You may have conducted hundreds of performance reviews over the course of your career, but in today’s era of Covid-19, everything is different. You and your team have been working remotely for months now in extremely difficult situations and you may be asking yourself things like, how can I begin to evaluate my employees’ performance at such a challenging time? How much should I consider the impact of Covid-19 on my assessment? And how can I make sure I’m fair-minded given everyone’s different circumstances?
Even in the best of times, few managers look forward to performance reviews. Now, amidst a global pandemic and economic crisis, performance reviews present an even greater challenge.
Effectively managing work performance in a virtual world is a very relevant topic during this time of the pandemic and in line with that, HR Nation Philippines in their ninth webinar in the HR Nation Masterclass series, invited guest speakers to share some options, perspectives, and things to consider before closing out your current performance cycle or even begin on your next.
In the webinar titled “Performance Evaluation In A Virtual World”,we learnt how we can create a sense of stability amongst our employees and make it easier for managers and others to provide reinforcing and redirecting feedback today and the next days to come.
To begin with, one of our guest speakers, Ms. Kathleen Ang, Human Resource Manager at Ikea Pasay City Store, shared her experience on how their company was able to manage performance evaluations in the past months. She began by discussing what V.U.C.A World is.
V.U.C.A World is a concept introduced back in the year 1987 by the US Army War College. This concept was developed to describe the multilateral, ever changing world that was then going on at the end of the cold war between US and Russia.
As far as HR is concerned, the concept of V.U.C.A was also applied in the ever changing landscape of strategic management. In the past few months, the concept of V.U.C.A has again come alive after the situations brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 being the most recent pandemic most of us have to contend with, both on personal and professional level, has left us with no choice but to go on and adjust in the new normal.
V.U.C.A stands for:
V – olatility or the rapid, unexpected challenges
U – uncertainty or the pending changes, known “unknowns”
C – omplexity or the multiple key decision factors or the variables to consider
A – ambiguity or the too many known “unknowns”
Living in the new normal, we are forced to view things with a set of new eyes especially in HR as we are obliged to think what can and what must be done differently in every aspect including recruitment, performance management, and the likes.
She also discussed the building blocks in effectively promoting remote work performance management. These includes:
- Giving regular feedbacks – Be connected
- Focusing on the results – Be flexible
- Setting clear expectations – Learn to trust
Ms. Kath Ang also shared in her talk a quote from Anthony J. D’Angelo, “Don’t reinvent the wheel, just realign with it”. For the past few months, this has been the new way of working when it comes to performance management.
Dealing with a V.U.C.A. world is something that is not familiar to most of us but what’s important is that we’re prepared and flexible knowing that nothing is guaranteed. We should also invest in information so that we could provide focus and clarity as well as be open to experiment and try new things so that we could all adapt accordingly.
The next speaker was Ms. Fabi Carino, Human Resources Director at Dentsu Aegis Network. She began her session by sharing the importance of performance appraisals. Conducting or having a performance management system is really essential in every company because this is one way for HR professionals to provide the employees with feedback towards their performances.
It also helps in deciding whether or not employees deserve higher compensation, as well as in validating the selection process in new hires and to look into how a better workplace can be developed for the sake of the employees.
The Scope of performance appraisal includes:
- Provides performance feedback
- Decides employee’s compensation
- Validation of selection process
- Identifying employee’s training needs
- Motivating employees
- Helps in promotion and demotion
- Facilitates communication
As we are all now working from home or some may call it as “living at work”, there are a lot of challenges HR professionals are facing when conducting performance appraisals and these include:
- Lack of personal interaction
- Ineffective job reviews
16 Reasons for Ineffective Appraisals:
- Differences among raters
- Confusing performance and potential
- Rating game
- Faulty assumptions
- Psychological blocks
- Halo effect – Degree of being biased
- Error of central tendency – Managers being afraid to give too low ratings
- Leniency
- Stereotyping
- Recency effect
- Appraiser discomfort
- Lack of objectivity
- Manipulating the evaluation
- Judgement error
- Ineffective organizational policies and practices
- Cross cultural biases
Tips to deliver effective virtual appraisals (S.O.L.I.D.):
S – etting the tone and expectations
O – verall evaluation
L – isten
I – nform
D – evelop
All these will not be possible without trust. Trust is the foundation of managing an agile team and individual performances. HR professionals should be able to give their support and involvement at all times. They should also be able to empathize with their employees and always look for opportunities to do frequent check-ins and evaluations to make them feel that their work is appreciated.
Closing all this is Brent Denning, Salarium’s COO. Salarium is a cloud-based system working real-time which lets you access your data anytime, anywhere with complete security.
So, whether you are the Company Admin, HR, or even an employee who’s based in the office, reporting in the HQ from a different branch or location, or even working from home, you have the power to access the system with no external or manual movement of upload and download of data.
Promoting safety at the workplace, Mr. Denning also presented Salarium’s newest product, a touchless time and attendance solution perfect for the new normal.
Introducing FacePass! is a Touchless Time & Attendance Solution powered by S.A.F.E. Tech (Secured Attendance & Face-Enabled Technology).
S.A.F.E Tech records your employees’ clock-ins and clock-outs in REAL-TIME via facial recognition. It’s seamlessly integrated into Salarium’s Timekeeping System, which enables you to:
- Create, Track, and Manage Shifts and Schedules
- Manage Overtimes, Undertimes, and Leaves
- Complete Attendance Reports Instantly
Significantly reduce physical contact without sacrificing convenience and efficiency. Visit https://www.salarium.com/facepass/ for more info.
Download Ms. Kathleen Ang’s presentation here: How to Effectively Manage Performance in a Virtual World
Download Ms. Fabi Carino’s presentation here: Effective Virtual Performance Review
Download Mr. Brent Denning’s presentation here: HR MasterClass Presentation
You may watch the webinar recording here:
