A (Partial) Workplace Return: Attending to Performance Management

In our previous post, we provided you with our take on the topic of professional sector employers gradually reintroducing their employees back into physical offices long seen as necessary for sustained productivity. The national lockdown and the changes it led to throughout the economy subjected that concept to a still-in-progress reevaluation, as changing values and powerful technology/software tools have created a stage on which employees can increasingly demonstrate their remote working flexibility and capacity.

In the aggregate, U.S. companies appear to be registering these changes throughout on a cultural level. This is at least anecdotally true, though we’ll surely see more research and reporting on the trend in months and years to come. For now, employers who are in the midst of transforming their workforces into something of a blended in-office/remote model should be asking themselves a few key questions:

1. Are we set up to keep team members feeling consistently connected with one another and with their leaders?

2. Should our baseline activity and general productivity metrics remain as they are? Or will our changing model render that unrealistic?

3. How should we structure our overall performance management and coaching framework? Is it viable as it is, or do we need to consider something more integrated?

These are necessary questions for any employer who plans to make any major structural shifts with regards to remote work. So much so, in fact, that our last question was largely rhetorical: yes, you should consider a highly integrated performance management framework. More than consider it, in fact, you should be outlining the incorporation of such a framework into your larger business model, especially knowing employees will be receptive to new tools that aid them in their shared and individual performances.

It’s important you begin structuring your accountability, collaboration, assessment, and development tools to reflect a workforce arrangement that probably differs from what it was a year ago, and one that’s likely to continue changing for a while longer. At renaizant, we’ve developed software implements to fortify performance management efforts tied in with what we call our 360° reviews.

Are you suitably forward looking yourself to make room for new functionality within your own organization? If so, consider the performance management infrastructure necessary for the business world we’re all coming to know.

We’ll be exploring the performance management topic at greater length in Part III of this series.