7 Ways to Improve Performance Management at Your Company

Wende A. Smith: Welcome to our webinar today. We're very excited to spend some time with you over the next hour. What we're going to cover today is seven ways to improve your performance management program. Like I said, we're really excited to be here. So let's get to our introductions. So my name is Wende Smith and I am the head of HR operations here at BambooHR.

I've been with the organization just about four months and I've actually been working in the field for about 20 years. I've worked for enterprise size companies and small, medium business organizations. Over to you, Rea. 

Rea Rotholz: Thanks, Wende.. Hi, everyone. I'm Rea Rotholz. I lead the learning solutions department at Hone.

I've been with Hone for about two and a half years, helping organizations upskill in all the areas that they need in terms of power skills, including what they need for performance management. So really looking forward to today's conversation and thanks for having us, Wende. 

Wende A. Smith: Yes. Wonderful. All right.

Well, let's kick off here with a poll question. So what part of performance management is the most challenging for your business? So Rea, let's see what's coming in here. I'm going to have folks vote. Yeah. Go ahead and take a, take an opportunity to vote. Yeah, everyone following the same template and process.

That is so true. I know, even in our organization, we have folks that will do things on the side and then port them into the system. We also have a couple of folks that like to do some different processes outside of the regular annual process. So that's pretty common.

Rea Rotholz: Getting behind coming in 2nd place. Having the right tools. There's a couple others. We'd love to see in the chat what your other situation is. What's challenging for you? 

Wende A. Smith: Yeah.

Getting managers to do their reviews. Don't you feel like you do a lot of chasing? Yes. I think we all experienced that.

All right. Great. Thank you everyone for taking part of the poll. So let's talk about our agenda. So today we're going to walk through why performance management is so critical to employees and ultimately the business. We're going to get into seven ways to improve your performance management program.

 And then at the end, we'll wrap up with a Q and A. So I'm going to hand it over to Rea to walk through the next slide. 

Rea Rotholz: Let's dig in. So first, before we jump into our seven tips, I'd like to take a moment to highlight The purpose of performance management.

Why are we all here? Why do we care about performance management so much? Well, the purpose of performance management is quite literally to drive the performance of the individuals on your teams through consistent feedback, coaching, and accountability. Unfortunately, the reality is that most organizations either don't do performance management at all, especially if you're smaller, right?

Wende A. Smith: Yeah, 

Rea Rotholz: you do it as a check the box activity to make sure you did it or what I find most common in larger organizations, you do it in a way that feels overly burdensome or, your employees roll their eyes. Oh, God, it's the this time again, right? So I know when I was at Dow Jones, I'd led learning and development there for a few years.

We did three iterations of the performance management program in three years. 

Wende A. Smith: Wow. 

Rea Rotholz: Yeah. We spent more time training people on the new process than we did actually helping managers to do performance management. Right. Right. I'm sure some of you big company folks on the line can potentially relate to that.

Yes. So in addition to maybe changing it up too frequently, we've identified three common challenges. That occur with performance management today. So 1 no standardization to no consistency and 3 no efficiency, which was really the example that I shared. Wende mentioned in her when the poll was up, sometimes teams are off doing their own thing on this side, right? They're not participating actively in the global approach. Or this has happened to me personally. You're asked to do, I don't know, 10 or 15 peer reviews as part of your performance, right? And 

Wende A. Smith: then 

Rea Rotholz: that becomes really overwhelming and you can't really be thoughtful.

So these are the three kind of. Key challenges that we see with performance management programs today. So What should be included in performance manager to combat those challenges? So we should include the fact that it should be consistent so annual or biannual it should not be a surprise It should be built upon consistent feedback that managers have been given over time Peer feedback.

I know I was making fun of doing 10 or 15 peer reviews. It is a great tool if you control, how many you're expecting people to do. Goal setting, which we're going to talk a lot about today in our tips. And of course we want to reward and recognize great performance. 

Wende A. Smith: Yes. And when you do this you do see incredible results.

So first of all, people tend to be more productive with clarity comes, productivity. When we get the right feedback, we do our jobs better. Let's face it, if we understand the, sort of the expectations and there's clarity in the conversation, then People perform better. And as a result, you end up with more engaged employees.

You end up with an improved employee satisfaction and engagement, and you have happy, happier customers and ultimately higher retention rates. So I think that we can all agree. Good performance management makes everything better for everyone. As I think about over the course of my career, where I've really seen a juxtaposition of doing performance management or not when I was at Salesforce, we actually took a year off and didn't do performance management at all.

