Events

In our research, The Makings of Modern Performance Management, we identified 3 levers of modern performance management (see Figure 1). In the course of 2 roadshows we’ve done since publishing the research, we’ve received a number of questions about one item in particular:

How can managers clear barriers for their employees?

We thought we’d take a few minutes to share with you a bit of additional information, in case you are also asking yourself this question.

Figure 1: Three Levers of Modern Performance Management | Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

You see a mountain, I see a mole hill

One of the first steps for managers is to align with their direct reports on what barriers they are facing in the first place. For example, a direct report might see a major, overwhelming amount of work on their plate, whereas a manager may simply see a need to prioritize better. Therefore, a great first step is for managers is to include pretty simple question during their check-in conversations:

What obstacles are you facing and how can I help remove them?

This is similar to what happens at Intermountain Healthcare, a Utah-based, not-for-profit hospital system, where managers are encouraged to cover 3 types of discussions during their check-in conversations:

• Connecting and removing barriers
• Contribution towards results
• Growth and development

Now, of course, the manager then needs to know how to respond appropriately – and specifically to understand when it is a barrier that only they can remove or if it's one that their employee needs help figuring out how to address for themselves. This type of insight is usually the result of managers using a coaching mindset – which they may have to learn through some form of learning and development resources. It's important that organizations offer these resources for managers to better understand how to coach their employees and that the organizational culture and organizational incentives then reinforce those behaviors.

Build barrier-busting mindsets

Once managers and employees have sorted out which barriers need to be broken down by whom, it is up to the manager to empower their employees to do their part. Organizations should provide a clear framework of when and how to escalate issues, to that employees know which problems they should tackle on their own.

In addition, managers need to encourage employees to find and document solutions to common problems. For example, if a certain type of email has to be sent out regularly, that should be kept in a central repository for everyone to access it (yes, we know this sounds simple, but this is the stuff of which barrier-busting is made). In addition, managers need to reinforce to employees that they will not be penalized for trying to break down major barriers if, for some reason, the effort goes awry. It’s critical that when managers ask employees to drive and own change, that they believe they are in a psychologically safe environment to do so.

Bust barriers, manager style

Finally, it's up to the manager to bust down some of those barriers themselves. The first step here is for managers to look at themselves and determine the activities or expectations they may have put in place that could be causing barriers.

For example, take the all-team meeting. Depending on the size of the team, it may not be terribly useful for everyone. However, no one is going to tell the manager that they shouldn’t have that meeting, even though it is largely a waste of time. It is on the manager to instead make sure that meetings have a clear objective that couldn’t be achieved without the meeting – and to then fix things when that isn’t the case.

Another example is when managers have put in place processes or expectations that are causing barriers to working being done effectively. Again, managers need to create a psychologically safe environment that allows employees to let them know when something could be improved – and to then not react negatively when it does.

Managers need to look outside themselves, and determine how they can help remove organizational barriers for employees. It might be laying the groundwork for an employee’s initiative or working with other leaders at their level to address a specific challenge. Another, absolutely critical manager task, is managers helping employees build the networks they need to solve their own problems. You likely know of other ways to break down barriers for employees – and we’d love to hear them! Please share them in the comments or give us some feedback on what you read here today.

Also, please have a look at our report, in which we dive into each lever in our model in detail and provide examples of how organizations bring them to life.

Over the course of our research, it became clear that the most progressive organizations have a very clear philosophy of employee experience – who it's for, what it is, and how it differs from employee engagement. This philosophy then guides all other decisions organizations make with regard to employee experience.

Target audience: Focus of experience efforts

Before we could get into the weeds of precisely defining employee experience, we first had to figure out who it's for. When it comes to employee experience efforts, there are 3 viewpoints that organizations tend to focus on: employees, customers, or both.

We found that a lot of organizations focus on the 2 far ends of the spectrum. Only a few consider what both employees and customers want in an integrated fashion. But those that use a blended focus tend to see some of the most desirable employee and customer outcomes.

