In our next #ODTalk on the 28th of September, Craig Yeatman asks “What is the state of performance management in South African firms”?
Craig writes: “My gym instructor once told me that lunges are the broccoli of exercise. I am not really a fan of broccoli or lunges, but I need both! I sometimes wish that lunges were more like the chocolate of exercise (as I really like chocolate!).”
Performance management and individual performance reviews may be the broccoli of organisational life. Since organisational life started (back in the day) every organisation has had some performance-based process for deciding on important decisions like individual development and compensation. Despite these enlightened times (it’s a long time since we used whips to motivate pyramid builders) a recent 15Five study shows that 62% of employees feel that the performance review process negatively impacts employee satisfaction. It just seems that we haven’t figured out how to make this an engaging process.
Of 1000 non-manager employees surveyed:
- Almost half felt the process did not focus on growth and development.
- Almost half felt that their manager was not skilled at having performance related conversations.
- More than half felt that the process broke down their relationship with their manager.
- Only 53% felt inspired to improve after the review.
Several large organisations (Deloitte, Microsoft, Adobe, GE) were in the news between 2012 and 2022 as they abandoned their old performance management processes in favour of new experiments with digitally enabled “touchpoints” and “checkins”. How do you view the performance management process?
Our OD talk will explore your experience with performance management. Our guest Craig Yeatman will lead a short review of the 15Five survey, and we will ask “What is working? What is not? What is the opportunity for OD and HR to try to improve the effectiveness of individual performance management in a healthy way?”