What is a Performance Management System?

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What is Performance Management Software?

To reach your organizational goals in this day and age, businesses need to ensure that not only their business but their employees are constantly moving forward. Employee growth and development is crucial when attempting to bring your organization to new heights. In order to easily grow and develop your workforce with clear and measurable goals, employers need a performance management system.

Performance management involves open communication between employers and employees and is the process of maintaining and improving employee skills and productivity while providing feedback, setting expectations, and discussing performance results help to focus business, corporate, and personal goals.

Using performance management software, managers can improve efficiency in the performance review process by eliminating paper-based or manual tasks, in turn limiting the number of missing or inconsistent performance documentation. As a result of more comprehensive performance processes, managers can pull deeper insights into performance, using them to create better growth strategies and implement stronger succession planning.

Managing Employee Performance - Why Is It Important?

You've probably heard the old adage "If you aren't moving forward, you are moving backward". Well, performance management software is what keeps your organization moving forward. 

Workforce engagement and a positive corporate culture are critical for retaining high-performing employees in a tight talent market. If the work environment fails to foster transparency, support communication, and make people feel valued, employees are likely to disengage and look for jobs elsewhere.

However, too many employers still rely on periodic, backward-looking performance assessments that do little to drive engagement and productivity.

To nurture and develop top talent, you need a flexible, data-driven performance management approach that enables you to continuously assess, coach, and recognize employees for their achievements.

Employee Performance Management System Requirements

Trying to develop your workforce and grow the skills of your employees with manual training and performance review processes is not only time-consuming and tedious, it also just doesn't work. At least, it doesn't ensure your employees and organization are reaching their full potential.

That is why it is not only crucial to ensure proper workforce management tools such as employee performance software but also to know what you should look for when selecting your performance management system. 

You need to know what employee performance system requirements are essential for success. 

Here are some features that you should look for in an employee performance software solution:

Employee Performance Software Features Every Solution Must Have

When looking for an employee performance management software solution, managers should look for the following tools and capabilities: 

  • Custom performance reviews, ratings, and feedback forms
  • Goal, competency, and core value libraries
  • Peer and continuous feedback
  • Focal, annual, and 30/60/90-day reviews
  • Unlimited nine-box matrices, succession slates, and talent pools
  • Gap analysis and scenario planning
  • Flexible workflows and approvals
  • Multiple manager reviews
  • Visual drag-and-drop tools
  • Real-time reporting and analytics

Integrating Performance Software With Other Workforce Management Solutions

In today's digital world, employee performance management software should, at a minimum, be able to integrate with compensation software and succession planning software.

When performance software is matched with compensation and succession planning, managers can use performance insights to understand who their top performers are, evaluate who's compensation should be adjusted, and understand their best option for internally filling an open role.

Performance Management Software Advantages & Benefits

Employee performance management software can provide the following benefits for businesses that utilize such a system:

Define and Track Goals

Define corporate-level goals that cascade down to groups and individual employees,
thereby aligning the entire organization for success. Managers gain immediate visibility of goal status and performance for individual employees throughout the year and may choose to tie them into a formal review process or use the performance development tools separately to identify and manage specific outcomes, nurture progress, and recognize achievements.

Automate the Performance Review Cycle
Performance software can help automate the performance review cycle, including form submissions, reviews, approvals, and sign-offs. Instruction tabs can walk employees and managers through the process of filling out review forms with sufficient detail, while the ability to define the anchor date and frequency of performance reviews helps managers stay on top of assessments.
Define Unlimited Performance Review Profiles

Performance software allows managers to define unlimited organizational, department, or job-specific review profiles with specific criteria for evaluation. 

Identify and Develop Top Talent

Performance management tools are essential in identifying and developing top talent within an organization. With proper performance insights, managers can ensure that the right workers are chosen for promotions and advancements, and when it is time to fill a role internally the right choice is made.

Conduct Data-Driven Performance Reviews

Complete, accurate employee information helps drive more effective performance management by leveraging attendance, absence, productivity, and safety violation data for more objective, fact-
based reviews.

Stay on top of Employee Development

Track employee skills and certifications with customizable reports that show who needs training and when. And when performance is fully integrated with modern human resources software, managers can define training courses, assign employees, and track completion.

Tie Compensation Awards to Employee Performance

When used with modern compensation management software, managers can make it easy to establish guidelines for awarding pay increases based on the correlation between performance rating and pay grade segment to make fair, equitable compensation decisions.

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