In the recent years, there has been a lot of attention that is being given to employee feedback, performance reviews and evaluation as a part of the whole performance management system. 

While a major focus has been to prepare managers to give feedback in a constructive and effective manner, paying attention to employee self evaluation is equally important. Knowing what self appraisal comments to use can play a major role in helping employees to effectively reflect and evaluate their performance and convey it effectively to the rest of the team. 

Purpose of self appraisal

The purposes of employee evaluation and performance review in general have been talked about time and again. However, self appraisal takes the process of evaluation at a very personal and individual level, leading to a more pronounced understanding of an employee’s performance. Some of the top benefits of employee self assessment include:

• Getting a true reflection of the contribution an employee perceives he/she has made to the organization
• Ensuring that the employee formally makes an effort to evaluate their developmental areas
• Facilitating self awareness for employees to ensure they are able to see the true picture
• Helping the employees navigate their next steps in the professional journey

Read: Employee self assessment: How to write a great one 

Benefits of self appraisal for the team and manager

In the section above, we have talked about the purpose or the need of self evaluation mostly from the perspective of the employee. However, self appraisal, when done correctly, has equally compelling benefits for the team as well as managers. A quick snapshot is captured below:

1. Higher engagement

With self appraisal, employees become active participants in their review and appraisal process, rather than simply being passive recipients. Consequently, they feel valued, motivated and the level of engagement increases. Furthermore, with greater engagement, levels of commitment, retention and productivity go up. 

2. Greater alignment

When employees take a step back to reflect on their performance with self appraisal, they become more receptive to diverse ideas. Put simply, in the absence of self reflection, they will have a hard time gauging where they need to improve. Consequently, they will be defensive when a manager or the team gives them feedback on the same. However, self evaluation will help them accept the gaps and be open to learning and growing. 

3. Development of a problem solving mindset

When employees reflect on their performance and identify the development areas, they will don a problem solving hat on to accelerate their professional journey. Through the course of time, this problem solving attribute will become a part of their skill set which will benefit the team and the manager greatly. 

4. Higher accountability

As a result of greater alignment due to self reflection on the strengths and areas of development, teams will see a greater sense of accountability to bridge the gaps identified. Under conventional circumstances, performance improvement might be seen as just a tick in the box by employees. However, after self appraisal, employees truly acknowledge and accept the need to bridge those gaps and take greater ownership and accountability. 

Download the printable Self Assessment Template and take the best practices to where you work. Click Here

100+ self appraisal comments 

Now that you have an understanding of why self appraisal matters, let’s quickly look at how to make it most effective. If you are experimenting with self evaluation for the first time, it can be an overwhelming activity for your employees. It is human nature to feel uneasy when you’re expected to evaluate your own performance. However, if you provide your employees with some comments they can use for self evaluation as a starting point, you can make the journey easier for them. 

Put simply, self appraisal comments are common statements that can be customized by your employees during the self evaluation process, especially, if they find themselves at a loss of words to describe their performance

These phrases are available for both strengths and areas of development to help employees paint a realistic picture of their performance. Here are the top 100 self appraisal phrases that you can use for different performance parameters.

1. Communication phrases

Use these self phrases to reflect on your clarity of communication, willingness to listen to others, etc. 

Positive self appraisal comments

1. I am able to clearly share my ideas and opinions with the team 
2. I keep my team members duly informed about my work and progress
3. I ensure that I respond to all emails in a timely and professional manner
4. I actively listen to and comprehend what others have to say
5. I excel at storytelling and presenting my ideas in front of a large audience

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

6. I find it difficult to get the right words to express my views
7. I am able to write down my thoughts well, but struggle to communicate them verbally
8. I hesitate in communicating my ideas to the top leadership
9. I get overwhelmed when I have to present to a large group
10. I need to work more on my email writing skills

2. Reliability phrases

These self evaluation phrases reflect how reliable or dependable you are for your team members, especially under special circumstances.

Positive self appraisal comments

11. I diligently follow up on the work allotted to me
12. I have been able to meet 80% of the deadlines and have proactively informed about delays with the reason for all other times
13. I promptly respond to emails 
14. I have an organized to-do list to ensure no work falls through the cracks
15. I ensure high quality of work consistently

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

16. I struggle to meet the deadlines more than 60% of the times
17. I find it hard to deal with multiple tasks at once
18. I get overwhelmed when the entire project depends upon me
19. My goal is to deliver at least 70% of the projects on time
20. I seek to be more proactive in communicating any delays to the leadership team

3. Ownership and initiative phrases

Using these self appraisal phrases can help indicate how invested or engaged you are in taking ownership of work without being asked to at times. 

Positive self appraisal comments

21. I like to participate in activities beyond my KRAs
22. I have taken ownership of at least 40% new projects allocated to our team
23. I am the first person in the team to raise my hand for something new
24. I enjoy spending 15-20% of my time on projects that I manage end to end
25. I took the ownership of the biggest client last quarter and the sales went up by 10%

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

26. I often shy away from taking responsibility and ownership of any project
27. I restrain myself to being a contributor than taking ownership and managing projects
28. I intend to take ownership of at least 1 new project in the next quarter
29. I find it difficult to take part in activities beyond my defined work
30. I intend to seek support from my manager to help me in getting over the phobia of underperforming when given the ownership 

4. Attendance phrases

The following self appraisal comments are important to help review your performance on the basis of how punctual and attentive you are.

Positive self appraisal comments

31. I always arrive office on time
32. I attend all meetings and inform in advance in case I am not able to attend any
33. I respect other people’s time and ensure that all my meetings start and end on time
34. I plan my time off in advance and inform my team members about the same
35. I do not take unnecessary breaks during office hours

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

36. I seek to be on work every time, and bridge the occasional gap that exists right now
37. I intend to plan all my vacation days in advance
38. I will ensure that I plan my meetings in advance with a clear agenda to ensure they don’t last longer than intended
39. I sometimes get carried away during breaks, I will ensure that I adhere to the break schedules
40. I will account for different factors and leave house early to reach office on time

If you forgot to download the template, here's the link for you again: Self Appraisal Template & Form

5. Teamwork phrases

Use these self evaluation phrases when you want to highlight your strengths/ areas of improvement of working with the team, your collaboration skills, etc.

Positive self appraisal comments

41. I go out of the way to ensure that my team members are able to deliver their best
42. I actively seek inputs from all team members on every project
43. I actively participate in brainstorming sessions and team discussions
44. I encourage other team members to share their perspectives
45. I get along with almost everyone in the team

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

46. I find it a little difficult to mix up with all the team members
47. I will work on my confidence to share my ideas with the team
48. Occasionally, I tend to overlook the ideas shared by others, which I will work towards
49. I will focus on delegating work correctly to ensure maximum impact
50. I will attend most of the team meetings and participate actively

6. Creativity phrases

Creativity self appraisal comments can help you in reflecting on how effectively you are able to come up with novel and innovative solutions to challenges and new ideas to augment the impact and value created.

Positive self appraisal comments

51. I am able to pivot my priorities and come up with new ideas based on changes in a project requirement
52. I like to experiment with new ways of addressing a problem 
53. In the last quarter, I came up with a new marketing solution that increased our organic traffic by 15%
54. I am able to think out of the box even in pressure situations
55. While I rely on standard processes, I am not afraid of taking the risk to try something unique that can lead to better results

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

56. Occasionally, I find it difficult to break free from the established process for any task
57. I feel that at times, I restrain my creativity in the face of practicality
58. In the next quarter, I will focus on accepting new ideas and ways of work
59. Sometimes I make the situation more complex by adding too much creativity, when only a simple solution is needed
60. I tend to shy away from sharing my innovative solutions, preventing higher impact

Similar Read: 150+ performance review phrases for managers

7. Attention to detail phrases

The following phrase can create a picture of your quality of work and how much attention you pay while undertaking a particular task during your self reflection process. 

Positive self appraisal comments

61. I check all my work at least 3 times before submitting
62. I have a detailed to do list to ensure nothing falls through the cracks
63. Most of the work I deliver has negligible errors
64. I am extremely patient with each project I work on to deliver the best
65. I ensure delivering consistent quality of work in at least 90% of the projects

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

66. When I am working on multiple projects, I tend to miss out on attention to detail
67. Occasionally, when I am in a hurry, I tend to overlook minor errors
68. I miss proofreading my work at times
69. I find it hard to prioritize work, leading to some inaccuracies at times
70. I aspire to become more organized in the near future to ensure all requirements are taken care of

8. Job knowledge phrases

You can use these self appraisal comments to illustrate how well you understand what is expected out of you and how well you are able to deliver on the same. 