“HR people are used to working in waterfall, slow, 18-month release cycle models when it comes to process and technology, and that’s not how employee experience works. If I see that 80% of my workforce is breaking down in a process or not being engaged at any given moment, I don’t wait a year to deal with it like in old employee engagement surveys. I want to deal with it today.”

Jason Averbook, CEO and co-founder, Leapgen

Clear definition: What employee experience is

• “Designing an organization where people want to show up by focusing on the cultural, technological, and physical environments.”¹
• “The extent to which employees of an organization are enabled or constrained by its adaptive work environment and collective work habits to do their jobs today and reimagine their jobs of tomorrow.”²
• “The combination of organizational culture, technological environment, processes, and physical environment that determines how employees perform and feel about their job.”³
• “Employees’ holistic perceptions of the relationship with his/her employing organization derived from all the encounters at touchpoints along the employee’s journey.”⁴

While we found these definitions adequate as they capture important aspects of employee experience, we also found them lengthy and convoluted.

Therefore, we developed our own concise definition of employee experience:

Employees’ collective perceptions of their ongoing interactions with the organization.

Another important point to call out is that employee experience is fluid. It involves constant dynamic human interactions and, as such, it's an ever-evolving target. To adapt to its fluid nature, progressive organizations adopt an iterative stance. They ask, listen, and act on employee and customer feedback in a frequent, swift, and repetitive manner. Thus, they leverage real-time opportunities to capture, process, and address experience feedback.

Relationship to engagement: How experience & engagement are related

Now that we’ve clearly established our definition of employee experience, let’s distinguish it from employee engagement. It's important to do this for a few reasons. First, many people use the two terms interchangeably – and they are actually quite different. Second, the historical legacy of employee engagement has influenced how people approach employee experience. Having a clear understanding of the differences between the 2 enables us to chart a clearer path forward for developing a strong and compelling employee experience.

All that said, we define employee engagement as:

A measure of energy, involvement, and concentration that's exhibited in work attitudes and behaviors.

Employee engagement is fundamentally different from employee experience (see Figure 1). It's a measurement of what employees do – their “exhibited work attitudes and behaviors” – versus what they perceive. There are other differences as well. For example, in engagement, organizations use a top-down process to develop strategies and implement activities that impact engagement scores. In employee experience, organizations use a bottom-up process to develop strategies and implement activities that impact employees’ perceptions.

Figure 1: Summary of the Differences Between Employee Experience and Employee Engagement | Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

For more on this and other levers of employee experience – and examples of how companies have brought them to life – we encourage you to download and read the full report by clicking the image below.

This article is a continuation of our recent study, The Makings of Modern Performance Management. Specifically, it explores the practices of performance management (PM) as they relate to frontline workers: Are they currently treated differently? Should they be?

The Criticality of Frontline Workers

Forward-thinking organizations have looked at frontline workers differently in the last few years. Whereas they were once seen as cogs in a machine (who, it was believed, just work for a paycheck, are inherently disengaged¹²), they're now seen as a source of future leaders, innovation, and a strong customer experience.³

We think that, as the focus on these workers increases, organizations will take a closer look at their PM practices – perhaps reevaluating how these workers are measured, engaged, and developed.

We recently looked at more than 20 academic and business articles, reports, and book chapters to better understand these changes. Not surprisingly, some of the things we learned align nicely with what we found in our modern performance management model.

What we learned

From our review of the literature, it appears that organizations are waking up to the notion that many workers on the frontlines have significant impact on customer experience,⁴ and as such, need more attention. As an example, a 2018 study by The Institute of Customer Service shows that increasing employee engagement also increases customer satisfaction.⁵

In general, we uncovered a collective urgency to move frontline performance management away from traditional operational-driven approaches to more modern development-driven ones.