And we did that just in the HR function, which was really interesting. And as a result we did. Have more robust one on ones and really talking about clarity of expectations. But what we found was that our employees really wanted to have clear goals. They wanted to understand if they were being measured against their results, how was that really working?

And so, like I said, we took a year off from doing it. And then the next year we went back to doing performance management. So I do think there's a lot of goodness in there. And to Ray's earlier point, getting the organization aligned and getting them engaged. Tends to be the bigger challenge.

So again, let's look at some of the data. When we think about this, and again, these slides come directly from Bamboo HR. We did these stats with our customers and they helped us understand how critical performance management was for them. So, as you can see as a result, 40 percent more employee engagement.

So this is a measurable result. They saw 25 percent reduction in their employee turnover and an increase in their employee productivity. So when we dial this in right, we really do see results that are supporting the purpose in terms of getting employees engaged in their role setting.

Okay. So again, time saving. So we did talk a lot about how. How we're chasing performance reviews. We're trying to get alignment in the organization. But really, once we see this dialed in, we see measurable results. So today we can say, as an average managers are spending around 210 hours.

Every year, just on performance management. And when you have a better strategy, you end up managers end up spending 80 percent less time on these employee assessments because it's dialed in. People are clear when we get this dialed in employees tend to spend 40 hours per year on doing their.

Performance management and with a better strategy in place, you can cut that time in half. So again, if you have clarity and expectation, you have clarity in your performance, you're not running around trying to figure it out. So it does ultimately help support increased productivity by reducing the amount of time spent in this space.

And then to wrap it all up when we get the process dialed in and everyone's engaged HR spending 90 percent less time managing the process, which we can all use that time back. I know all of you are busy every day with a million things. So getting performance management where we need it really does improve productivity on the HR side as well. 

Rea Rotholz: I really love all the statistics from Bamboo HR throughout this presentation. And for those of you that said you were struggling with getting buy in from either your managers or your stakeholders, I highly encourage you to leverage some of these statistics from Bamboo HR because they really are powerful.

Also funny, Wende, grass isn't always greener, right? You got rid of performance management. People realized, Oh, wait, 

Wende A. Smith: Oh, wait, we like it. Yeah. 

Rea Rotholz: Totally. Well, let's get into our seven ways to improve performance management, how this is going to work. I'll kick off each section. Wende will walk us through some of the how to's and hopefully you all.

Walk away with some tangible next steps that you can take to improve your performance management Program at your organization. So first we'll kick off another poll To hear from you all. 

Oh, this is a yes no. Does your performance management program link goals and work to the organization's mission or vision?

Wende A. Smith: Interesting.

A little more leaning towards the 

Rea Rotholz: no, but pretty even. 

We're at 54 percent. Oh, I think someone might have switched. 

Wende A. Smith: Yeah. I love it. 

Rea Rotholz: They thought about it and they're like, wait a second. Wait a minute. 

Well, you can certainly see where we are going with this question, right? As we get into our first tip here. So tip number one is link employee goals to your business goals. And what does, yes, thank you. Link employee goals to your business goals. So one of the things that is so important to think about when you're setting up your performance management program is you have to have goals in the first place.

If you don't have any goals at all, then how are you supposed to hold someone accountable to something that's fair and equitable and clear to that individual? So that's the first things first, is make sure you have goals. But secondly, it's incredibly powerful. When employees understand how their individual goals ladder up to the organization's priorities, right?

How am I, my small piece in this larger puzzle making an impact? And whenever I say this to, People I'm working with or customers, I always get, well, our sales people just have their sales targets or our engineering product people just have to release features. And the answer is yes, of course they have their specific goals, but why is it important for sales to hit their target?

for the larger organization. How is that new product feature going to impact the customer? Right? Making that implicit reasoning that seems obvious to more senior level folks make that really explicit in the goal setting process.

Wende A. Smith: All right. And when we get this right, we really do positive results. All right. So at least 80 percent of over performing companies link everything they do to purpose. So to Rea's point, the laddering, right, the cascading, what is our objective this year? What are our OKRs?

And driving that down through an organization does bring tremendous amount of over performance. And then when we think about the Gallup research, that's just a 10 percent improvement in employees connected with a mission or purpose of the business. And this leads to an 8. 1 percent decrease in turnover.

So I know that turnover is a really important metric for us in our organizations and retention is really key. So anytime we can impact the retention and turnover, we, we want to And you had another study you wanted to share here too, Rea. Can you share that? 

Rea Rotholz: Yeah. So another interesting stat, again, as you're thinking about how you're going to sell this internally, Gartner research shows that when employee goals are aligned to organizational and employee needs, employee performance actually increases by 22%.

