Performance-management seen key to growth

June 25, 2010

Organizations find it tough to substitute performance management for annual reviews in their corporate culture, a new study says.

Yet adopting an organizational mindset that focuses on performance based on regular feedback is key to aligning employees with organizational goals, says Employee Management Performance, a study by Aberdeen Group a Harte-Hanks Company.

Using performance data to drive learning, succession and compensation is a key characteristic of top-performing organization, the study says.

Top-performing organizations, it says, are 30 percent more likely than those that do not perform as well to use data on performance and attaining goals to create development plans and assign learning as part of - or based on - performance reviews.

Based on a survey of 400 organizations, the study found, organizations expect to achieve short-term growth though efficiencies, not job cuts, and that aligning individual performance with organizational goals will be integral to that growth.

Key to that alignment, the study says, will be to focus on individual goals, standardize the employee-performance process, and make us of data on employee performance data across different elements of managing talent.

Also key to building performance into the organizational culture, it says, will be visibility, accountability and regulation communications.

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