Three overall themes emerged from our review of the literature:

• Frontline workers need empowerment
• Frontline managers play an important role and should be held accountable for performance development – their own as well as their workers
• Frontline engagement likely requires moving away from industrial-era performance management approaches

We take a look at each of these in the following sections.

Frontline workers: Empowerment

With the current focus on customer experience and its perceived role in driving market competitiveness, there is a general sense that frontline workers need to be better empowered.

To do this, forward-thinking organizations are using development to equip frontline workers – especially those directly serving customers – with soft skills (anywhere from emotional intelligence and communication skills to problem-solving and conflict resolution) so they can better address customers’ needs.⁶

Additionally, real-time and individualized feedback are also seen as ways to empower frontline workers^7,8 – including those in manufacturing roles – to think critically, solve problems, and make effective on-the-spot decisions.⁹

Frontline managers: Accountability for performance development (theirs and their workers)

The bulk of the literature on frontline performance management focuses on managers. The idea that frontline managers play a crucial role in the development of frontline workers is widely accepted (and aligns with what we found more broadly in our recent research as well). Most of the pieces we read mentioned the lack of accountability for the development of their people as a pervasive problem among frontline managers.

Some advocate for offering more formal training to frontline managers in traditional performance management aspects such as: giving and receiving feedback, engaging in frequent 1:1 conversations, setting goals, and addressing performance concerns. This suggests that organizations are beginning to rethink the role of frontline manager from enforcer and doer to manager as coach. While it may seem generally appropriate, it will require changes to their responsibilities and mindset, not to mention to the systems and processes that support them.

Frontline engagement: Leave behind industrial-era PM approaches

The literature suggests that performance management practices for frontline workers are somewhat stuck in the industrial era. And if we ever want to build a fully engaged frontline workforce, then organizations need to re-think how they currently evaluate and address frontline performance.

For example, there is a tendency to measure frontline workers against operational efficiency metrics such as: hours clocked, calls handled, and products assembled. While tracking these metrics may be necessary at times, organizations are itching to improve frontline performance in a more developmental manner,¹⁰ and as such, bring more value to customers. Some recognize the importance of connecting frontline workers’ performance to the organization’s mission and making sure that frontline workers see the big picture.¹¹

There also seems to be a desire to make performance management for managers and employees more meaningful – moving it away from only a transactional process focused on hard skills to a developmental process also focused on soft skills.¹² This is in large part driven by the current focus on providing a positive and compelling experience for both employees and customers.

What we read

Several pieces stood out from the literature we reviewed. Each of the following pieces explored ideas that we found useful in expanding the way we think about frontline performance management.

Frontline Workers and the Skills for Tomorrow’s Economy

College for America

“Even jobs considered ‘entry level,’ or frontline, such as call center customer service reps, require workers to do more than merely handle a transaction; technology now handles those straightforward processes.”

This article defines U.S. frontline workers. It also describes industries with the greatest number of frontline workers and the specific skills they need to be able to fill market needs.

Highlights:

• Defines frontline workers, their demographics, current skills, and the skills they need to develop to compete in the marketplace.
• Offers a framework for evaluating frontline workers' skills.
• Recommends developing frontline workers in higher-level cognitive and soft skills such as: problem-solving, critical-thinking, and relationship-building.

Developing America’s Frontline Workers

Kevin Oakes and Kevin Martin / i4cp

“Companies need to be clear on the positive business impact of frontline worker development, provide the support mechanisms to reinforce this, and measure it through the performance review process and reward (or hold accountable) managers accordingly.”

This report presents findings from a study on development practices for frontline workers among 365 US-based businesses. It describes the increasing demand for skilled workers to fill US-based jobs. It discusses the need for greater frontline manager involvement and accountability for frontline worker development.

Highlights:

• Shows a high correlation between bottom-line business impact and when frontline workers take advantage of development opportunities.
• Examines the current skill level of frontline workers and emphasizes the need to upskill this segment of the workforce for future growth.
• Supports the idea that managers serve as coaches and mentors to those on the frontlines.