It's impressive. We could all use 22 percent increase a lot of things. I agree. 

Wende A. Smith: All right. So here's what you can do. First, make sure your employees are clear. How does their work impact mission of the company? How do you ensure that feedback is structured so that you have clear goals, weekly priorities that align with the goals of business?

And that's not easy to do, but getting that clarity at the top and being able to link that to your different divisions and that day to day work activity is really where you get the goodness. 

Rea Rotholz: Yeah. Perfect. So our second tip is building a culture of feedback. So I know I mentioned, it's a best practice to have an annual or biannual review. It's also important to provide that consistent feedback throughout the year. So a performance review, and I'm sure you all agree. Should never be a surprise if it is a surprise then something is not going well.

Yeah, right So the performance review and the reason why we do it only a couple times a year is that it's meant to be that macro level Conversation based on all of the micro level conversations that have been happening in the weekly or bi weekly one on ones If you were to skip these, weekly or bi weekly one on ones, then you're waiting way too long to provide the feedback that's required to really do your best work day to day.

So we definitely want to make sure that we are building a culture of feedback where we're consistently meeting. We have, some of that candor. We're providing coaching in real time so that there is absolutely no surprises when it comes to having that actual performance reveal. 

Wende A. Smith: That's really key.

And we've seen it when it's going wrong. So we want to make sure it's not a surprise. All right. So what does it look like when you get this right? Well, positive results. Next slide here. All right. So at least 96 percent of employees today that regular feedback is a positive thing for them.

Sometimes I think we hear word feedback and you get a new action, but when you're doing it right. Employees thrive. Again, it's all about reinforcing their performance and reinforcing expectations. And then interesting when we talk about recognition, 69 percent of employees receive recognition for their leaders are 69 percent more likely to do better work.

And I have an actually interesting story here. I've put in recognition tools in a number of different organizations and what we found. This public recognition really has impact. So if you're using some sort of an internal flag, or if teams. If you can recognize people in a public way, that has a really positive impact.

All right, so what can you do? So delivering feedback consistently, again, it's not just the annual review. This is something that we want you to be doing in your one on ones. You want to make sure that you're talking regularly about expectations and clarity around goals.

And that's a really two way conversation. If you do it over Slack, or if you do it over email, that's great. But really having the conversation, I think, is really important. 

So a personal story about my organization I was working in really didn't have a culture of one on ones. People were just really fast and met me. And when I took over the team, I did put in weekly one on ones with my team and really their engagement turned around 100%.

They felt like They felt like they had within the option, and they also felt like they were performing better because they had regular feedback. We were talking about work on a regular basis. So, Okay, explain a little on media feedback. So when I think about media feedback, that can be, we have a verbal conversation and maybe I force that with a message, forcing what we talked about or let's say we have an email conversation about something we then have a conversation and or whatever it's actually for us again.

Rea Rotholz: So one more poll. It's a easier yes, no, for you all. 

Wende A. Smith: Let's see what we see in the poll. Yeah, that's really true.

The feedback, it can be a dirty word. So it really does need to be something that you hit head on and make it a positive activity. Yeah, look at how many people feel that way, Rea. It's so true. Feedback. 

Rea Rotholz: Yeah. So fight or flight response. How many of you are the fight versus how many of you are the flight? I'm definitely the fight. 

Wende A. Smith: Well, it depends on who's giving you the feedback. That can really make a big difference. Yes, I agree with that. 

Rea Rotholz: Can you, Wende, can you just share a little bit more about that?

Like who would be someone that would make you want to fight versus someone that would make you want to fight versus someone that you would appreciate? No, 

Wende A. Smith: someone in a position of power, I think can really give you a fight or flight response. I think someone that is seen as powerful. Even if it's not necessarily with their position, but maybe in the social circles I also think to intent is really important with feedback.

So if your intention while giving feedback is not to see this person improve, that comes across, you really need to have intentionality with your feedback in supporting that employee to do their best. So coming at it from the perspective of, being open to feedback and. Believing in the best intentions of others, I think is critical.

Rea Rotholz: 100 percent agree. At Hone, our sort of core leadership development training starts with a class called Build High Trust Relationships, because you can't really give or receive productive feedback if you don't have that trust. 

Wende A. Smith: It's right. It trusts everything. 

Rea Rotholz: It's true. It really is. So, thank you all for participating in the poll.

Here is our pro tip. For many of you, you agree that feedback can be scary and can elicit that fight or flight feeling. response. And so it's important to understand, the timing of when you're giving that feedback, who's providing the feedback, et cetera. And then we also highly recommend using a framework.

