As the world around us is changing, the labour market changes accordingly. Positions that are vital today may be obsolete tomorrow. Traditional assessment systems with a single performance interview and a single evaluation are fast becoming outdated, is the conclusion that’s being reached by more and more organizations. How can they inspire employees and make them feel confident that they have the competencies to take up new responsibilities (should their existing positions be dissolved)? How can they know which talents will blossom where? These are some of the questions we are often asked. The answer: renew the HR cycle!
There are many possible ways to develop talent and fill roles and positions. Which makes perfect sense, as we are all unique individuals. The same solution that suits one person fine may be quite unsuited for another. And yet we often see a one-size-fits-all approach, where the focus is on presence, established competencies and expected results. Employees are literally viewed as human resources, to be deployed for optimal efficiency in order to maximize returns. This type of approach leans heavily on generic job descriptions and leaves little room to value the individual. It’s a situation that desperately needs to change.
Focus on roles and value
We are seeing a new way of thinking emerge that favours roles over positions. For instance, younger generations are less inclined to accept 60-hour working weeks and less likely to be concerned with fitting a job profile. Instead, these younger employees are keen to continue their professional growth. They want to shape their roles and activities around the way they see needs change and develop.
Rather than evaluating whether their employees’ performance is ‘in accordance with the job description’, we should learn to appreciate the way each individual adds value on the basis of his or her unique talents. This will enhance both job satisfaction and employee commitment, which in turn will result in improved performance, a good working atmosphere, greater client satisfaction and sustainable deployability.
Traditional methods of performance management simply weren’t designed for this style of fostering talent and establishing potential, and therefore many organizations are looking for better alternatives. When employees can be given the confidence to take responsibility within a certain framework, they will be better able (and more motivated) to take control of their own development. As they strive to fulfil their personal ambitions, they will come up with new ways to realize the goals of their organizations.
Assessing talent to help put the right people in the right place
Optimal deployment of employees usually begins by asking ‘Who should do what?’ and ‘How to define optimal deployment?’. In order to be able to answer these questions, organizations need to define the type of behaviours they wish to see. The next question has to be: ‘How are we going to organize this?’ Still too often, organizations let this process be guided by the letter of their job profiles. Few are likely to deploy people on the basis of their talents and development ambitions. Just look at what happens in the recruitment process, where candidates are selected who tick the most boxes on a list of requirements. But no candidate ever ticks all the boxes, and the partial mismatch inevitably results in a certain amount of friction.
In addition, the person who best fits the profile will in time often be promoted to a better position. That’s because their ability to do well in one position may lead us into believing they must also have the potential to shine in other positions. But in reality, not even the best performance is a guarantee for success in those other positions. For instance, someone can be a highly rated specialist in a specific field but have no managerial skills whatsoever. If such a person were to be promoted into management, no matter how hard he or she tried, it could never be truly successful and eventually everyone involved will be worse off.
Judging talent, the right way
Another remarkable phenomenon is that only 21 per cent of assessments actually reflect people’s work performance, as was shown in the research of Mount, Scullen and Goff. To a large extent, assessments are based on subjective psychological factors, which further adds to the level of misjudgment of employees’ potential. We tend to weigh negative observations more heavily and favour people who behave most like ourselves. For instance, an assessor who has a habit of working late may feel that employees can’t be serious about their work if they are very punctual about clocking off. Even if they are highly efficient and consistently beat their deadlines, their performance may be underestimated simply because we’re not looking at them objectively.
Social innovation, the key to success
If a business aims to be successful and innovative, people are the key factor. This begins with recruitment and continues into retainment and deploying talent in the most suitable positions. We know that it’s important to focus more on talent, and to value roles over job profiles. All of this puts us on a course that calls for a greater degree of self-direction and servant-leadership. The knee-jerk response might be to let go of top-down direction completely, but that would be taking a gamble: commitment could dwindle and goals may no longer be met. But as we’ve seen before, performance management on the basis of established competencies and expected results isn’t the right way forward either. So what is? The answer: social innovation with a renewed HR cycle. This will steer the development towards an effective and future-proof organization. In reality, however, we see a great many organizations who have yet to make this conversion.
Renewed HR cycle
In the new HR cycle, managers and employees enter into a conversation with the shared objective to set the parameters and discuss what the employees want to achieve and develop. How does an employee plan to do this and what does he or she need to make it happen? What can you, the manager, do to help them? Often, employees indicate that they aren’t fully realizing the potential of their skills and their organization isn’t doing enough to put their talents to optimal use. The renewed HR cycle, with its continuous dialogue and its focus on employee talents and opportunities for growth, presents just the framework we need right now. Make sure to sit down with employees periodically at fixed times to discuss progress and see if there is anything you can do for them. Scheduling sit-downs at regular intervals makes them a part of your routine.
Tooling fortifies the renewed HR cycle
The Spiegelapp, our digital development tool for personal and professional growth, helps to organize the HR cycle for optimal deployment of talent. This tool provides the necessary input for performance management interviews, ensuring that topics are highlighted which otherwise might be overlooked. Success is no longer a matter of KPIs and statistics, but of using talents effectively, enhancing motivation and stimulating growth. Which will then result in greater job satisfaction, sustainable deployment and a successful organization. Tooling is not an aim in itself, but it can help drive the renewed HR cycle. With the Spiegelapp, employees define their objectives and the concrete behaviours that are required to realize them. With that in mind, they collect their own real-time data, which will help them explore their (hidden) talents and points for development.
Using the Spiegelapp is a dynamic process which can quickly provide an insight on the basis of objective data. As such, it answers the needs of HR professionals aiming to stimulate behavioural change and gain in-depth knowledge of employees’ potential for growth. Not by projecting potential for future roles from potential for current roles, but by analysing actual performance and frequent mutual reflection. The focus is on looking ahead and asking how employees can do better next time. This will result in improved performance and greater job satisfaction. Talents will be used more effectively.
Would you like to know more about the new approach to performance management?
Call Krista Beilschmidt on +31 (0)70 346 92 05 or +31 (0)6 41 27 30 20 for more information and relevant references in the commercial and not-for-profit sectors. Krista is an HR-consultant, business administrator and organization specialist, and a managing partner of H+C.