Ten Steps to Supercharge Performance Management

Tony DiRomualdo / American Management Association

“HPOs replace annual or semiannual formal performance reviews with regular (monthly or quarterly) informal discussions between frontline managers and their direct reports. This establishes better communication and helps to both maintain consistent focus on what needs to be done and gauge progress.”

This article outlines ten ways in which organizations can improve their performance management practices. It also provides ideas on how organizations can improve the effectiveness of performance management practices for frontline workers and their managers.

Highlights:

• Discusses the importance of creating an environment of ongoing frequent conversations between frontline workers and managers.
• Proposes maintaining a consistent performance management culture throughout the organization to gain buy-in and enable high performance.
• Emphasizes the need to train frontline managers on effective performance management practices.

Frontline Managers: Are They Given the Leadership Tools to Succeed?

Harvard Business Review Analytic Services

“…feedback managers receive is largely punitive: ‘Only negative feedback when failures happen. Punishment in the form of bad performance reviews, notices of corrective action, and terminations are the rewards for failure’…”

This article highlights findings from an online survey to HBR’s readers aimed at understanding the importance of frontline managers to organizational success. It discusses frontline managers’ influence on key organizational outcomes. Yet, it contrasts frontline managers’ importance to organizational success with the lack of managerial effectiveness.

Highlights: 

• Describes how frontline managers are crucial in helping organizations reach business goals.
• States that few organizations invest sufficient time and resources in the professional development of frontline managers.
• Argues that frontline managers lack basic leadership competencies and need further development.

Unlocking the Potential of Frontline Managers in Global Health

Arnab Ghatak, Srishti Gupta, and Ying Sun / McKinsey

“…the typical frontline manager is time strapped, multitasking, and lacking critical elements needed for success: an understanding of priorities, management skills, motivation, autonomy, and information.”

This article examines frontline managers in a healthcare setting. It outlines specific challenges that frontline managers face in their role and suggests six ideas for improvement. It also provides examples of successful frontline management development programs in health-related facilities globally.

Highlights: 

• Mentions the adoption of a service industry framework to better understand and relate to customer-facing employees.
• Suggests a 6-pronged approach to support frontline managers in healthcare settings throughout developing countries.
• Advocates for disciplined performance management practices to motivate and develop frontline managers.

Other good reads (if you have some time)

1 “Developing Skilled Workers: A Toolkit for Manufacturers on Recruiting and Training a Quality Workforce,” The Manufacturing Institute, 2019.

2 “How to Motivate Frontline Employees,” McGregor, L. & Doshi, N., Harvard Business Review, 2018.

3 “Front Line Staff, the Patient Experience and Your Bottom Line – Avoiding the Cultural Hourglass,” Warren, B. & Kinney, T., Select International, 2015.

4 “Maximizing Frontline Sales in Retail Banking,” Maxwell, M, Derraik, R., & Ross, E., McKinsey, 2014.

Ten years ago, the most complex questions learning leaders faced about their learning technology was which LMS they were going to use and how much it was going to cost. That isn’t true today. Now, learning leaders are faced with both higher expectations and unprecedented choice when it comes to creating a learning environment. Why?

Expectations have increased

Expectations of L&D functions have increased. Whereas they were once only responsible for creating and disseminating training, organizations and individuals now expect more.

Organizations need results.

Industries are constantly being disrupted, causing organizations to rethink both their products and their business models in order to properly compete. This has affected not only how organizations compete, but if they compete at all: nearly 9 of 10 Fortune 500 companies in 1955 are gone, merged, or contracted, demonstrating the market disruption and churning in the last 6 decades.¹

Likewise, organizations face changes internally. They have flatter structures, greater connectivity, increased collaboration, and thinner organization walls (e.g., gig economy workers). More work is done in teams, roles are increasingly more flexible, and there are fewer concrete career paths. As structures and job requirements change to help the organization compete, L&D is forced to rethink development  solutions – customizing them to specific challenges and ways of doing things their organizations face.