Positive self appraisal comments

71. I have a clear understanding of what I am expected to do as a part of my role
72. I understand the value my work is able to contribute to the overall organizational success
73. I was able to meet 80% of my OKRs in the last quarter
74. I stay updated on the latest trends and insights in my field
75. I take up training and upskilling every quarter to stay relevant for my role

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

76. Due to a multifunctional role, I find it difficult at times to understand the expectations
77. I sometimes struggle to explain to others what I do
78. I am not sure how I am able to create an impact for the organization
79. I seek to increase meeting my job expectations by meeting at least 70% OKRs in the next quarter
80. Occasionally, I find myself unprepared for the role, and plan to take up courses to address the same

9. Customer satisfaction phrases

Customer satisfaction self evaluation performance phrases help gauge how effectively you are able to address customer requests or complaints that leads to a higher Net Promoter Score, brand credibility, etc. 

Positive self appraisal comments

81. I respond to all customer queries within 24 hours
82. I have been constantly receiving high remarks on customer satisfaction surveys 
83. I am always calm and patient when dealing with customer complaints
84. I have been able to increase the customer lifetime value for my customers by 15% in the last year
85. I am able to answer difficult questions for customers in a professional manner

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

86. At times, I find it difficult to respond to customers in a timely manner
87. I intend to ensure that I become more patient while dealing with customer complaints
88. I sometimes get overwhelmed when a customer raises an objection, which I seek to overcome
89. While I am able to handle customer service over phone/email, I intend to achieve the same for in-person customers
90. I intend to improve my score on customer satisfaction surveys by at least 10% in this quarter

10. Growth and development phrases

Finally, these self-appraisal comments can help you highlight your growth plans towards your professional development and impact on the organization.

Positive self appraisal comments

91. I set personal growth plans every month to ensure a healthy balance
92. I have taken 2 trainings in the past quarter
93. I have a clear 5 year vision for my career and am taking ‘abc’ steps towards it
94. By the end of the year, I plan to complete 5 trainings in my domain
95. I believe learning and development is integral to success

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

96. I sometimes find it difficult to make time to upskill myself
97. In this quarter, I will try to take up at least two courses on technical skills
98. I struggle to identify the right courses for my skill set
99. I tend to leave trainings in between occasionally
100. In this quarter, I will focus on creating a professional development plan for myself

Self appraisal template 

With a broad understanding of the more than 100+ self appraisal comments that you can use as a part of your self evaluation process, let’s move to this concluding section. Here, we will focus on sharing a few templates that employees can use to articulate their performance in an effective manner. 

The self evaluation phrases mentioned above can be added at the right places in these templates to give a holistic picture of one’s performance. A few things to focus on include:

• What you did
• What was the result
• What was the overall impact
• What were your learnings
• What are some areas of improvement

You can download this in PDF here:  Customizable Self Evaluation Template

Template 1: Positive impact

In the last <performance period>, I have successfully <activity/ initiative undertaken> which led to <tangible impact (metrics)> for the organization. 

My focus was on <a detailed view of everything that was done> which resulted in <accomplishments>. 

Overall, I believe that I have been able to create an impact by achieving <top 3 achievements> and seek to amplify the same in the future. 

Template 2: Areas of improvement

I believe that the last <performance period> has been full of learning and development for me. 

While I was able to <quick snapshot of achievements>, I acknowledge that I need to pay attention to <areas of improvement>. 

I believe that this focus will help me <intended outcome for improvement>. 

Towards this, I will ensure that I consistently work towards <improvement plan (courses, behavioral changes)> to achieve <SMART goal>. 

Wrapping Up

That said, self appraisal is an extremely crucial step of performance review. As a manager you must encourage your team members to provide honest reflection on their performance without being afraid of any negative consequences. Apart from providing the self appraisal comments mentioned above, you can also use assessment tools to make self appraisal a common practice within the organization. 

Custom Pulse Surveys by SuperBeings can help you with understanding their needs and help you support them better. If interested, book a free demo today.

Suggested Reading

Employee Self Assessment: How to write a great one

150+ performance review phrases for managers

How to use custom pulse surveys to enhance employee experience

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Holistic performance reviews are integral for any organization that seeks to create a high performance culture. However, the nature of performance appraisals has undergone significant transformation with a focus on 360 feedback and review. 

One of the key pillars for the same is employee self assessment and self appraisal. Through the course of this article, we will share with you why self assessment is important and how you, as a manager, can help your employees get it right to facilitate maximum impact. 

Decoding the meaning and importance of self assessment

As the name suggests, employee self assessment or self reflection is the practice or process where employees reflect on and assess their performance over a period of time to identify accomplishments, development areas and other performance aspects

The aim of self assessment is to get the employees’ view of their performance and add the information and data to manager and peer feedback. This can enable organizations to get a holistic understanding of the employee performance and gauge the overall contribution, some of which might be invisible from a macro view. Here are a few reasons why employee self assessment as a tool for performance review makes sense for growing organization:

• Understand employee’s side of the performance story on what has been their greatest contribution, blockers, development areas, etc. 
• Gauge aspirations of the employees to align OKRs and engagement plans to facilitate high levels of performance
• Enable employees to reflect on their contribution as well as challenges faced by them to get an understanding of where they stand in the overall organizational vision
• Help managers gauge employee strengths and identify accomplishments that may not be overtly visible
• Empower managers to bridge the gap between their perception of the employee performance and the self reflection of the employee 

When is the ideal time for employee self assessment?

With the rise of continuous performance management and regular review and appraisal, your self assessment process should follow a similar approach. 

Instead of pushing employees to assess and reflect on their performance at the end of the year, you should encourage them to conduct regular self assessment

On one hand, regular and continuous performance linked self appraisal by employees will ensure that no part of their performance goes unnoticed. On the other hand, it will constantly give them a chance to reflect on their performance and improve on the development areas on the go, instead of waiting for the year end. Invariably, they will embark on the path of development and improvement at an accelerated pace. 

Here, if you leverage employee pulse surveys which are short and frequent in nature, you can ensure consistent and continuous self reflection from employees. With as frequent as one question a day, you can encourage your employees to build a culture of performance-oriented self assessment. 

Download ready to use customizable Self Evaluation Template and make writing self appraisals easier

How can employees get self assessment right

With self assessment and reflection being a fairly new practice to performance management, many organizations and employees struggle with getting it right. 

While some believe that employees might see it as a chance to explain their bad performance, others believe that it might end up biasing the manager’s perspective. 

However, when done right, employee self assessment can be an extremely powerful tool to facilitate a high performance culture. Here are a few tips to get your employees conduct performance self assessment the right way:

1. Be open and honest

Encourage your employees to be open and honest. Employees must not see self assessment as a place for self aggrandizing in the hope of a better rating, rather an honest assessment of one’s performance. 

For self evaluation to be effective, your employees need to reflect on their performance without the worry of being penalized for identifying areas of development and improvement 

It is important to not see self assessment as the sole foundation for promotions and appraisals, but rather as a journey towards growth. 

2. Reflect on the OKRs

Next, persuade your employees to reflect on their OKR performance. The idea is not only to assess what has been achieved with OKR grading. It should also include reflections from OKRs about the possible enablers and blockers to further refine them for the next performance period. The employee must be guided to reflect on what helped achieve the OKRs and what other support is required as well as what he or she would personally like to work towards. 

Download: Free OKR grading template

3. Incorporate feedback from managers and peers

Third, when self assessing for performance review, employees must incorporate feedback from their conversations with managers and peers. If your organization has a culture of regular 1:1s, this will be very easy for your workforce. The idea here is to motivate your employees to reflect on what feedback they have been able to gauge and whether or not according to them their performance is a reflection of the same. 360 degree feedback can also be a helpful tool for employees to understand all aspects of their performance.

Factors like what did the manager praise about their performance or what did a coworker thank them for are very important for self assessment. 

Read: Top 50 1:1 meeting questions for great managers

4. Identify challenges and opportunities

Finally, as a part of performance review self assessment, employees need to reflect on the challenges and opportunities, both internal and external. Internally, they need to assess their attributes, skill sets and aspirations and align them with the expectations to gauge their level of performance. Similarly, external factors like resources, team support and their impact on performance needs to be documented. 

Best practices to write employee self assessment

When you share these above mentioned tips with your team members, they are bound to ask questions about the best practices for writing or filling up self assessment surveys in the most effective way. We have you covered for that as well. Here are a few quick tips to help your employees write effective self assessment:

• Be focused and get to the point of reflecting on your performance quickly
• Do not shy away from appreciating or praising yourself, be an advocate for yourself
• Illustrate your USP as a part of your team i.e. be specific about what sets you apart
• Clearly highlight your contribution — towards a project, to overall team work, etc.
• Use figures and data wherever possible
• Highlight the impact of your work, it could be in the form of more sales, stronger pipeline, etc. depending on your role
• Reflect on your OKRs to see what you were able to achieve and what you couldn’t, document the reasons
• Clearly mention your development areas, it will help your managers see that you are open to suggestions

Read: How to go from performance management to employee development 

Employee self assessment questions and templates

If you look at these best practices closely, you will realize that the key to writing effective self assessment also lies in the questions that you ask. 