This takes a lot of the mental load of how am I supposed to provide this feedback off of the people who are actually providing it. So at Hone, we teach the SBIW framework. Many of you have probably heard of SBI, Situation Behavior Impact by CCL. We added the W, which is the way forward. And really all a frame, a framework helps with is making sure feedback is there.

Very specific, right? So if I were to say Wende, you're doing a wonderful job at this presentation. Wende might feel good, right? Oh, I'm so glad that I did a wonderful job at this presentation. But if I said, Wende, I really appreciate how you used specific statistics. So the audience can understand the impact of what we're sharing.

Wow. Now Wende knows what she can apply to a future presentation more specifically, right? Instead of them saying, good job. Right. That's really vague. 

Wende A. Smith: Right. That's right. 

Rea Rotholz: makes a big difference. All right. So tip number trace, number three, measure performance regularly. So again, we've talked about, okay, you might have a annual or biannual performance review.

You're having consistent conversations in your one on ones, but let's talk a bit about actually measuring. regularly. So we know that feedback is critical to work performance. Here's some more fun stats for us. 75 percent of employees say they don't receive feedback frequently enough in order to improve their work performance.

So again, it's not happening in real time where they can really apply it. And 73 percent of employees say they'd like their manager to be more clear With and we talked about in the beginning the goals and expectations So it's one thing to provide ongoing coaching. That's more generic. It's another thing to say.

Here's the goal that we agreed upon And here's how you're doing relative to that goal and the expectation set Way more powerful right when people can understand how they're stacking up to what measurements were put in place Prior to that conversation happening. 

Wende A. Smith: Yes. 

Rea Rotholz: So, goal setting and goal tracking.

Let me just flip to the next side. Goal setting and goal tracking are, I think we can agree, standard pillars of performance management. And so is not waiting until the end of the year, right? We also don't want to just wait until the performance review to have that official conversation. We agree to no surprises.

Right. So, really, what success looks like, measure performance regularly, talk about it in those one on one conversations, be crystal clear. I think it's Brene Brown who says clear is kind. 

Wende A. Smith: Clear is kind. That is right. It is hard for people to be clear. A confrontation can be difficult, but clear is kind. 

Rea Rotholz: Yes, that really has stuck with me the first time I saw it. And just make sure that you're continuous, continuing to communicate how well employees are doing both positively. Let's not forget that. Hey. You're doing extremely well by doing X, Y, Z. Insert specific feedback, right? Like we discussed. So positive and constructive. Here's what I'd like to see more of you doing, for example.

Wende A. Smith: Yep, exactly. Okay, so let's talk about results. So fast feedback can boost your engagement four times. That's huge. And this is really from a Gallup poll that was conducted. And conversely, employees who don't get regular feedback say they're about 19 percent less engaged.

So it has an impact. And I know that it's not always easy to give feedback because it's A lot of times it's not necessarily positive, but the way that you shape it and your intentionality around it. Like we just talked about being clear is kind. All right. So what can you do? Let's check in on the progress towards goals in every 1 on 1 conversation.

Something that I do is I tend to have my 1 on 1 sort of, document. I use, we use Google suite here at BambooHR. And so my employees, they'll write what they want to talk about in our one on ones and I write what I want to talk about. So we keep track of it on an ongoing basis and it really helps us stay aligned.

Again, don't wait for the end of the year to measure progress. That is again, elicits surprise. And we don't want to have people surprised at the end of the year, especially if the feedback and the goal performance is lagging. And again, don't wait to tact, tactfully communicate needed behavior adjustments.

And I know that managers struggle with this. I think in every organization I've been in manager enablement. Around having crucial conversations has been a challenge and it really is something we as HR professionals need to lean into in order to enable managers to be able to have those conversations and adjust behaviors in the moment and not let it continue on and on because the employee doesn't get the feedback that what they're doing isn't right.

And then find a cadence that works. So one on ones can be weekly. They can be biweekly. And, sometimes. I might meet with somebody a couple of times in a week when we have something really big rolling out. And so again, finding that feedback cadence that works for you and for your team is super helpful.

All right. So pro tip, another pro tip. We, um, we love AI here at BambooHR and 92 percent of HR leaders intend to increase their HR or their AI use in HR. The plan is to increase usage in the next 12 to 18 months. We're seeing the tools out there. I don't know how often you're running into AI when you're out on the internet, but it's everywhere.