As structures and job requirements change to help the organization compete, L&D is forced to rethink development solutions.

The good news is that the C-Suite seems to be doing what they can to enable the L&D function. As of 2019, only 27% of L&D leaders state “limited budget” as a top challenge. Additionally, 82% of L&D leaders report that their leadership actively supports learning programs.²

It’s getting easier: In 2019, only 27% of L&D leaders state “limited budget” as a top challenge, and 82% of L&D leaders report that their leadership actively supports learning programs.

Employees want better experiences.

We have talked to nary a learning leader or vendor that is not aware of the expectations employees have of their organizations for learning and growth. According to LinkedIn’s 2019 Workforce Learning Report³,

• 68% of employees prefer to learn at work
• 58% of employees prefer to learn at their own pace
• 49% of employees prefer to lear at the point of need

Whereas the organization and L&D function used to have more control over who was taught what when, today, employees have essentially taken the reins. They want more control over how, what, and when they learn, and technology has enabled them to do so.

Organizations have a lot of choice.

Learning leaders also have more choices than ever before. Gone are the days when L&D functions vetted and chose one LMS to serve the entire organization. They are now choosing from a wide variety of technological solutions, and the many vendors that offer those solutions.

How much choice do they have? We keep a fairly close eye on the learning technology landscape. Ten years ago, there were roughly 60 players in the market (that still exist today). Today, we have a vetted list of over 200 vendors, with another 40 on our list to talk to. That’s a lot of choice.

To make it even more complicated, it’s more difficult to put vendors in boxes. Whereas offerings used to fall neatly in the LMS or Microlearning or Coaching categories, new technologies span many categories, making it harder for learning leaders to ensure the right solution without doubling up unnecessarily.

These expectations and choice have resulted in a sort of panic when it comes to the technology that enables employees to learn. Many leaders go after the new and shiny; many shy away from choices for fear of making the wrong ones; and many have failed to acknowledge the changes at all, instead opting for the traditional one-platform system with little deviation or addition.

For this research, we interviewed over 30 very thoughtful learning leaders about their learning tech ecosystems. They were incredibly generous with their time and candor, helping us to understand not only the challenges they face in choosing and implementing technologies, but their best ideas for doing it better.

What did we do with that information? We wrote a report. In it, we outline the findings of those 30+ interview and provide examples of real-life learning tech ecosystems and get their thoughts on how they should think about ecosystems, including their  philosophy, structure, sustainability, and evolution.

To access the report, click here.

The term “employee experience” is hot – in a global 2018 study of five hundred CHROs, 83% of organizational leaders emphasized a positive employee experience as crucial to organizational success.¹ There is also evidence that organizations with a strong employee experience have twice the innovation and customer satisfaction and higher profits than organizations with a weaker employee experience.²

However, despite this enthusiasm, there is not a lot of clarity on what the term means and what exactly organizations should do to improve it. We, therefore, began a study of this topic earlier this year. In this new report, The Four Levers of Employee Experience to Create Sustainable Results, sponsored by Medallia, we focused on one primary question:

How should organizations create a compelling, delighting, and sustainable employee experience that results in high-performing, satisfied employees and loyal customers?

Some of the Myths and Realities We Uncovered

Over the course of our investigation, we encountered some very strong perspectives on employee experience. Some of the “myths” we identified early on in the research are below – as well as the counter-balancing reality we discovered through our reading and interviews (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Myths and Realities of Employee Experience | Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

So, given the realities of employee experience, what should organizations do? Our research identified some very actionable steps organizations can take.

The Four Levers of Employee Experience

After analyzing the breadth of what we learned, we identified four critical levers of employee experience: a clear philosophy, a supportive culture, articulated accountability, and an aligned measurement approach (see Figure 2). When combined together, these four levers can have a powerful impact on employee experience.