Simply asking an open ended question like reflecting on your performance will seldom yield any substantial responses, mainly because your team members will struggle with starting their answers

Therefore, we have compiled a list of questions and potential answer prompts/ templates to help you make self assessment a part of your performance review process effectively.

Top 10 self appraisal questions

1. What are the key responsibilities you have taken up in the past <performance period>?
2. How would you describe your performance in the said period?
3. What have been your greatest accomplishments?
4. What are the top 3 skills that have helped you excel professionally?
5. What are a few skills that you would like to work on in the next 3-6 months?
6. Have your goals changed over the past <performance period>? If yes, how?
7. Have you been able to achieve your set goals?
8. How do you plan to achieve your goals for the next <performance period>?
9. What are some development areas that you have identified for yourself in the past <performance period>?
10. How would achieving your goals impact your professional journey as well as the organization?

Also read: 150+ useful performance review phrases to start using today

Top 10 employee self assessment answer prompts

1. I have been able to increase sales by x%
2. I have maintained a response time of 24 hours for all stakeholders
3. I helped and supported the efforts of an external team to help them reach their targets 
4. I appraise my team members of my targets and updates on a weekly basis
5. I exceeded my target by y%
6. I believe I would benefit from <improvement area>
7. In the coming months, I would like to focus more on <skills> to ensure <impact>
8. I would like to do more of <development area>
9. I believe refining my <development area> will help me leverage my <strength> better
10. I wish to achieve <goal> and would work towards <development area> for the same

Role of managers in facilitating effective employee self assessment

Ensuring impact with self assessment is not only dependent on your team members. There are several ways in which managers of an organization can help build a culture of effective self evaluation. 

Create an open culture where employee self reflection does not become the sole tool to penalize or promote employees, see it as an extended glimpse of performance

• Encourage your team members to reflect on their performance without the fear of it being used against them
• Provide constant and regular feedback to enable employees to reflect on their performance in real time
• Use the right tools to make employee self assessment a common practice across the organization
• Do not comment on the self assessment for any employee as it being correct or incorrect
• Create a dialogue around the self evaluation to understand the employee better and deliberate on each point, don’t assume

Wrapping up

As we come to an end, it is clear that employee self assessments are an integral part of performance reviews and if conducted in the right manner have the potential to drive a high performing culture. However, we understand that administering and facilitating participation for self assessment can be daunting, especially for a growing organization. 

Fortunately, custom pulse surveys by SuperBeings with automated sending and reminders, along with NLP based sentiment analysis can take care of the same for you. If interested, book a free demo today to learn more. 

Suggested Reading

100+ most useful self appraisal comments you must know

How to use custom pulse surveys to enhance employee experience

How 360 degree feedback can help managers

Reviews can be overwhelming for those giving it as well as those receiving it. 

As a manager, you need to ensure that the performance review phrases and comments you use create the delicate balance between providing critical feedback covering areas of improvement and ensuring a positive attitude to motivate the employees

To make the entire process effective, we have compiled a list of 150+ performance review phrases and captions that you can use with a list of phrases to avoid and best practices for providing reviews on areas of improvement. 

How to use performance review phrases 

Before we jump onto the review phrase examples that you could use, let’s discuss how you should use them to ensure maximum efficacy.

• Don’t use generic phrases or buzzwords for all performance reviews
• Make the reviews personalized for each employee
• Add context or quantify the review phrases with information and data points relevant to the employee
• Use performance phrases that are context specific 
• Leverage performance review phrases to identify key behaviors for each segment of performance appraisal

Read: Top 10 performance review tips for managers that actually work

Which performance review phrases should you avoid 

While the intent of employee review phrases is to provide appropriate feedback to the employees, there are certain practices and comments that you should avoid. Often, using such phrases will dilute the impact of your conversation. To ensure high levels of effectiveness, you should avoid:

1. Being vague

Steer away from using cliched review phrases which don’t have any substance or communicate impact like ‘Mr. A is an excellent communicator’

This is a generic statement. You should rather use phrases that add value to the statement like ‘Mr. A doesn’t shy away from asking questions in case he has doubts about the conversation.’

2. Comparing two colleagues

You need to ensure that your performance review phrases do not hint on any level of comparison between two employees.

Avoid statements like, ‘Ms. P was able to close 10 deals in 6 months, however, you closed only 6.’

3. Being absolute

On whichever side of the spectrum your performance review falls, ensure that your phrases are not absolute. Put simply, you should stay away from comments that include the terms Always/Never. Even if you want to show incidence of more than one time, use terms like seldom/frequently. 

For instance, avoid phrases like, ‘Mr. Q never speaks up during meetings.’

4. Humiliating or downgrading the employees

The intent of using performance review phrases is to ensure that you are able to communicate your feedback in the most meaningful manner

Using statements that humiliate or look down upon the employees defeats the purpose. Ensure that your statements have a constructive tone to them.

It is best to negate statements like, ‘Ms. L is the worst person on the team, she can never get anything right.’

5. Being uncertain

Finally, be very firm and sure of the performance review phrases you use. 

Terms like maybe, I am not sure, etc. will downplay the impact because the employee will get a sense of your uncertainty and may not take the feedback very seriously

Avoid using phrases like ‘I think Mr. G has been outperforming his targets for the last 3 months.’

How to provide reviews on areas of improvements

Not all instances where you will use performance review phrases will be completely positive in nature. Rather, there will be multiple instances when you will have to talk about the areas of improvement for your employees if you really want to see them grow. However, delivering reviews on the latter can be overwhelming. Fortunately, the following tips can help you be well prepared for it.

1. Be specific

Don’t throw random generic statements when you want to speak of areas of improvement. It may seem a good way to avoid confrontation, but you will end up not yielding any impact. 

For instance, instead of saying, ‘You did not perform well’, use statements like ‘Your performance in the last project was not upto the mark due to several missed deadlines’

2. Be regular

Next, if you are providing review or feedback for areas of improvement, try to make it as soon as possible, once you identify the challenge. The sooner you share the review, the more relevant it will be. 

For instance, saying, ‘Mr. X did not meet sales targets in the first quarter’ when you are sitting in the last quarter will not yield much impact. 

3. Try to not get personal

Finally, ensure that the performance review phrases you use do not come across as a personal attack on your employees. They should focus on the behavior or attribute you wish to talk about and not the person specifically. 

For instance, instead of commentating ‘You are not serious about your work’ use statements like ‘Your performance in the last quarter indicates a lack of taking ownership’

150+ useful performance review phrases 

Let’s quickly walk through the top 150+ performance review phrases that you can use for performance management and feedback for your employees. We have categorized them under specific performance aspects to make them easier to comprehend. 

1) Quality Of Work Performance Review Phrases

You can use these phrases to describe your assessment of whether or not the quality of work has been as per company standards. 

Generally, quality of work is intrinsically linked to high levels of motivation, commitment and productivity

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

1. Has an exceptional attention to detail
2. Consistently follows up and prevents work from falling through cracks
3. Work is well researched and articulated
4. Double checks the work before submitting
5. Maintains a proper plan to ensure nothing is missed

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

6. More focus is needed to ensure greater accuracy
7. Has been inconsistent in the quality of work delivered
8. Needs to put more effort into producing reports that are error free
9. Doesn’t follow an established process of completion and checking of work

2) Job Knowledge Performance Review Phrases

Every role or job comes with a set of expectations and responsibilities. If an employee is foggy on this understanding, chances are high that he or she will be unable to deliver as per expectations.

Clear job knowledge will help employees set clear expectations of themselves and ensure effective performance  

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

10. Has been able to translate strategy into results
11. Is able to address organizational challenges with technical knowledge
12. Was able to yield 10% higher sales by leveraging new techniques
13. Keen to upskill in the domain of operation
14. Understands the changing job requirements and is willing to adapt

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

15. Is not able to meet changing market expectations
16. Has not been willing to take on opportunities to learn new skills required
17. Unable to provide technical solutions to the problems at hand
18. Is unsure of the skills required for the job

3) Attention To Detail Performance Review Phrases

Attention to detail is a subset of quality of work and is critical for most roles.

Employees that have high levels of attention to detail are often more proactive and deliver error free work

On the other hand, a lack of the same leads to a high number of inaccuracies.

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

19. Displays high levels of patience
20. Is highly organized and ensures clarification at every stage
21. Produces work that requires minimal iterations
22. Maintains a checklist to ensure everything is delivered on time
23. Undertakes multiple rounds of proofreading before delivery

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

24. Delivers unreliable or incomplete output frequently
25. Tries to focus on multiple projects at once
26. Tends to overlook requirements in an attempt to complete work on time
27. Doesn’t spend adequate time on details

4) Dependability Performance Review Phrases

As a performance component, dependability refers to the degree to which you can rely upon your employees to deliver quality work consistently and put in extra effort if the need arises 

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

28. Displays high level of performance every day
29. Has shown time and again that he/she can be counted on during uncertain times
30. Doesn’t shy away from commitment to handle multiple projects
31. Doesn’t complain if the need arises to put in extra hours at times
32. Ensures high quality of work consistently

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

33. Is seen struggling with keeping up with deadlines
34. Rarely delivers what is agreed upon
35. Tends to shift ownership to others 
36. Takes leave of absence without prior intimation regularly

5) Initiative Performance Review Phrases

Initiative is an attribute that is exhibited by only a few employees who take ownership of getting things done without being asked to. 

