Krishna Prasad, Head HR - APAC, Skillsoft plays down the importance of periodical employee feedback while also explaining its importance in building careers and grooming future leaders

A critical factor in an organization today is identifying and developing future leaders at all levels. Performance Management is fast evolving in scope, from creating a conducive environment for teams and employees, enabling them to excel in their tasks to bring the right strategies and systems for simplifying the process. Effective performance management is about building leadership, teamwork and a constructive feedback mechanism – and tying it into a system that brings efficiency, predictability, and visibility.  

Krishna Prasad, Head HR - APAC, Skillsoft plays down the importance of periodical employee feedback while also explaining its importance in building careers and grooming future leaders.

How does the performance review coupled with technology help organizations to lower the attrition rate?

It is all about managing expectations. While, on one hand, organizations expect an employee to be equally excellent at working with cross-functional teams as they are with technologies; employees, on the other hand, have certain expectations from their leaders and managers. An employee seeks continuous and constructive feedback from their seniors in order to learn and improve their skills. Employees also expect their organizations to provide them with necessary career progression opportunities and resources to achieve professional growth. When the expectations of employees are satisfied, and they are made to feel valued, it forges trust between the two parties, ensuring a long-term association.

With the integration of technology into performance review methodologies, their implementation has become more efficient. Employees can now access learning management systems on-demand as per their convenience, which has improved their engagement with the programs. Further, since the data accrued by these systems are stored on an accessible digital platform, employees can refer to their goals and their leaders’ reviews whenever required, and work upon them accordingly. In this way, technology has made the implementation of a continuous culture of learning and feedback extremely effective.  

What role do organization building and work-life balance play in grooming future leaders for the company?

In today’s fast-paced world, striking a balance between work and personal time is very important, else, one will burn out and indirectly will have an impact on the company. One of the key ingredients to achieve this balance is prioritization.

MS Project “Plan” does not necessarily mean to be applied at work but for planning your dream vacation and the rules still would remain the same and same is the case when you want to inculcate a ‘change’ within your organization or moving your flat from one location to another.

The game remains the same, just the players change and that is the most important characteristics which are embedded into leaders building organizations.

How does a high-performance culture and assessment help the junior level employees to take up more responsibility and come up with better performances?

Continuous culture of learning and feedback helps managers in identifying consistent high performers across all verticals, who can then be compensated accordingly. Similarly, these systems also enable leaders to identify non-performers and help them come up with suitable, personalized training strategies to uplift these employees. Further, tying these programs with performance-driven incentives and rewards have been observed to be effective in driving actual performance. Thus, by establishing a culture of top performers by aligning goals, performance, and rewards across the entire organizational structure, companies can help their employees across all levels in augmenting their performances while taking up greater responsibilities. 

How does the periodical assessment replacing annual review helps the organization play a role in building individual careers? 

As compared to annual reviews, periodical assessments have an element of promptness to them, in all senses of the word. First, the effect of a regular feedback cycle between team leaders and employees is prompt in the sense that employees are able to quickly assimilate the feedback they receive into improving their operations in real time. At the same time, consistent feedback motivates employees, thus prompting them to correct and streamline their behaviors towards enhancing their self-development, which in turn benefits the organization.

In addition to forging a better manager-employee relationship, a well-structured periodic assessment provides companies with critical opportunities to support those individuals eager for greater challenges. Since employees look forward to growing professionally, dedicated individuals are up for taking on any and all challenges and feel valued when their seniors show trust in them.

Can performance management put extra pressure on employees to be result oriented, only to be underperforming burdened with responsibility? 

For one to know, whether he/she falls into the bottom of the layer is through performance management and there is no escape out of this, however, it becomes important to customize the rules around performance management so that they are transparent, measurable, periodic and agile in receiving/giving feedback.