Figure 2: The Four Levers of Employee Experience | Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

• A clear philosophy: Identifies a target audience and clearly defines employee experience and its relationship to employee engagement.
• A supportive culture: Anchors employee experience to the culture via employee-centric values, beliefs, and assumptions that reinforce five essential behaviors: collaboration, transparency, psychological safety, alignment, and feedback-sharing.
• Articulated accountability: Distributes responsibility for employee experience strategy and large-scale issues among senior leaders. It also centralizes responsibility among individual contributors for sharing meaningful feedback and among mid-level leaders for effectively responding to it.
• An aligned measurement approach: Takes into consideration an organization’s data analytics maturity and a clear data analytics strategy aligned to key business metrics.

The most progressive organizations we interviewed were able to use these four levers effectively to create a clear and compelling employee experience.

Within the report, we provide details on how organizations can approach each lever and provide numerous quotes and examples of organizations who have done each one well. While interviewed organizations’ outcomes varied based on what they were trying to influence, the below quote from Greg Pryor at Workday sums up nicely many of the themes we heard:

“Our first belief, and we think about our values in that order, is that happy employees enable happy customers. Happy customers want to innovate with us. The ability to have great innovation allows us to attract happy employees and do really interesting work, and that creates a virtuous cycle.”

Greg Pryor, senior VP of people and performance evangelist at Workday

For more on each lever – and examples of how companies have brought them to life – we encourage you to download and read the full report. You can also join us at Workday Rising, where we will share the full results of this research for the first time.

Excerpt from: Diversity & Inclusion Technology: The Rise of a Transformative Market

On the surface, technology seems like the magic bullet for helping conscientious companies combat D&I challenges. After all, we recognize that no people are truly free of bias, so why not rely on bias-free technology? That all seems perfect until we reflect on how software is created and chosen by those same biased people. So how should we think about AI in the context of D&I?

In our recent study with Mercer, we examined the emerging market for D&I tech, and we also tackled the question of AI and raised some questions about its inherent benefits and risks.

Here is an excerpt from that report which looks more closely at the role of AI in D&I:

The potential dangers of AI in D&I technologies—and some ways to address them

To debunk some of the myths associated with the use of these technologies, we’ve outlined the potential dangers and limitations of using AI when it comes to decision making. We’ve also suggested some considerations leaders can take into account, below to become better informed consumers of AI products.

Potential Dangers of Artificial Intelligence in D&I Applications:

• Decisions based on AI algorithms have grown in complexity (often lacking a clear logical flow that humans can understand), opaqueness (as of result of limited transparency, regulation, and accountability), ubiquity (AI has become mainstream), and exclusiveness (especially if developed by small and/or homogenous teams).
• There are increased concerns around algorithmic design stemming from inadvertent human biases that can embed unintended discriminatory features into the algorithm. Introducing diversity and inclusion principles into algorithmic outcomes can be difficult if said principles are not practiced before designing the algorithms because machine learning is based on existing data.
• In instances where there is limited human oversight and involvement in the development and/or implementation of AI technology, there may be limited transparency and accountability on how predictive tools reach their decisions. AI systems are like black boxes, making it hard to identify potential bias and analyze decisions reached by predictive tools.
• AI can amplify stereotypes, adversely impacting underrepresented and marginalized populations.
• Widespread use of AI has moved fast, with little scrutiny and oversight from regulatory bodies. The responsibility of upholding ethics is often in the hands of AI developers, which brings the need to establish and sustain a code of AI ethics to the forefront.