Initiative is generally found among employees that feel a sense of affinity towards the vision and values of the organization and seek to make an impact

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

37. Proactively sets goals and OKRs for oneself
38. Participates in activities that goes beyond KRA
39. Often tries to engage in areas to deliver more value
40. Constantly takes ownership of new projects and assignments
41. Is willing to go out of the way to help others

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

42. Requires constant reminders and supervision
43. Resists taking on new responsibilities and participating in activities
44. Unwilling to set goals and add value to projects
45. Barely completes the work allotted to him/her

Read: How often should you conduct performance reviews

6) Teamwork and Collaboration Performance Review Phrases 

When you are working in an organization, you seldom work in silos. You often have to collaborate, co-create and collectively work with your team members towards a shared goal. An employee can be a great individual contributor but may not excel in teamwork. However, high levels of teamwork and collaboration lead to greater engagement, commitment and a positive culture. 

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

46. Was active in seeking inputs from all team members during the last project
47. Has shown proficiency in delegating tasks and following up
48. Has been actively participating in all brainstorming sessions
49. Facilitates unity in the team by promoting open communication 
50. Has built a rapport with everyone in the team

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

51. Has a poor record of showing up for team meetings
52. Does not willingly share ideas or feedback with others in the team
53. Rarely encourages colleagues and is less than willing to seek feedback
54. Is unable to delegate work in an effective manner

7) Productivity Performance Review Phrases

Productivity refers to the output an employee is able to deliver, both in terms of quality and quantity. Employees that show high levels of productivity are an asset to the organization. Providing regular performance feedback on productivity can enhance the same by making employees aware about the gaps. 

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

55. Constantly delivers on or before time
56. Has been instrumental in meeting targets in the last quarter
57. Ensures minimal distractions to deliver volumes of high quality work
58. Focuses on using tools and techniques to work in a smart way
59. Achieved sales target 5 days ahead of time for the last month

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

60. Has been asking for extensions on deadlines
61. Unable to focus attention on work for a long time, leading to below average delivery
62. Lacks organizational skills leading to little progress in productivity
63. Has shown reluctance to work on new projects

8) Attendance Performance Review Phrases

While it is true that employees must be given adequate time off, taking leave of absence very frequently and without prior notice can impact an organization in more than one way.

‍Attendance is not limited to showing up at work, but also permeates to meetings, sessions and learning initiatives. It is an overt display of commitment and engagement and low levels can be an indication of potential attrition

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

64. Consistently shows up for meetings on time
65. Doesn’t take unnecessary breaks during work hours
66. Informs about time off well in advance
67. Ensures things are managed well with Out Of Office (OOO) automatic emails when not available
68. Doesn’t make others wait for a pre-scheduled meeting

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

69. Shows up late or is a no show during workshops
70. Does not take initiative to respond to meeting invites
71. Spends excessive time on non-productive things during work hours
72. Extends meetings unnecessarily

9) Communication Performance Review Phrases

Poor communication among employees can lead to misunderstanding, high stress, poor company morale and much more. On the flip side, streamlined communication results in greater engagement and a better experience. Constant feedback on communication can help prevent instances of miscommunication and clarity at all levels.

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

73. Is able to communicate his/her ideas in a concise yet informative manner
74. Consistently asks questions in case there is any confusion
75. Ensures the every point he/she makes is relevant and well articulated
76. Doesn’t shy away from starting a conversation, especially on a difficult topic
77. Is not afraid of saying “let me get back to you”, when he/she is not sure of the answer

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

78. Has been observed using language that is not welcome by others
79. Is unwilling to listen to others/ take feedback
80. Avoids meaningful conversations
81. Is often verbose and written communication is not clear

10) Integrity Performance Review Phrases

Employees with high levels of integrity often align with strong moral values and believe in ethical business practices. 

Guiding integrity through performance review statements can help build an attractive and reputable employer brand for the organization

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

82. Ensures that commitment is adhered to
83. Makes an effort to do what is right
84. Does not take the easy way out
85. Maintains a high level of discipline, confidentiality and ethics at work
86. Follows business principles diligently

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

87. Indulges in office gossip
88. Doesn’t give in 100% if left unsupervised
89. Tries to pin blame on others and makes comments in the process
90. Is found breaking rules on more than one occasion 

11) Leadership Performance Review Phrases

Leadership as a quality is integral for your employees if you seek to build a healthy succession pipeline

Reviews on leadership capabilities can help budding leaders build the right skills, competencies and attitudes to take up new roles and positions without any challenge. 

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

91. Successfully led the last team project and recorded 15% increase in sales
92. Provides meaningful feedback to peers and colleagues with clear actions
93. Deals with people with empathy and compassion
94. Encourages team members to unlock full potential
95. Helps others when they are stuck in work 

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

96. Rarely shows appreciation or acknowledges others
97. Doesn’t set a positive and authentic example for others
98. Creates a culture of shifting accountability and fear
99. Lacks the willingness and skills to delegate work

Read: Top 7 tips to improve leadership effectiveness 

12) Problem Solving Performance Review Phrases

Problem solving is one of the most critical skills for the 21st century. Employees no longer have to just undertake repetitive tasks, but have to indulge in critical thinking to address real world challenges. 

Creating a culture of problem solving can help you ensure resilience and business continuity even during uncertainty and ambiguity

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

100. Proactively suggests new and innovative solutions to problems
101. Always comes with a few solutions to the management when a challenge arises
102. Views problems as opportunities 
103. Helped address a customer complaint leading to 10% increase in customer stickiness
104. Is good at preempting and evaluating challenges

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

105. Rarely comes up with ideas or suggestions during brainstorming sessions
106. Sticks to the processes and practices and shies away from experimentation
107. Fails to comprehensively understand the problem
108. Is hesitant to change the conventional flow of processes and work

13) Adaptability Performance Review Phrases

Surrounded by uncertain market conditions, employees need to display high levels of adaptability. Be it picking up new skills, or pivoting priorities as the need arises, adaptability is highly critical today. Consistent feedback on adaptability can help employees gauge the importance of this quality and focus on developing the same. 

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

109. Is willing to adjust priorities, deadlines based on changed realities
110. Thinks on the feet and quickly responds to a new challenge
111. Believes change can lead to better outcomes
112. Upskilled himself/herself in 3 months to deliver the last project successfully
113. Makes conscious effort to remain agile

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

114. Is reluctant to move out of the comfort zone
115. Feels overwhelmed when asked to adjust priorities and take on new work
116. Unable to maintain calm and composure when uncertainty strikes
117. Rarely attends sessions on change management

14) Flexibility Performance Review Phrases

Close to adaptability lies the quality of flexibility to describe employees who are not rigid and set in their own ways. They are open to new ideas and are willing to accommodate in case the need arises.

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

118. Has a positive attitude when there is a need to accommodate or change
119. Shows proactiveness in case of urgent changes 
120. Is willing to embrace change
121. Adjusts well with new responsibilities and duties
122. Is willing to adjust when others request

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

123. Doesn’t move away from what he/she believes is right
124. Is not willing to view things from others’ point of view
125. Rarely helps others if there will be no impact on him/her
126. Unwilling to work according to schedules of others

15) Adherence To Policy Performance Review Phrases

While it is important to innovate and think out of the box, a certain level of adherence and compliance to policies and practices is integral for a thriving culture. For instance, certain HR policies, POSH policy, etc. need to be adhered to, to ensure the maintenance of a professional decorum and create a safe workspace for everyone. 

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

127. Respects and follows all policies set by the company
128. Ensures that any instance of poor compliance is reported immediately
129. Is vocal about commitment to policies
130. Has deep knowledge about the content and intent of each policy
131. Makes an effort to engage in different committees, initiatives to further the policy impact

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

132. Is unaware about the policies that exist in the organization
133. Doesn’t make an effort to attend workshops/sessions organized on key policies
134. Doesn’t actively make an effort to adhere to policies
135. Dismisses colleagues when they quote policies to him/her

16) Achievements Performance Review Phrases

Though not exactly a performance parameter, it is very important to get in line performance review phrases that talk about achievements of the employees. While positive phrases can reinforce the achievements, areas of improvement can help reach the desired levels. 

