Performance management engages employees in their work, boosts their everyday productivity and drives them to achieve their goals. 

When implemented correctly, performance management is the perfect tool for motivating and empowering employees. The first step to effective performance management is to understand what it is and how it works.

In his Handbook of Performance Management, Michael Armstrong notes that effective performance management is a continuous process. This means that companies should be lessening the focus on their quarterly or even annual performance reviews and looking to ensure that performance management is taking place all of the time. 

Follow these four principles to improve performance management in your workplace:

1. Plan to succeed

Planning should be the first priority for performance management. Without a plan, your employees will lack the direction they need to make improvements. 

The best way to improve performance is to set both individual and team goals, and these should be aligned with the long-term goals and overall vision of your business. 

Using SMART objectives that are specific to each individual within your business and creating a personal development plan for employees which factors in what each employee needs to learn or develop in order to achieve their goals are two steps which cannot be skipped.

Read more tips on improving performance in your business:

• Do you know who your best sales rep is?
• Is performance-related pay back in favour?
• 7 steps for dealing with poor performance in a growing business
  

2. Act to achieve

For performance plans to come to fruition, managers need to continuously track employee progress, encouraging them to take actions which move them closer to their goals. 

The most effective way to ensure employees act in order to achieve is to encourage them to schedule regular time to work on their work goals and their personal development plans. 

Managers should also take the initiative to give individuals in their team regular feedback and to use their coaching skills to assist their team in tackling new challenges and finding alternative ways of working to improve performance. This feedback and coaching should be ongoing.

Read more tips on page two…

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