Five Key Considerations for Using D&I AI in Organizations:

1. Recognize that AI and algorithms are not neutral because they are created and trained by humans with innate biases. Therefore, make every effort to understand their full benefits and limitations. Ask D&I technology vendors if they conduct algorithmic audits and risk assessments to determine how their predictive tools reach decisions and their potential impact on underrepresented populations.
2. Become well-versed in understanding your D&I technology data by becoming aware of how D&I data is used, stored, and processed within algorithms. Use your internal HR and workforce analytics to monitor and better understand the impact of using D&I technologies on your specific organization.
3. Establish a governance process that maintains a holistic view across sources of data and algorithms.
4. Formalize and communicate a standard organizational framework that establishes a shared understanding of how and when your organization makes decisions stemming from AI technologies to ensure transparency and accountability among stakeholders.
5. Use artificial intelligence information directionally, as one piece of the larger puzzle, rather than as an absolute. Consider the macro-level picture of AI data by incorporating other sources of information to better substantiate your decisions.

How should organizations create a compelling, delighting, and sustainable employee experience?

Our latest study, The Four Levers of Employee Experience to Create Sustainable Results, highlights what we learned from progressive organizations and how they create an experience that results in highly satisfied, engaged, and loyal employees and customers.

RedThread Research would like to thank Medallia, our sponsor that made this research possible!

Get insights on:

• A clear and concise definition of employee experience and its relationship to employee engagement
• 4 levers for a holistic employee experience approach
• Leading employee experience practices from progressive organizations
• Specific behaviors and actions to foster a thriving employee experience environment

Over the last decade, organizational leaders have focused on changing performance management practices to better respond to what employees want and organizational realities require (e.g., disrupted business models, greater competition). Given all the changes, we thought it was high time for an investigation.

In our latest report, The Makings of Modern Performance, we examined the impact of new performance management practices and asked — were they actually the magical elixir to an organizations' problems?

Let's take a look at some of the key findings.

What’s not working in modern performance management

Turns out (surprise, surprise), that modern practices aren’t always having the impact we had hoped – but probably not for the reasons you are thinking.

In the early stages of the research, we learned there are a few things fundamentally broken when it comes to the way many people look at performance management practices (and HR practices more broadly). Here’s what we found:

• Many HR leaders tended to put too much weight on “best practices” versus identifying the broad levers that drive performance for their organization.
• There is an over-focus on process and an under-focus on the actual performance outcomes organizational leaders are trying to drive.
• There was a tendency, in this last performance management “revolution,” to throw the baby out with the bathwater, when it came to some core tenants of performance management, such as procedural fairness.

The three levers of effective performance management

So, what should organizations do instead? After an extensive literature review, of 50 academic and popular press articles, approximately 20 interviews with HR leaders, and a survey of 368 HR leaders and employees, we found some really compelling takeaways.

First, leaders need to be clear on the outcomes they most want to drive with their performance management and enablement practices. In our interviews we identified three that were of primary importance:

• Individual performance
• Organizational performance
• Employee engagement

Then, organizations should focus their efforts on the activities – which we call levers – that can drive each of those. Specifically, our research finds three levers (see Figure 1) that drive performance and engagement:

Figure 1: Three levers of modern performance management; Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

• Culture: While it’s often a nebulous concept, our research uncovered the importance of culture in performance management. More specifically, performance management practices should support a future-focused culture that values fairness and feedback.
• Capability of managers: As modern approaches to performance seem to hinge on the manager’s ability to conduct ongoing development and performance discussions, this lever is critical. Managers have to have to capabilities needed to move past evaluating performance and delegating tasks.
• Clarity: Employees have to understand what is expected of them in the near-term and in the long-run. Improving upon performance, over time, requires that organizations provide insight into current performance and development needs, but also help employees understand what will be required in the future for continued career success.

The impact of focusing on these levers is significant. For example, organizations that scored high on culture were 32% more likely to experience high employee engagement and 97% more likely to experience high organizational performance. In the report, we identified significant levels of impact across the other levers as well.

In the report, we dive into each lever and discuss themes that are especially critical in each. For example, within culture, organizations should pay particular attention to providing fairness, feedback, and a focus on the future. We also provide examples of practices from our quantitative data that illustrate the different ways that organizations could align to the lever.