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

136. Ended the last quarter with 20% more sales than the previous one
137. Saved $1 Million for the company by leveraging automation tools
138. Outperformed other teams by exceeding the target by 15%
139. Increased customer stickiness by 15% by reducing complaint resolution time to 24 hours
140. Increased organic traffic on the website by 35% leveraging the right SEO techniques

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

141. Missed meeting the target for last month by 5%
142. Unable to meet deadlines because of lack of organization
143. Finds it difficult to deliver error free work consistently
144. Needs to focus on better social media engagement to increase organic traffic

17) Professionalism Performance Review Phrases

Despite the rise of a casual work culture, especially with the advent of remote work, there is a need to maintain a level of professionalism to ensure the right culture. Performance review phrases on professionalism can help employees understand what is desirable and how it ultimately impacts productivity, performance, retention and engagement at large.

Phrases to indicate performance is acceptable or exceeds expectation

145. Has high levels of integrity and work ethic
146. Ensure communication in a professional way without using abbreviations, emojis, etc.
147. Doesn’t get worked up and shows it to others even under pressure
148. Dresses according to the need of the workplace
149. Converses in a polite yet convincing manner

Phrases that indicate need for improvement

150. Has a hard time keeping personal life away from work
151. Sometimes talks to colleagues in a manner that is considered offensive
152. Doesn’t maintain workplace hygiene
153. Is often dressed in casual clothes which don’t gel well with the nature of the setting

Suggested Reading

Performance review tips for managers

When and how frequently to conduct performance review

10 second summary

• An effective performance management system must include goal setting, timely feedback and reviews
• As a goal setting approach, OKRs work best at senior levels and managers play a major role in cascading them to junior levels
• Goals may be set for a year, but must be revisited frequently to ensure relevance and pivot as needed
• Regular feedback is an important component of performance management, however, time must be allocated to synthesize the same
• The Start Stop Continue framework is effective for feedback 
• Performance reviews are integral for performance management systems and help close the performance loop
• A clear distinction must be maintained between performance reviews and increment conversations
• Performance management must be seen as a means to help people develop their expertise and the process should be as simple as possible

As performance management takes precedence in growing organizations and comes to be seen as a means to engage, retain and develop talent, our second talent talk focused on diverse aspects of performance management systems (PMS) with Saurabh Deshpande. Saurabh is an independent HR partner and advisor to businesses. He works with startups and growth stage organizations as a consulting CHRO, to help them design and implement scalable HR practices. 

He also partners with HR Technology companies as an SME to drive IP creation and product differentiation. Saurabh has 2 decades of experience across HR consulting (with Hewitt Associates - now Aon and Mercer Consulting) and line HR (with InMobi, India's 1st unicorn startup).

Without further ado, let’s begin the discussion.

Question: What are the key aspects that constitute a performance management system? 

Saurabh— I believe there are three fundamental aspects of performance management systems:

• First,  goal setting to clarify to the workforce  what is expected of them, how they will be assessed, getting them familiarized with different aspects of their performance
• Second, frequent feedback which can be formal che ck-in or informal on-the-go feedback
• Third, timely performance reviews to evaluate the performance against set expectations and discuss the areas for development 

Therefore, the three fundamental blocks of a performance management system include goal setting, feedback and reviews. In addition, there are other aspects which can be customized to the context of the organization, the culture, and your business, etc.

Best Practices for Setting Business Goals

Question: What are the different types of goal setting systems available today? 

Saurabh— Let's start with a little history of goal setting. There are 3 major milestones to this.

1. Management by Objectives (MBO)

Management by Objectives or MBOs is a goal setting methodology introduced by Peter Drucker in 1954. Prior to the 1950s, the top management would decide the organizational goals and objectives, which were not cascaded to the lower-level team members as it was considered unnecessary. 

Rather, the team members were informed about the specific tasks they were expected to perform, without an understanding of how their contributions would feed into the overall organizational impact. With the introduction of MBOs in 1954, Peter Drucker brought a huge shift in thinking which included: 

• Informing everyone in the organization about the goals
• Drawing a clear picture of how it cascaded down to each function, team and individual
• Bringing a sense of purpose for everyone by illustrating how their work fed into organizational success. 

From a performance management standpoint, this fundamental thinking of sharing goals with everyone and ensuring a structured cascading process prescribed in MBO has been a constant theme across all performance management systems, including balanced scorecards, OKRs, etc. 

The MBOs approach for goal setting lasted for about four decades However, there were a few drawbacks of setting goals with MBOs:

• Measuring performance on an annual basis focusing on a list of objectives arranged in priority
• Lack of regular monitoring and tracking which led managers often report that employees were not able to achieve all the objectives, only at the end of the year
• Little or no room for employees to improve their performance during the year
• Myopic focus on other aspects including mission and vision, learning and growth, customer outcomes, business processes and finance

2. Balanced Scorecard 

Thus, the 1990s saw the rise of the Balanced Scorecard approach by Kaplan and Norton to bridge this gap and laid the foundation for a form of goal setting, focusing on:

• Four dimensions, including learning and growth, business processes, customers, and finance 
• Translating the organization’s vision and mission into annual objectives and categorizing them into these four dimensions for a cohesive understanding.

While the balanced scorecard approach was fairly comprehensive, it was fairly static throughout the year, once the objectives were set according to the four dimensions. 

3. Goal Setting Today with OKRs

However, as organizations became more aspirational with a focus on hyper-growth, higher risk appetite, etc., the need arose to adjust and refine goals on a regular basis. Furthermore,  both MBOs and balanced scorecards really talk about goals which are directly achievable. For startups or growth phase companies, there is a need to quickly adapt and pivot while setting goals that have a small chance of being realized. This gap was filled by Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) as they are —

• Typically set on a quarterly basis, as opposed to annual setting in others
• Almost always stretch goals and if an individual hits about 75% of their OKRs, it's considered the goals have been achieved, unlike MBOs or Balanced Scorecards which require 100% completion for goal achievement
• Collective where the onus of achievement is not on a particular individual, but on overall outcomes achieved by working together.

Read: Advanced guide to OKRs

Question: Are there any guiding principles for choosing the right goal setting system? 

Saurabh— Most startups and growth phase organizations tend to adopt an ad hoc approach and hastily take decisions in the face of investor pressure or to gain a competitive edge. However, this needs to change in favor of going back to the fundamentals of goal setting as a means to making everyone in the organization understand what is expected of them, how they will be assessed and receive feedback. 

To make an informed choice about the goal setting system, organizations can start by answering the following questions:

• What are the top three things that you want to achieve?
• What works for your organization? 
• Where are you on your journey? 
• What's the market that you are operating in and how volatile is it? 
• What level of employees do you want to focus on?
• Are the roles in your organization more static and well defined or are they dynamic?
• Is there a clear distinction between middle management and senior management?

For instance, if you are a hyper growth organization, working in a volatile market, OKRs can be an ideal choice

Question: As a goal setting approach, can OKRs be adopted at all levels or should organizations find a different approach? 

Saurabh— This entirely depends on the levels of management. 

At the junior or professional levels, roles are better defined and there is a clarity of expectations, Therefore, OKRs may not be as relevant at the professional level. However, OKRs have worked best at the senior levels as roles get more standardized. 

Even the maturity to be able to understand that a goal is set and it’s ok to achieve 75% of that goal is something that may not work at the junior or the professional levels. In fact there are organizations that have adopted OKRs across all levels, which has led to some negative outcomes where it becomes unacceptable to not be hitting goals. 

Question: How can leaders align the organizational objectives to the individual goals? 

Saurabh— I believe this is where the role of the manager becomes very important as they: 

• Understand the objectives or the OKRs of the organization as well as OKR for the teams and individuals
• Can help employees understand their roles and how that contributes to the achievement of the OKRs
• Leverage KPIs or KRAs for aligning objectives at junior levels

For instance, if the larger objective is customer delight, the KPI for a software engineer can be to reduce the number of errors in the code. Then, it becomes the responsibility of the manager to explain how the reduced number of errors contributes to the larger goal of customer delight. 

Question: What is the recommended frequency for setting goals and then revisiting them? 

Saurabh—  Goal setting is typically something that should be done annually, with a few important elements: 

• Depending on the kind of roles and the performance management systems or approach as well as the kind of market environment, goal setting might need to be more frequent
• Goals might be set for a year, but there may be a need to revisit them on a quarterly or on a half yearly basis
• Relooking at goals also becomes important because career progression at junior levels is obviously faster, and organizations  might have people whose goals need to change with the way they have progressed in their particular role or possibly moving on to the next level. There may not be a change in the overall goal but the KPIs or KRAs might need to be modified.  

Feedback Strategy in the Workplace

Question: Is feedback an important lever in driving performance? How can organizations experiment with it? 

Saurabh: Before jumping onto feedback as a means to drive performance, let’s understand what performance management systems essentially entails — 

• An effective PMS guides team members and helps them live up to their potential and to further grow their potential
• It helps them understand what they're doing, what is going well for them and what they should do more of, their areas of development, etc.
• Performance management processes also help managers develop high-performing teams

In this understanding of performance management systems, feedback plays an important role. 