And we at BambooHR. Also use AI and it's really powerful. Out of those 92 percent 43 percent say they will use AI in their performance management, which is really powerful when you start to think about AI helping managers have those conversations when people aren't tracking against. Both helping perhaps, seed some of those comments or ways that you can shape your feedback can really help that manager enablement.

Again, AI is not going to replace humans. I know you hear a lot of that in the news, but quite frankly, it is just a scraping tool and it can only give you so much feedback back, but it can give you some bones and really help you shape the construct of what you're trying to put together.

And again using KPIs backed by data. I think it's just really important for you to be able to measure how your performance management is working within your organization. And I do see here on the chat, Lynn saying that the challenges is lack of accountability. And I think everyone, everyone sees that in organizations where accountability can be stronger and reinforcing that through your performance management, leveraging AI to help reduce your workload.

All of those things will help you drive success. 

Rea Rotholz: Number four. Keep those one on ones that we've been talking about. Simple. I love a good simple tip. So some additional stats, more than 60 percent of employees report that they want more feedback at work and more than 50 percent of employees who quit their jobs believe their manager could have done something to prevent them.

That's really key. 

Wende A. Smith: Yeah. 

Rea Rotholz: How horrible to be a manager. I'm a people manager and to think, wow, I could have kept my high performer if I had just been. Building a stronger relationship, understanding what was really going on, getting to the root cause of things, prioritizing well being. These are all things that can happen in those one on one conversations.

Additionally, according to a study by Gallup, employees who have regular one on one meetings with their managers are three times more likely to be engaged than those who didn't. So, Wende, you shared that. Your organization you were with prior didn't do any one on ones and all you did was institute standard one on ones and you saw that engagement Increase right because people knew that they were gonna have time with the manager.

You got to know them It makes a really big difference. Now. What's interesting? I think is Let's reflect on how are we mostly spending that time in our one on one conversations? How are we? Well, I can venture to guess, and I'm not going to be overly generic because everyone is different, but themes show we're reviewing progress and providing status updates.

We are talking explicitly about projects. We are, I don't know, complaining sometimes, let's be real. When we don't have a structure or a best practice around what should be in our one on ones, it becomes challenging because we default to some less than productive things, right? Providing just status updates or not using the time as effectively as we could be.

So what does success look like? Well, click to the next slide. Don't waste that precious one on one time. Wende's going to show you, some things you can think about next, but this is precious time on your calendars for both of you. One of the things that I always think about is When you are late to a one on one, what does that say to the person on the other side of the camera or the phone or in the meeting, right?

You're saying, oh, I had to do something that was slightly more important than this time with you. I highly encourage you, especially if you're people managers, to think about the impact, the implicit impact that has when relate to one on ones. I feel like often times the one on ones are what get pushed, rescheduled, relate to them because they're given.

They're not. It's precious time and let's make sure that we're showing our employees that they're valued and we're connecting with them. really authentically as people during that time to build that trust. So when we have to do our performance conversations and provide that feedback, the trust is there.

Wende A. Smith: That's right. And it's so true. I, I think we're all guilty of pushing one on ones or having our one on ones pushed. So I think that's something we have full control over. So, what can you do about it? Well, Let's consider a format that works for you. Some of the things I like to include in one on ones are talking about accomplishment.

So if there's been certain key projects that have been completed, let's celebrate those accomplishments and the impacts that those accomplishments had on the employee's work. This could be things too, where things get moved. So perhaps a project that was, Supposed to go out next month. There's a new priority.

We've got to reprioritize the one on one is the perfect opportunity to talk about reprioritization cultural alignment and how work and tasks are connected. So something I like to do not only in my one on ones, but in my team meetings, they do a lot of pass downs, information that I've received in meetings that I've been in that are really important for the employee to understand to get them full line of sight.

To how the company's operating decisions that are being made at the top so that they feel included and engaged in just the rhythm of the business. And then obviously growth and development. That's really key here. Employees want to grow, they want to develop, they want to get promoted, they want to have new opportunities taking time in your one on ones to have those conversations to understand what their ambitions are.

To understand how you can help them remove obstacles and help them in their career is also extremely important during this one on one time in terms of like my story. So, I've had a one on ones where actually I was able to find out things that were going on with my employee that I might not have otherwise known, maybe things are happening in their home life.

I had a, an employee who had a house. fire actually. And they're a pretty introverted individual. So they didn't really tell anyone about this, but it was a pretty huge impact for this individual. But by sharing that information in our one on one, I was able to plug that employee into our EAP program.

We also have, a band love program where we help employees that have, situations like this occur. And so it's an opportunity to really have that human, interaction with your employee. 