Learn more

For more on each lever we uncovered in this research we encourage you to download and read the full report.

This year’s HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas was optimistic and enthusiastic, brimming with talk of humanizing work, improving the employee experience, and ever-increasing vendor growth rates. If you want to see what folks thought in general, check out #hrtechconf on Twitter.

As we left the show, we captured a few of the things that struck us from the show (admittedly, we saw relatively little) and our 30+ vendor meetings:

• D&I Tech: Given that we started the D&I tech conversation a year ago at this show, we are perhaps a bit biased on this one in thinking that it is important. However, the fact that a session on this topic in the Women in Technology part of the show had hundreds of people in it (see picture above) shows the incredible interest in the topic. That said, we were extremely disappointed that the conversation did not focus on the broader D&I tech landscape of solutions, and instead was largely focused on two types of technology that serve traditional D&I needs: pay equity and harassment reporting. We wish the conversation had focused more on the opportunity of D&I tech, which is to scale awareness of D&I-related issues and provide insight during critical decision-making moments (e.g., hiring, performance feedback, promotion).
• Ecosystems and integrations: We’ve never heard as much talk about how vendors fit within the broader HR technology ecosystem as we did at this show. (Granted, Dani spent part of her session talking about learning technology ecosystems, so it was top of mind.) However, almost every vendor we spoke with talked to us about how they fit within the ecosystem of others in their space, the partnerships they are building, and the need for better and more scalable integrations. We also heard more about how vendors are being asked by customers to “figure it out” with vendors they may not have worked with in the past, putting a new pressure on partnerships and (quite frankly) flexibility among the vendors.
• Skills: The subject of skilling (or re-skilling or up-skilling) the workforce is a huge one, and we heard about it from many different vendors. There are a range of perspectives on how to measure skills and what can be done with that information (e.g., workforce planning, learning approaches, career mapping resources, internal project or job marketplaces). We are still not confident that any vendors have cracked the question of how to skill the workforce for the future, but at least folks are thinking about it.

We were asked by many vendors for advice on what they should do moving forward. Here are a few of the themes we touched on:

• Stop asking employees for information you can get somewhere else: Nearly every vendor in the expo hall is asking employees for data, many via surveys (and as we said, no matter how pretty it is, no one wants to take another survey). Yet, vendors are able to access more latent (existing) data from internal systems and external (public) sources than ever before and our technologies for analyzing that information have never been more powerful. Vendors need to break out of the habit of asking employees to give them information and instead ask: “How else can we get the information or insight we are seeking?” And then build that capability, whatever it is.
• Push more insights down to employees: Building on the previous point, we are pulling together more data and insights on employees than ever before, but it seems that the primary purpose is to give it to management to manage the business better. While that is all well and good, it is not enough, as it limits insights, decision-making, and action to management, who often serve as a bottleneck to change. Instead, organizations need to provide more information to employees so that they can better understand what is happening and adjust their work and behavior accordingly.
• Build for the future, not tomorrow: It may sound overly grandiose, but we believe we are at an inflection point in many ways with HR technology, where we are building truly revolutionary tools that will influence generations to come. To that end, we are encouraging vendors to think beyond the short-term when it comes to their product vision. For example, don’t focus just on skilling the workforce with a certain set of skills we think will be useful, but instead focus on helping organizations create environments where people are constantly encouraged to learn whatever skills are necessary. Or, as another example, identify ethical standards for people analytics – even if it may limit what can be done in the short term – so that we can set a solid foundation of trust so we can do more interesting and profound analyses in the future.

What do you think? We’d love your reactions or questions about what we’ve written and – for those of you who attended – we’d like your own reflections on your experience in the comments.

Finally, we want to thank those of you who were able to attend Dani or Stacia's sessions. Please feel free to reach out if you'd like a copy of our presentations ([email protected]).

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