Even if an organization finds itself stretched for resources and seeks to reduce the administrative load, it can still replace formal annual reviews with more candid conversations

Offering employees feedback and recognition is extremely important. It can play a major role in letting employees know that you value them and are willing to invest in them. This small act of taking out time for feedback by a manager makes an employee feel valued. Thus, to drive performance, even if you are stretched for resources, honest, considerate feedback can take you a long way.  

Question: Do you think feedback needs to be a regular process? 

Saurabh— Undoubtedly, feedback is an ongoing process. However, while feedback should be given as regularly as possible, there should be enough time given to synthesize it too. For instance, as a manager if you are giving honest and sincere feedback to your team members on a daily basis, you need to pause and reflect on the volume of feedback that the employee will receive at the end of a month or so. 

Read: Everything you need to know about continuous feedback

Thus, in addition to giving feedback, managers need to help people synthesize and make sense of the feedback for growth. Furthermore, the regular feedback must melt into the annual reviews. The feedback from different situations must collectively help evaluate employee performance on different goals and create a comprehensive development plan. 

Furthermore, feedback needs to go beyond being just a corrective measure where managers share the areas of improvement and highlight the weaknesses and gaps in performance. Employee feedback needs to also be a reinforcement tool to illustrate to employees certain behaviors that need to continue, focusing on positive psychology. This will help your team members identify their strengths.  

Read: What, when and how of 360 degree feedback (free templates inside)

Question: What are the best practices for incorporating feedback as a part of the performance management system?  Do you recommend any templates?

Saurabh— There are different aspects that feedback needs to look at:

• First, feedback needs to talk about the goals to create a foundation for telling team members about their strengths and areas of improvement. 
• Second, feedback must be actionable and there the Start Stop Continue framework comes in. It helps managers align team members on what behaviors and actions are relevant and should continue, which ones might be derailing performance and need to be eliminated and which ones need to be learnt from scratch. 

The moment you add action items to the overall feedback, it becomes very powerful.

Furthermore, I believe that one should not get overly carried away by templates because: 

• Most HR professionals are expected to manage things at scale with stretched timelines, focus on ensuring compliance and getting carried away by templates makes the job harder.
• It doesn’t matter if a person does not fill every box in that particular order. What’s important is what the employee is  taking away from that.‍
• The Start Stop Continue framework fits in well as it gives you just three boxes. Now in those three boxes write what appeals to you, write what makes sense to you. It doesn’t have to be as per a prescribed note or template. 
• Getting too carried away with templates, with terminologies, with jargon etc. makes us lose sight of the overall intent and performance management systems. 

Question: Who do you think the onus of feedback should lay with and should it be a part of a mandatory process or a voluntary activity between the manager and the employee? 

Saurabh— I believe that despite the best intentions, managers and employees can lose track of the importance of feedback in the light of other business priorities, unless it’s part of a process. To facilitate the same, people managers should have a dual focus: 

How to illustrate the importance of feedback

• Managers need to help people understand the importance of feedback and performance management systems
• Feedback should be seen as something that employees seek and not something that is thrust upon them
• Create a timeline to ensure that intentions translate into impact and avoid gaps when giving feedback 
• Focus on creating a culture of feedback

How to follow up and track progress after feedback

• There needs to be an element of tracking and follow up to make feedback effective
• Nudge managers to remind them to have conversations with team members from time to time
• Leveraging technology is a great way to automate nudges and schedule follow-ups 

Employee Performance Reviews 

Question: Are performance reviews important and what is the intent behind them? 

Saurabh— Undoubtedly, reviews are important because they:  

• Close the loop from where you started out with goal setting
• Help inform employees at the end of the year to understand how they performed against their goals 
• Highlight strengths, development areas, focal points for the next performance cycle

Invariably, performance reviews often become the basis for increments and bonus. In fact, in recent times, reviews and increments are seen to go hand in hand where performance management has boiled down to a reflection of the increment for the employee.  

That’s not what performance management systems seek to achieve. To break this cycle, organizations are focusing on having different performance management and increment conversations, to illustrate that performance management is much larger than the salary increments.  

Understanding ratings and increments

Increments should be based on one’s capability and its value in the market. Whereas, proficiency in performance should be seen as growth through the learning phase of a particular role where consistently exceeding expectations should be understood as being in the expert level for that role, and, therefore, a related increment 

Furthermore, with the rise in market correction and other related trends, organizations are moving away from specific increments ranges linked to ratings. Thus, there needs to be a focus on using the performance conversation to assess the proficiency level of a team member and determine their pay range. 

Increment is related to performance but it's not a direct translation. Bonuses, on the other hand, tend to be for previous year’s performance and therefore, there is a direct linkage of your bonus payout to your rating.  

In addition to increments and bonuses, reviews also need to focus on the career movement.   

Thus, performance review at the end of the year should cover goal achievement, strengths, development areas and proficiency for the role. Based on this, increments, bonuses, career movements, etc. can be direct or related outcomes. 

Read: How to strategically align compensation with performance management 

Question: How can organizations position performance reviews as a development activity rather than an assessment for increments? 

Saurabh— There are two steps that need to be taken into consideration.

Break down the conversations

• Undertake performance review and then internally discuss and align on the increments 
• Conduct the increment conversation after a few weeks or even a month

Give ratings the right way

• Give ratings in the right way to prevent losing track
• Communicate ratings to team members in a way that it doesn’t take away from the impact of the performance conversation 
• Focus on what employees need to develop and not on the rationale behind the poor rating
• Focus on talking about performance on each goal rather than justifying how cumulatively the rating was reached
• Share the key areas of improvement and the key areas of leverage more

While ratings are important for compensation management, performance calibration, etc. at scale, that's an internal administrative process. That doesn’t have to be the primary goal of the performance review which should focus on areas of strength and areas to develop and not on labels. 

When it comes to justifying the increment, organizations should focus on the employee’s proficiency for the role because that is the basis of the new salary

Read: Top 10 performance review tips for managers 

Question: What is the ideal frequency for the employee review cycle to balance effectiveness and administrative overheads? 

Saurabh— There's no one size fits all. What's more important is to ensure that once the frequency is set, it is adhered to. If not, it will lead to a feeling of being undervalued by the employee. 

Here’s where the HR needs to play a little bit of a balancing act. Put simply, if HR professionals are spending all their time on ensuring feedback, synthesizing it and doing performance check-ins, there will be no time left for other work.  

If organizations are able make  performance check ins or the performance discussions quick, regular and not overly taxing in terms of the huge amounts of documentation, etc., then quarterly actually is still a great frequency

Three months is a good amount of time to observe a person's performance and to be able to synthesize feedback and give them the larger picture. However, if that’s not viable, performance reviews need to be done six monthly. It's in the organization’s best interest to make sure that that person does well and the more frequent feedback is delivered, the more they will get a chance for course correction, the better it is. 

Question: How can organizations make the process of performance reviews simple and make them more frequent? 

Saurabh— There are two components at play here, the stakeholders and parameters.

Identifying the stakeholders

• Focus should be on who are the stakeholders that are giving feedback
• Adopt a 360 degree feedback strategy as there are a lot of things that the manager may not be aware of, and therefore, it's important to get multi stakeholder feedback 
• Select stakeholders from across the entire spectrum, but not in large numbers to ensure time and resource efficiency

Parameters for review

• Relook at the traditional 360 degree feedback questions 
• Reflect on how easy or difficult it is for a person to objectively give that feedback
• Make reviews simple to the level where parameters are observable and people can easily comment on, limiting it to 3-4 questions

Question: What best practices would you recommend for organizations that are setting up their performance management systems? 

Saurabh— I would like to share three takeaways:

• First, understand the spirit of performance management as a means to help people develop and get better at what they're doing and not see it as a tool to distribute the compensation budget. As organizations have invested in hiring people, it is in their best interest to facilitate development for them to foster organizational success. 
• Second, try to keep things as simple as possible. Ensure that performance management is adopted by employees because they see value in it and not because it has been forced down upon them. It is important to maintain simplicity and ensure value to the team member who is getting feedback or whose performance is being managed. 
• Third, compensation increments should not be the reason that employees focus on performance management and efforts must be taken to de-link the two. 

Suggested Reading

All you need to know about managing employee performance

11 performance management problems

10 employee performance review tips for managers

Complete guide to 360 degree feedback

‍

With the growing importance of goal setting and achievement across industries, the implementation of the OKR framework is on the rise. Consequently, most organizations are adopting OKR software to facilitate the process of setting and achieving company goals through Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). 

In this article, we seek to help growing organizations make an informed choice when it comes to buying the right OKR software. We will not only discuss the features to look out for, but also give you a comparative analysis of the best OKR software available in the market to decide which is best for your needs. 

