things longer, it’s about doing things that energise them. If you get this right, you end up with a productive and engaged employee. And if you have engaged employees, you get a much more sustainable business, with a more agile and faster growing business.”
Here are several reasons for taking the Connected Conversations approach that will benefit your organisation:
- Return on Investment: Taking this course Drives profitability, customer satisfaction and shareholder value. It has been proven that if you increase your employee engagement, you’ll put an extra £1,500 per person on average to the bottom line of your business. Multiply that by the number of employees that take the course and you can work out the impact it has on your business.
- Engage for Success: There is a lot of data around the correlation between business performance and employee engagement. By implementing Connected Conversations, it’s good for you business and its good for your shareholders.
- Increased Employee Engagement: If your company is employee-centric, those employees will be more motivate and will stay with you longer. The outcome is more profit and more value for your business.
How can we get started with Connected Conversations in our company?
Together with 10Eighty, Marshall E-Learning has created a formal, alternative set of performance appraisals that fall under the Connected Conversations model, distilled into the Connected Conversations course.
The Connected Conversations course equips managers with the skills required to give feedback and motivate employees, but make sure that employees are still reaching organisational goals.
The Connection Conversations course also help employers become people-centric, shows how managers can give regular feedback in order to grow and improve their employees, and help employees manage their career using the three areas of Intelligent Career Theory.
The Connected Conversations course features an interactive learning package, with high-quality video scenarios, and associates from both Marshall E-Learning and 10Eighty talking about the key issues that surround modern performance and appraisals best practice.
What we’ve got here is this new movement for strengths-based and employee-centric approach goes way back to the scientific method of the early 20th Century and Frederick Taylor where you design the company around production, not the people. That’s fine for guiding cars, but and shop or knowledge business is a lot about managing the person and the way they do their job. As knowledge workers, we are more determining more the way we work ourselves.
For more information on our new Connected Conversations course and for a free demo, please contact us on 0845 123 3909 or email us at contact@marshallacm.co.uk.