Rea Rotholz: That sounds extremely devastating. Yes. Wow. But amazing that your direct report felt comfortable sharing that with you and you were able to help them work through it.

I also really liked the first bullet you had there, Wende, around celebrating the accomplishments. 

I think sometimes we breeze over that and we don't actually celebrate the small wins along the way. You have the big product releases, the big, 

Wende A. Smith: let's move on. Yeah. Yeah. 

Rea Rotholz: The big things like maybe get highlighted at a company level, but like the little things your direct reports are doing are laddering up again to that bigger goal or that bigger impact.

So taking the time to really celebrate those accomplishments. And the one on one, I think, can set the tone also for positive conversation. I love that you included that. Yeah. Okay. So number five, self evaluations. I know there has been some chatter in the HR world about whether self evaluations are helpful and what questions to include.

I personally love a good brag sheet. That's what we call it when you're on my team. A brag sheet is an ongoing list of things that you have crushed in your job. It is copy and paste Slack messages and emails that customers saying how grateful they are an email from a peer or whatever it is, you save it in a folder or on your brag sheet.

And that's what you can refer back to when you're writing yourself evaluation. We, for someone alluded to this in the Q and a, or in the chat, there is a lot of bias. that comes up in these performance reviews, especially recency bias, right? We reflect on what happened over the past few months because that is what is most forefront in our minds.

And a brag sheet can really help everyone remember what the past six months or the past year entailed. Wende, you mentioned that you actually have an ongoing document. with your direct reports. How fabulous to have an easy way to see. Hey, here's everything that we've talked about over the past six months that I can refer back to.

So having that self evaluation really helps employees, share their successes and paint themselves in the best light. It also allows them to reflect on. Here's how, since we're measuring performance regularly, Here's how I maybe missed a metric or an OKR. Here's what I could have done better.

And it allows them to get, the first say into what they've noticed, which can help the manager say, okay, they're actually already self aware about whatever this thing might be. And then that kind of performance conversation could maybe go a little easier. So, big fan of self evaluations over here.

Wende A. Smith: Yeah, we love a good self evaluation. I'm a big fan of those as well. So, so here's what you can do. Ask your direct reports following a self evaluation. So if you have it as a part of your process, and, we have that, here at WHO. My employees will go out and fill out their self evaluation, and then I'll do my evaluation, and then we'll talk about the two results of that.

So some key questions that you may want to include in, in your self evaluations are my biggest area of impact. What was your biggest area of impact? It helps. to align the employees thinking to impacts and results versus sort of box checking. Again, I accomplished what percentage of my goals.

So maybe you have four or five goals. Maybe one of them you didn't get done, but there's a good business reason as to why. It gives them an opportunity to reflect on the work that they've done and the percentage of completion. This is also really helpful in mid year check ins so that you can say, do we need to adjust priorities?

Is this something that we're still actually on track to completing this year or are we going to deprior deprioritize it? My manager and I have identified a top growth area. Again, that's that insight, that self awareness of, I know maybe I'm shy in meetings. I'm not, but let's say you are. But if you're shy in meetings and you need to speak up more that is an area that maybe you're asking your employee to work on.

And so they're, trying to work on being more outspoken. And this is also really important. Where do they see themselves growing? Do they see themselves moving into sales? Do they see themselves? Selves as someone who wants to be a customer support hero, what is their growth area?

Is it something specific to the job or is it related to their own individual development? And that could be public speaking, it could be a number of different areas, but again, it's fully rounding out that self-evaluation to be about the work and how the work gets done. And then where they need support.

So maybe there's areas where you as a people leader need to lean in more, maybe you're not giving them enough time and attention or clarity and expectations. And so this is an opportunity for them to let you know how you can help them be more successful. Okay. And we're going to talk about four more.

Areas that are specific to Bamboo HR. So these questions again, are in our own product, and we use these for our own employees. And I harken to that in my prior slide. But again, it's how well does my company recognize my value? And it's a multiple choice question. We really here at Bamboo HR are a very Values driven organization values show up in everything we do in the work that we do Against the mission of the company.

So understanding how the company recognizes you and the value you bring to the table Is a key metric for us here at bamboo hr Also, what would be the what would have the greatest impact? impact on my ability to do my best work more often. So what's limiting you are tools, maybe not helping you as much as they could be, is the office where you sit.

Is it distracting? Is it an area where maybe you're not able to do your best work again? This is important for us in terms of understanding Where our employees are and how they're doing day to day. And what are some things I do? Well, this is an open ended question. So this is going back to the brag sheet.

