Leverage Goals For More Flexible Performance Management System
For the last several years, the HR Profession has debated the benefits of having a performance review process in place. Whether or not a formal review process generates a tangible benefit isn’t so much in having a formal review process, but what tools and actions are supervisors and managers using to manage and coach their employees between review cycles.
The latest release of “Goals” is a tremendous tool to help managers provide continual feedback and coaching that employees want throughout the employee lifecycle. There are MANY great enhancements to the Performance Management Module including more automation, workflows and flexibility to facilitate ongoing performance development beyond the basic annual review process.
New Goals Feature
The system can now support and track a wide range of goals. Goals are great because they can be related to individual or company performance; they can assigned to multiple people/teams and they can have a different cycle then the performance reviews. Permission can be granted to create goals by any person (employee, manager etc) and make it viewable to whomever needs access. Goals provide visibility into important projects, achievements and make it easier for managers to coach employees or teams on a regular basis and don’t have to be tied back to the performance review system for rating.
- Shared Goals – Allows users to assign a goal to multiple employees who share the responsibility of completing the goal. There is an area for notes and the visibility of these notes can be customized. There is also a new widget, Share Goal With, that has been added to the Performance Goal screen. You can see data about the employee who the goal is assigned to as well as add individuals and delete individuals from that goal. These can be downloaded as a PDF for your convenience and will display in all areas as the other Goals are, such as the Summary tab, Entry tab, etc. The goals can be marked as read by the users within that goal only.
- Goal Audit – A new Goal Audit widget has been added to the Performance Development Goals screen. This new widget provides details to associated changes and updates.
- Add Goals to the performance review – Simply mark a goal with “add to performance review”, and these goals are automatically created when a Performance Review is initiated making it easy to see specific accomplishments in the final review process.
- Add Goals to the Next Performance Review – A new Workflow step, Create Goals, can now be added and configured after the Finalize step in Performance Review Request Workflow. allow managers to create Goals to be added to next year’s Performance Reviews for employees.
Other Performance Management System Enhancements
- Final Score Review – Managers will now be able to view a performance score prior to the finalization of the review which can be helpful during Performance Review and Compensation Module management. The system can be configured to enable Ratings, Entry Comments and General Comments separately for each of the sections included in the profile.
- Adjustable Authority To Select Final Grade – A new option, Responsible for Final Grade and Effects, in the Review step, now allows users to designate either the Finalizer or one of the review Managers as the single user with the authority to also control the Final Grade for the review. Where typically the Finalizer could do this, when the new option is enabled, it allows the designated Manager to do so. All review outcomes such as Bonus, Manager, Job, Raise, etc., if enabled, are also controlled by the user with the authority to give the Final Grade, unless it is calculated. If it is calculated, the system will continue to do the calculation.
- Reviewer Comments – Viewability and editability
There is more flexibility for individuals involved in the review profess to have additional places for comments in conjunction with the ability to approve and pass on the review to the next individual or reject and send it back to where it came from. This new step allows Comments to be added after the Rating is complete, which allows managers to add Ratings first, and then later return to enter Comments on a Performance Review.
Learn more about the features and functionality of our Performance Management module or contact us for a demonstration of our full HR management solution.