OKR software key features: What not to miss

An OKR software is bound to have multiple features depending on its target users and level of advancement. However, for growing organizations, there are a few features that are a must have and should not be missed, including:

• Ability to collaboratively set OKRs
• Option to see OKRs visually that increases goal and progress transparency
• Clear bifurcation between objectives and key results
• Offer the flexibility to prioritize between different OKRs
• Empower organizations to track OKR progress in real time
• Provide insights on OKR progress with action plan
• Offer OKR coaching to help managers leverage OKR benefits
• Provide integrations with existing meeting tools and other commonly used communication and project management software (such as JIRA, Slack, MS Teams etc.)
• Enable team members and managers  to create weekly OKR plans

Read: How to choose the right OKR software for a more detailed understanding of how to understand your OKR needs and find a suitable solution

Benefits of using an OKR software

There are several benefits of using an OKR software. Right from helping teams get on the same page, to facilitating greater accountability. Here is a quick snapshot of the possible advantage that OKR software enables:

1. Automated follow ups

One of the top benefits of OKR software is that it automates follow ups and nudges with the power of RPA to ensure that everyone regularly updates their progress on each OKR. This helps in grading OKR achievement as well as enables managers to gauge whether or not performance is on track.

2. Better goal transparency

Second, OKR software creates goal transparency for all. This way, everyone is able to visualize the goals in the same way and keep track of each other’s performance as well. 

3. Real time insights

An OKR software driven by AI also has the potential to help managers with real time insights. With an integrated dashboard, managers can monitor OKR performance and address any risks or challenges preemptively.

4. OKR coaching

Finally, another benefit of OKR software is that it also has the potential to help managers with OKR coaching which includes setting, monitoring and grading OKRs in the most effective manner. Furthermore, it can help managers align OKRs with 1:1 conversations with their team members via guided templates to ensure productive meetings. 

Read: How to calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) of using an OKR software to understand and measure real tangible benefits of OKR tools

11 best OKR software in 2022

Without much ado, let’s quickly explore the top 11 OKR software available in the market today. 

• SuperBeings: Integrated OKR tool with performance management and employee engagement support
• Betterworks: OKR software to help managers identify strengths and reward innovation
• Leapsome: People enablement platform with the ability to set up recurring goal cycles with fixed timelines
• Profit.co: OKR software with free functionalities for 5 team members
• Culture Amp: Employee engagement and performance management solution with customizable OKR templates
• 15Five: OKR and performance management platform backed by research from The Center for Evidence-Based Management (CEBMa) 
• Weekdone: OKR tool with software and coaching capabilities
• Gtmhub: OKR software with 200+ OKR examples for all teams
• Engagedly: OKR software with robust goal visibility, statistics and tracking
• Lattice: People success platform for OKR tracking with customizable goal weighting
• Ally.io: OKR software providing OKR readiness and acceleration program
  

1. SuperBeings

Promotes breaking down company objectives into day-to-day projects to drive results

Key features

• Assign OKR champion — set accountability for top goals
• OKR weights — Allocate different weight to OKRs to clarify priorities
• Manager approval workflow for individual OKRs — review employee goals as you go
• OKR coaching to managers by top industry experts 
• Easier, timely and hassle-free OKR check-in with integrated Meetings tool
• Integrations with top productivity and communication tools

Pros

• Real time insights on day-to-day OKR progress
• Assign owners for each objective, task and project
• OKR coaching and onboarding support for powerful 1:1s

Cons

• Mobile app is not yet available

Pricing

The pricing for SuperBeings starts at $3.00 per user per month, being one of the lowest in the market with the features and capabilities offered. SuperBeings offers a 21 day free trial

2. Betterworks

Human capital management software focused on OKR based performance management and employee engagement ideal for team with 5+ members

Key features

• Communicates goals to everyone in the organization
• Tracks OKR progress along with automated updates
• Enables managers to identify workforce strengths and opportunities for ambitious goal setting

Pros

• Reward smart risk taking and innovation
• Spot opportunities to pivot or improve key strategic initiatives early
• Clear communication of how each OKR leads to organizational impact

Cons

• Limited user-friendliness
• Limited reporting capabilities

Pricing

The Team Edition which is ideal for 5-250 employees is priced at $8.00 per user per month when billed annually. For organizations with 250+ employees, pricing is available on request. There is no free trial available. However, you can watch a pre-recorded product video.

Read: ROI of using an OKR software: Why should you invest in OKR tools

3. Leapsome

People Enablement platform for goals & OKRs management, performance reviews along with employee engagement and 360 feedback support

Key features

• Enables employees to leave comments on goal tracking to provide context
• Provides automatic progress updates and tracking reminders
• Offers the option to customize goal visibility at different levels

Pros

• Ability to set up recurring goal cycles with fixed timelines
• Increased accountability with progress timelines on dashboard with owner, contributor, and team filters
• Ability to generate goal tree to highlight ownership

Cons

• Absence of calendar integration for Outlook users
• UI is not very attractive

Pricing

Leapsome offers modular pricing for its different products which starts at $6.00 per user per month. Demo is available on request.

4. Profit.co

OKR software integrated with task, performance management, and employee engagement ideal for organizations of any size, free for upto 5 team members

Key features

• Offers guided weekly-check in to track progress
• Provides 7 types of key results to track any type of goals
• Real-time heatmaps for strategic interventions

Pros

• KPI library with 400+ inbuilt and custom KPIs
• OKR templates to create OKRs within 5 minutes for every level
• Opportunity to collaborate with mentions and tags

Cons

• Inability to view tasks in Gantt chart format
• Too many functionalities can be overwhelming in the beginning 

Pricing

Profit.co is free for upto 5 members. The growth plan is priced at $7.00 per user per month, billed annually and the pricing for the enterprise plan is available on request. There is a 30 days free trial available for the growth plan

4. Culture Amp

Employee engagement and performance management solution focused on goal tracking, reviews and development ideal for teams with 25+ employees

Key features

• Dynamic goal management with cross-team collaboration
• Greater OKR visibility
• Seamless sharing of OKR results and feedback

Pros

• User friendly, science backed
• Easily customizable templates
• Easy tracking of goal progress and alignment on outcomes

Cons

• Lack of customizable reporting options
• Limited automation in admin functionalities

Pricing

Culture Amp offers three pricing plans dependent on the team size. Self starter for 25-200 employees, standard for 201-999 employees and enterprise for 1000+ employees. The pricing is available on request. Culture Amp doesn’t offer a free trial. However there is a pre-recorded 3 minute product demo

6. 15Five

Performance management platform with 1-on-1 tools, performance reviews and OKRs capabilities ideal for any team size

Key features

• Tracking of OKRs in real time and weekly check-ins
• Set individual OKRs and connect them with company goals
• Reporting insights to identify areas of improvement

Pros

• Backed by research from The Center for Evidence-Based Management (CEBMa) 
• Availability of OKR coaching for managers
• Great reminders to facilitate accountability for weekly progress reporting

Cons

• Limited dashboard control
• Lack of Outlook calendar integration

Pricing

15Five’s pricing starts at $8.00 per user per month and increases to $14.00 per user per month depending on the features and capabilities required. 15Five offers a free trial that users can sign up for

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7. Ally.io

OKR software to measure goals and track performance for organizations with 12+ team members

Key features

• OKR readiness and acceleration program for growing organizations
• Visual dashboards and ability to give different weight to different priorities
• Comprehensive OKR examples for different organizational levels

Pros

• OKR coaching and consulting
• Easily usable OKR templates designed by experts for all teams
• OKR Check-ins and flexible OKR Scoring with guidance

Cons

• Intuitiveness of UI is limited
• OKR hierarchy may be confusing

Pricing

Ally offers two plans, Growth and Enterprise. The Growth plan is priced at $7.00 per user per month, billed annually for a minimum of 12 users. The pricing for Enterprise plan is available. Free trial is available for 14 days.

8. Gtmhub

OKR software for enterprises and non-profits ideal for small, growing and enterprise teams

Key features

• 200+ OKR examples for all teams, including sales, marketing, leadership
• Multiple ways to view alignment, structure ownership and create accountability
• 160+ custom made insights for installation and OKR auditing

Pros

• Integration with Slack, MS Teams
• Ability to visualize OKRs in one place and customize visibility for better decision making
• Easy OKR categorization with tags

Cons

• Some basic functionalities lacking
• Difficulty in navigation while setting OKRs at times

Pricing

Gtmhub pricing starts at $7.00 per user per month for the start plan and increases as the capabilities and functionalities increase. Free trial is available for basic plans.

