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How do you think that performance management needs to adapt to align to smart working?

The annual appraisal is more or less dead, but how can we manage the performance of people who are not necessarily in the same room as the leader?  What are companies doing to crack this?

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  • The annual appraisal arguably should be more or less dead but it certainly isn't yet. Its alive and kicking in most organisations up and down the country I believe.
  • If we focus on outputs/achievements rather than time spent at work this should be possible. The leader becomes a coach supporting his/her team to work effectively rather than a supervisor of attendance and behaviour.
  • In reply to Anna:

    agree continuous performance management is on the roll out - however, when you feed forward and have no performance ratings - how do you deal with disciplinaries and redundancies?
  • In reply to Diane Bulmer:

    When we implement smart working we also implement real-time smart performance management. This data can be used in those situations and is actually more relevant than anything carried out months before.
  • In reply to Ruth Ann:

    @Ruth Ann
    I would have to disagree with the notion that in the case of disciplinary or redundancy procedures that anything that happened less than a couple of months ago is "less relevant", particularly in the case of long serving staff.
    Industrial Tribunals, IMHO, would almost certainly take a longer-term view of the context in which a person is dismissed when deciding whether a dismissal was or was not a "reasonable" response to the situation.
  • In reply to Ray:

    I would not suggest using a performance management system to keep records of disciplinary matters. If an employee is producing poor outcomes - we suggest this information is held separately. The aim of aligning smart working to a smart performance system is to help employees produce their best work - their best outcomes. It requires the employee to observe real time feedback and take responsibility for their own performance. We have found that Smart Working requires a very different set of skills for employees, teams, leaders and HR.
  • In reply to Keith:

    I killed it about 10 years ago, and so far it hasn't put in a Lazarus like appearance!
  • In reply to Robert James Munro:

    Robert - That's my kind of HR!
  • In reply to Ruth Ann:

    In that case,  I've obviously misunderstood your answer to Diane's question :

    • " however, when you feed forward and have no performance ratings - how do you deal with disciplinaries and redundancies?"

    The answer being

    • "When we implement smart working we also implement real-time smart performance management. This data can be used in those situations and is actually more relevant than anything carried out months before."

  • In reply to Ray:

    No worries Ray. It works for us. To be fair - we don't find a lot of disciplinaries taking place when smart working is effectively deployed. Have a lovely evening.
  • In reply to Anna:

    Hi Anna
    Agree.
    However I believe that it is also important to capture feedback/coaching and results factually. Ideally, yes if everyone is able to do so regularly and keep the records straight, it sounds like perfect.
    I also think that it is important that we capture the degree to which deliverables are achieved and demonstrate factually/ quantitatively differences in outputs across individuals - which is why I tend to favour the annual or periodic reviews where the line manager ought to specifically make time for a crucial performance conversation with team members.
    Cheers
    Reena