What do I do really well? What if I received, recognition for this year? And then ultimately how could I improve? Again, this is a back to self awareness, understanding my own development path and journey and allowing that to be open ended. So we can have a two way conversation about it during the performance management cycle.

Okay. All right. Another pro tip. Consider using self evaluation questions for your own improvement and especially if you don't have a proactive management. So this is something that I think Raya really did a great job describing from the pro tip or, from the brag sheet, your manager's busy.

They have probably a lot of direct reports. They may not know all of the things are happening to you on a day to day basis. So again, I think it's really important to leverage that self evaluation. To identify areas where you think you're doing a really great job or areas where you have an opportunity to improve.

It allows you to have those human to human conversations saying that, maybe I am shy in meetings. Maybe I do need to speak up more or maybe I'm, Really out there and doing a great job with that, but maybe I'm not as detail oriented as I could be. And so those are areas of opportunity for me and allowing that self evaluation to be an honest sort of, dialogue about, how you think you're doing and how you think your manager is doing.

Hey, 

Rea Rotholz: all right. Number six, we got 11 minutes left. And we do want to get to some questions. So number six, empower leaders to be effective. This is what I am personally most passionate about, especially working at home. This is the ticket. Your managers are the ones that are driving performance on their teams.

They're the ones that have to role model. what good looks like, yet we often lead them to figure it out on their own. We don't give them the right upskilling opportunities or the right ability to practice before they have to go do it, right? We say, Hey, have a conversation, go do it. 

We need to practice this stuff in order to do it well, right?

It's a skill set. So let's today agree to stop doing that. We are going to upskill our managers so that they can feel empowered to have these conversations and we can make sure they're much more effective in the future. 

Wende A. Smith: Absolutely. So, here's what you can do to help drive that success.

Again, being a leadership led organization, not an HR set organization. That is something we say a lot here at MOHR. Again, this is. This is really leveraging leadership in the right ways. We need leaders to, to, to own decisions. We need leaders to drive accountability. And it's always well, HR said we have to do this, or HR said this is important.

It takes the accountability out of the equation. So HR said to leadership led is really key with that. And then again, provide effective training. So it's all about enablement. Managers are not born to be, amazing people leaders. Typically, they're amazing individual contributors that get promoted into a people leader role, and we have to help enable them to be successful and doing that through effective training and doing that training timely, when they joined the organization as a leader or have been promoted into a role as a people leader, making sure they have those tools and that training to help them be self reliant.

Again it may have to be over prescribed in the beginning. I've worked for organizations that are all about permission. Does HR give us permission? And I'm like, I'm not here to give you permission. I'm here to enable you and ensure that you can be successful. And so you sometimes have to be over prescriptive in order to move the needle on that.

But I guarantee you, once you get that the training wheels off managers are often running and you will see a change in the culture of your organization. All right. Pro tip. One more pro tip. Include resources for managers in your onboarding program. So we do here at VOHR, we do values classes and leading through our values.

And we do that in onboarding whether you're a people leader or not. And so it's all about resources. It's all about getting them started off on the right foot, right from the beginning.

Rea Rotholz: I love that. It's all about meeting people where they are. And making it as easy as possible for them to do the performance management program. But I love that meeting, meeting them where they are. Okay. Drum roll, last tip. And this is honestly the hardest part I think is including managed performance management in your overall.

Talent philosophy. Some of you might be saying I don't know what a talent philosophy is, right? Do we have one? It's a very hre type term. But a talent philosophy is really Just the overall Guidelines that you're using for everything related to talent, right? It could be how you're hiring, how you're promoting your capability model, if you have one, that's all part of your talent philosophy.

And so performance management should be in service of furthering that talent philosophy, right? It should not be just a standalone program that's not woven in. So. Make sure your top philosophy is aligned and then adjust it if needed so that your performance management, your top philosophy align.

Wende A. Smith: Absolutely. So here's what you can do. Again, it's all about including performance management in your talent philosophy. Setting guidelines around performance for your employees. So what does good performance look like? What is the work and how do I get my work done? Get, get clear and outline how you treat, high performers, average performers and low performers.

It's really important to have consistency across your organization in the treatment of really strong performance and equally low performance. And again, address Address transparency. So it's really important that we are transparent in the work that we do and sharing that across the organization.

It was really interesting that Salesforce V2Mom is their performance management philosophy and process. And I can see anyone's goals in the organization all the way up to Mark Benioff, the CEO. And he conversely can see everyone's goals in the organization all the way down to, a level one, intern.

