With a paper-based employee performance appraisal process, the most you can hope to get in terms of workforce analytics is data on your employees' performance scores. Even then, you need to manually enter the scores in a spreadsheet, as well as any data on job profiles, department/division, etc., if you hope to do any analysis or sorting of the data. It's labor-intensive, error-prone, and not likely to give you any insight that you can use for strategic planning.
Automate Your Employee Performance Appraisals So You Can Analyze the Data
Automating your employee evaluations, with a web-based tool like Halogen eAppraisal, gives you access to a wealth of data you can use for performance analytics; data about performance on goals, competencies, development needs and more. To get the most out of your performance appraisal data, you need real-time results, the flexibility to filter the data any way you need to, and the ability to compare results year over year. If you want to use performance data to drive learning and development initiatives, pay for performance programs or succession plans, you'll also need to be able to share data seamlessly between these processes.
Identify Workforce Strengths and Weaknesses
By looking at competency scores across your organization, you can easily identify workforce strengths and weaknesses and evaluate these in light of your organizational strategy? Do you have the right competencies, in the right parts of your organization, to achieve your strategic goals? Looking at competency scores and breaking them down by division/department/geography can help you identify:
- High potential employees for succession planning and leadership development
- Where you have strategic strengths that you can leverage
- Areas where you have limited bench strength that needs to be deepened
- Pockets of core competencies
- Whether all the parts of your organization have the competencies they need to succeed
- Opportunities for learning and development programs, organizational, departmental/divisional or individual
By comparing ratings year over year, you can ensure continuous improvement and monitor the effectiveness of your programs.
Align Goals and Monitor Their Progress
An automated, web-based performance management tool should give managers, HR and executives a line of sight view of all linked goals and their current status. This reporting capability lets everyone see who is contributing to organizational goals and whether individuals, teams and the organization as a whole are on track to achieve those goals. Easily spot problem areas and take corrective action before it's too late.
Your performance management tool should also allow you to see performance ratings for goals and compare them from group to group, as well as year over year. This comparison allows you to identify individuals or groups who are underperforming so you identify the root causes and correct them, as well as to identify your top performers, so you can gain insight into the reasons for their success. It also allows you to spot potential fairness issues, where ratings are not applied using the same standards.
Being able to track goals and their progress, as well as everyone's ratings on goals gives you unique insight into your workforce performance and allows your organization to learn from both its strengths and its weaknesses.
Assess and Consolidate Training Needs
There are two key ways in which you need to be able to assess training needs.
First, an automated performance management process can let you view all of your employees' development plans so you can see at a glance the demand for training courses, activities and resources. You can also filter this data so you can view it by location, department, division, etc. to help with planning, scheduling and even delivery. If for example, you note that there is great demand in one particular division for a course or set of courses, you might decide to tailor the material to their specific needs to maximize the benefits.
The second vital way you can assess training needs is by examining competency ratings and goal scores. By identifying areas with low scores, or scores that are below target, you can proactively develop and deliver training interventions that help boost performance. Lower than desired scores in a particular competency could result in a corporate wide initiative to improve knowledge and skill in that area. Identifying low and high scoring employees could open up opportunities for mentoring or job shadowing.
This simple data can strengthen your organizational learning and development programs, as well as help ensure your organization has the skills and knowledge it needs both today and tomorrow.
Streamline Your Performance Appraisal Process
An on-time report that looks at each step in your performance appraisal process and gives you statistics for on-time completion can be an invaluable tool to help you streamline your appraisal process.
Your first step should be to look at any bottlenecks that occurred in your last process and steps with a lower rate for on-time completion. Ask yourself:
- Did you allot enough time for the step?
- Did the people responsible for completing the step have sufficient knowledge and training to do the work? Is there an opportunity or requirement for additional training?
- Are there sufficient resources assigned to complete the step?
- Is the step necessary and adding value to the process? Sometimes steps don't get completed on-time because users perceive little value in them (for example, a second-level or higher manager sign-off if those individuals don't actually want to review every appraisal but are using the step as a way to keep track of their completion).
Next, look at steps that have a very high on-time completion rate. Ask yourself if you can shorten the time allotted for this step to shorten the overall process.
By looking at both bottlenecks and efficiencies, you can identify areas where you can adjust your process to make it even more effective and timely.
Read How Others Have Used Performance Management Data to Drive Strategic Initiatives
For O'Sullivan Creel's HR Partner, Halogen eAppraisal's best feature is the reporting function, which gives her instant information at any given time. O'Sullivan Creel uses the data to streamline their process, manage employee performance and build their training curriculum. As a result, they've seen increased employee satisfaction and retention.
In addition to helping them track their performance management process, Innovapost is using Halogen eAppraisal's reporting capabilities to identify competency gaps, and high and low performing employees. They're laying the foundation for succession planning and performance-based learning and development, while reaping the benefits of better quality employee performance reviews.
See for Yourself
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