Events

Where are we in the great performance management experiment?

For many years now, organizations have been seriously reconsidering their performance management (PM) processes and implementing significant – and sometimes drastic – changes. Some of these changes, in aggregate, have resulted in new approaches that are much more aligned to the way work really gets done today.

More importantly, though, these changes also reflect a shift in the focus of PM – to a set of practices designed to enable individuals to have more information, gain feedback more quickly, and to engage them more fully in their work, with a goal of enabling higher performance.

Navigating Modern Performance Management

As our research points out, modern PM drives performance and engagement through development and feedback. And so, the real question companies need to ask is this:

What should my organization do to improve the performance and engagement of our employees and the ability of us all to meet our business goals?

We believe the effectiveness of PM practices should be judged on whether those practices drive 3 outcomes – individual performance, organizational performance, and employee engagement. In analyzing our research data, 3 groups of practices (which we call levers) emerged:

• Culture
• Capability of managers
• Clarity

While we have identified certain levers that are more effective for driving performance and engagement, we want to be clear that how these levers show up in different organizations will vary. There is no one “right” set of practices for modern PM – but there are right principles.

In the infographic below, we've highlighted a few of our crucial findings from our research. To learn more, you can also download and read the full report, The Makings of Modern Performance Management.

As always, we would love your feedback. If you have thoughts, please share in the Feedback section to the right!

In 2019, we conducted an extensive literature review and interviewed progressive employee experience organizations. We have highlighted a few of our crucial findings from our research in this infographic. You can also download the full report here and register to attend our webinar on the topic here. We would like to thank Medallia for sponsoring our research.

As always, we would love your feedback. If you have thoughts, please share in the comments section below!

In early 2019, we decided to dive into the world of people analytics technology with the goal of developing a framework that would help practitioners and vendors better understand the market. This people analytics technology study has looked at what challenges the vendors are looking to solve, their growth, and how organizations are using them.

We found that the people analytics technology market is kind of like a teenager. It’s growing up fast and integrating itself across several HR functions, but at the same time, it is unsure of what it wants to be when it grows up or who to serve primarily.

Over the course of past few months, we ran a vendor survey and spoke with over 30 solution providers and their customers to find out about their primary users, what sets them apart and the type of data they use. We have highlighted a few of our crucial findings from our research in this infographic. We would like to thank PAFOW and Insight222 for sponsoring our research.

As always, we would love your feedback. If you have thoughts, please share in the comments section below!

As it turns out, good learning tech ecosystems don't just happen; they need to be thoughtfully created. We recently interviewed over 30 learning leaders and got the lowdown on their tech ecosystems, their philosophies, and their strategies. Out of those conversations, four major themes emerged.

As always, if you have thoughts, please share in the comments section below!

In early 2019, we published the results of our comprehensive research effort, Diversity and Inclusion Technology: The Rise of a Transformative Market. To further help you understand this market, we've now summarized our findings in this infographic. We also encourage you to check out our updated interactive D&I tech market tool and read The D&I Technology Market: Update Summer / Fall 2019, which contains some of the newer vendors we've identified since publishing this research. And as always, let us know your thoughts!

Click on the graphic below to see a larger version or to download it.

For as long as we have been doing this (and we've been doing it awhile), how L&D functions measure, analyze, and report on their impact is a perennial challenge. The Learning Impact Study, which we began in March of this year, has explored what organizations are doing.

Like all good researchers, we started this study with the hope of finding the silver bullet – the single thing that L&D functions could embrace to solve their challenges. We didn't find it. Learning impact is a notoriously difficult problem that depends on several variables – industry, business goals, learning audience, technology, equipment, culture, and on and on. Each organization has to approach it differently.

What we did find, however, were several really good insights into how thoughtful leaders are addressing this challenge. The following infographic summarizes some of these insights. As always, we would love your thoughts!

Click on the graphic below to see a larger version or to download it.

Not surprisingly, organizations are not paying enough attention to how technology affects networks, which in turn, affects the ability of women to advance within organizations. This infographic highlights initial findings from the Women, Networks, and Technology research and provides several hints to organizations looking to level the playing field.