So transparency is really key. Again, and then coming back to the accountability, what is accountability look like? How do we move from HR said to leadership led? Managers are responsible for the performance of their employees. That is why we have people leaders in order to be the coach on that team.

And so really ensuring that you're defining that and making that very clear for your people leaders and equally for the employees of those people leaders. Okay, we're going to the recap. We are on the last bits here, Rea. 

Rea Rotholz: Yes, we are. 

So to recap some of what we discussed today. So one, link employee goals to your business goals. And first, make sure you have goals. Right, that's important. Thank you. Yes. Build a culture of continuous feedback.

Use a model. We like SBIW. Measure performance regularly. Make sure that the goals are measurable and you're addressing how people are doing relative to those goals. Keep your one on one simple. Use them to build relationships. Don't be late to them. Or if you have to reschedule, let the person know why. Do your self evaluation, add in your brag sheet, would love to see more of those. I love the pro tip for that, which is do your own self evaluation and see how you're doing. That's a great tool for yourself. Empower your leaders to be effective, big fans of upskilling over here. And then include performance management in your overall talent philosophy.

So those were our seven tips. to hopefully help you with your performance management programs. 

Wende A. Smith: Well, and Bamboo HR can help you get started. So we are an award winning solution from hire to retire. We have more than 30, 000 customers using our solution, both big and small organizations trust Bamboo HR to help them with all things from onboarding, hiring, the employee experience, performance, which is what we're talking about today and data and reporting.

So we're excited. We have a lot of those tools built into our solution. So definitely if you want to learn more you can let us know if you'd like to learn more about the tools, all right. All right. So before we get started you want to talk about home. 

Rea Rotholz: Yeah, I'll just quickly introduce Hone as well.

So Hone is a live skills development platform, so I know I was mentioning upskilling being so important. All of our classes are live, instructor led by our global network of coaches, and we upskill employees on things like how to have powerful one on ones, how to give feedback, how to prepare for that performance review, all of the things that really require Frameworks and practice before you have to go do it.

That's what we specialize in. So we have over a hundred classes in our catalog around communication, collaboration, leadership, et cetera. And we are really dedicated to making sure things like your performance management program go well, because your managers are truly empowered to have those conversations.

Wende A. Smith: Absolutely. All right. We want to get started with Q and A, but I want to just do a quick reminder. If you look at the docs tab we have a number of documents out there to help you. I saw in the chat that there were some questions about templates and things. So definitely check out the docs tab. We do have some, Materials available to you and we have about three minutes.

So we would love to answer any questions that you might have.

Rea Rotholz: Awesome. I'm pulling up the Q and A now.

Wende A. Smith: So are there any plans to bring HR performance? Absolutely. We are currently leveraging AI for a product called Bamboo Answers, which is available to our customers, where employees can go in and ask just regular questions about HR things and they get AI answers.

And when it comes to performance, we're going to continue to just elaborate on AI across the platform. 

That's exciting. 

Rea Rotholz: Yeah. Are there any other words we can use other than feedback? That's an interesting one. I always like to think about it as just conversations. I try and keep it casual. Can we have a chat about that presentation you did earlier?

It doesn't I have feedback. I have feedback. Right. It doesn't have to be 

Wende A. Smith: so serious. That's right. Yes. 

Rea Rotholz: Let's talk about how that went. 

Wende A. Smith: Yeah. Let's talk about what went well. What didn't go well. Yeah. 

Rea Rotholz: Exactly. What 

Wende A. Smith: else? Tips to using Bamboo Performance. Again, take a look at our docs. You can also reach out to our customer success team.

They're there to help you be successful in Bamboo Performance. So definitely leverage the docs and you can also do an outreach to the organization. Thoughts on biannual or annual? Yeah, I was just going to say, I am a big fan of biannual. I love a mid year check in as a formality and then I love an annual wrap up the year.

Rea, what do you think? 

Rea Rotholz: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's both. And I think having that ability to have the overall, the time to really review the overall is actually really helpful. Oftentimes, performance management, annual or biannual processes do impact. Compensation promotion cycles, especially if you are a large organization, so it's important to consider how that's connected to.

With those other processes. 

Wende A. Smith: Absolutely. Well, we are at the top of the hour. I wanted to thank you all for joining. If you have a moment and you'd like to meet with us, definitely take advantage of the poll. We'd love to meet with you when you're ready. And again, thanks for spending some time with us and bearing through the strange sound issues that we had in the beginning.

And Rea, it was great presenting with you. Really had a great time. So thank you everyone. 

Rea Rotholz: Me too. Thank you so much, Wende. And thank you all. Have a great rest of your day. 

Wende A. Smith: Take care.