9. Engagedly

Performance management software with goal management system and regular check-ins ideal for medium sized organizations with annual OKR budget of $5000+ 

Key features

• Easy insights into team performance 
• Robust goal dashboard for goal visibility, statistics and tracking
• Align organizational, team, and individual goals with multiple contributors

Pros

• Real time check-in and progress update
• Customizable and advanced analytics
• Real time progress mapping and engagement with threads and discussions

Cons

• Limited capability for goal customization
• Some functions can be difficult to work with

Pricing

The starting annual agreement for Engagedly is $5,000. Demo is available on request

10. Lattice

People success platform with a focus on tracking OKR/goals, gathering real-time feedback, 1-on-1 meetings ideal for teams with annual OKR budget of $4000+ 

Key features

• Ability to integrate OKRs with 1:1s, performance check-ins
• Customizable goal weighting
• Speedy, frictionless surface for setting, tracking, and reflecting on goals

Pros

• Progress-tracking integrations with JIRA and Salesforce
• Advanced goal and OKR analytics

Cons

• Can be difficult to use for some
• UI has limited intuitive capabilities

Pricing

Lattice is priced at $8.00 per user per month subject to a minimum annual agreement of $4000. You can request a product demo by signing up

11. Weekdone

OKR tool coaching capabilities ideal for small and medium sized organizations

Key features

• Ability to set weekly plans for OKR achievement
• Personal OKR coaching and live OKR help chat
• Weekly OKR progress reporting and e-mail

Pros

• Hierarchy view to visualize goals effectively
• OKR onboarding to transition from excel sheets to OKR software
• OKR examples to facilitate an effective start

Cons

• Set up may be complicated
• The UX can be difficult to navigate at times

Pricing

Weekdone is free for upto 3 users. The pricing for 4-10 users starts at $90 per month, billed annually and increases as the number of team members increase. There is a free trial available for 14 days for 4 or more users

Top OKR software for startups

Out of the 11 OKR software mentioned above and others, we have curated a list of top OKR software for scaling startups. 

These OKR tools focus on specific needs of fast growing organizations including — limited budgets, growing and dynamic teams, limited bandwidth, changing expectations and the need for handholding and OKR coaching from time to time. 

The below section also mentions the specific reasons that make the selected OKR software ideal for startups.

1. SuperBeings

• Provides the capability to scale up with addition of team members
• Automated reporting, check-ns and AI recommendations to save time
• OKR coaching for new managers for goal centered 1:1 conversations
• Onboarding support for better OKR adaptation
• Priced at only $3 per user per month 

2. Weekdone

• Free customization and adaptation
• Free version for very small teams
• Specialized OKR coaching

3. Engagedly

• Automated performance and OKR reviews
• Highly customizable
• Advanced analytics

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4. Koan (by Gtmhub)

OKR and status tracking software ideal for fast growing organizations with free services option

Key features

• Align daily operations and fixed goals
• Insightful weekly goal status update
• Shared visibility and view of OKRs across the organization

Pros

• Flexible tracking of OKR progress
• Tree view to track relationship between objectives and key results
• Free basic functionalities for unlimited users and teams

Cons

• 1-o-1 feedback missing
• Limited customization capabilities

Pricing

Koan offers a free tier for single teams that need basic functionalities. Pro tier with advanced functionalities, integrations, etc. is priced at $6.00 per user per month, billed annually. 30-day free trial is available for Pro version

5. Poplebox

OKR Software to align and track goals and priorities strategically and automatically with a provision for OKR coaching

Key features

• Presence of OKR coaching to facilitate effectiveness
• Customizable and presentable dashboards with charts, KPIs & narration
• Robust integration for data extraction from tools like Jira, MySQL, Hubspot, Google Sheet, etc.

Pros

• Easy onboarding and zero training time
• Single dashboard view of all OKRs
• OKR hand holding with expert coaches

Cons

• Option to update activities while reviewing own goals missing
• UX can be better like users have trouble signing in at times

Pricing

The pricing starts at $7.00 per user per month for OKR+ Peformance suite. A demo and a 14-day free trial is available.

Key considerations to choose the best OKR software

Before we conclude, this final section will help you understand that as a growing organization, what are the top 4 things you should consider while making a choice for the best OKR software. Invariably, you will have to assess the features and align them with your needs. In addition you must:

1. Consider the price point

Ensure that the OKR software is well within your budget. You can start with the basic plan for the OKR software mentioned above and then upgrade as per your need. Mostly, your budget should be around $6.00-$8.00 per user per month. 

However, there are a few OKR software that do offer free services upto a certain number of users and SuperBeings which is priced at $3.00 per user per month with varied advanced features. These can be effective choices to help you scale up your OKR commitment effectively. Book a free SuperBeings trial 

2. Check for free trial

As a growing organization, you may not have a complete clarity of what exactly you need and commitment to an OKR software without testing it for a few weeks can be challenging.

Therefore, do check with the OKR tools if they offer a free trial. Most of the tools ideal for growing organizations offer free trials for 14-30 days and can help you make an informed choice.

3. Team size

Next, you need to ensure that whichever OKR software you choose, it can support your team size and growth plans. Additionally, some OKR tools have different plans for different numbers of team members. Be cautious while choosing the plan ideal for you. 

If you choose a bigger plan than what you need, you will not only end up spending more, but your team members may also struggle with functionalities that might not be relevant to your use case. 

4. Integrations

Finally, you need to check whether or not the OKR software is offering integrations. It is important to have integrations with your preferred productivity or communication tool to prevent unnecessary context switching to update OKR status, respond to surveys, etc. Most OKR tools like SuperBeings offer comprehensive integrations with Slack, MS Teams, Jira, Asana etc. You need to pick the software that provides the right integration for your team needs. 

Wrapping Up

The OKR framework has proven to help many fast growing organizations in setting strategic goals and achieving them effectively. Adoption of the right OKR software can help you augment the effectiveness of your OKR process with seamless tracking, coaching, insights and much more. 

If interested, book a free demo with SuperBeings today. 21-day free trial. No credit card required

Suggested Reading

How to calculate the ROI of an OKR software

How to find the right OKR software

The ultimate guide to OKRs (downloadable PDF)

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10 second summary

• Talent development is a key priority and understanding the nature of it as a function of HR is evolving rapidly
• You need to understand the changing talent development landscape — from identification to acquisition to nurturing — and focus on competencies, employee value proposition and a technology led hiring infrastructure for best results
• For effective performance management, you need to focus on performance enablement with emphasis on co-creation of OKRs over traditional goal setting with a technology backdrop
• You must reimagine feedback to make it more frequent and structured
• As a fast growing organization, you should focus on preparing managers with proper training, self assessment and feedback 
• Top 3 HR priorities for the future include: creating an environment where employees feel valued, leverage technology to fuel talent development initiatives, and, revisit models of work and workforce engagement

Here's a brief about our first Talent Talk guest

With talent management and talent development becoming a key priority for growing organizations, we invited Dr. Chandrashekhar Sripada, Practice Professor of OB and Strategic Human Capital at ISB to our first Talent Talk. He also leads the (HC&LI) at ISB as its Executive Director. 

Prior to joining ISB in 2017, he spent 40 years in India Inc. and held the position of CHRO with companies such as NIIT, Reliance, Capgemini, and IBM, and retired from Dr. Reddy's as the President and Global Head of HR.

His current research interests focus on the interplay between human capital and firm performance and a focus on aligning talent development with performance in the backdrop of the future of work. 

With his extensive experience and expertise, he shared with us diverse realms of the talent management and talent development ecosystem and how growing organizations can redefine their engagement, feedback and performance management practices for organizational success. 

Future of HR as a function and focus on talent development

Before covering different aspects of talent management, including the best practices, focus on manager development and employee engagement, Dr. Sripada discusses quickly how the future of HR as a function is likely to evolve and its impact on talent development. 

Talent management as we understand today started as labor welfare in the early 1920s with the introduction of specified working hours, provisions of cafeteria, etc. The focus on employees per se then was merely transactional. However, as the deepening of the industrial economy and the focus on employees as personnel grew, the entire caveat of human resources came to the forefront. Eventually, the entire people side of the business gained importance and there were changes in the way businesses communicate the same, mentions Dr. Sripada. 

While sometimes, human resource and talent management are used interchangeably with the assumption that each employee brings about certain talents, others feel that talent development is a subset of human resources. Referring to high potential employees. Dr. Sripada adds that the future of HR lies in aligning human resources and talent development under a single umbrella to focus on people-centric initiatives to facilitate individual and organizational success. 

The sections to follow will highlight how the HR function has a key role to play and the best practices in facilitating talent management. 

Top talent acquisition practices for organizational success

Talent development is essentially about enabling your workforce to perform to the best of their abilities, facilitating their professional growth as well as yielding business impact. However, if you look closely, talent management starts by acquiring talent in the most effective and efficient manner.

Here are a few key takeaways for growing organizations to help create the right talent acquisition strategies before talent development. 

1. Acknowledge the changed talent acquisition landscape

Today, you need to understand and acknowledge that talent acquisition is not a simple contractual process between candidates and organizations. Employment or working at an organization is not the only way of being gainfully occupied in the 21st century. With options like entrepreneurship, gig economy, etc., talent today has a lot of varied opportunities. Therefore, you, as an organization, need to make your talent acquisition process highly robust to attract the best talent out there in the most efficient way suitable for your business. 

2. Understand the talent requirements, skills and competencies

Once you understand the contemporary talent acquisition landscape, you need to pause and reflect on what kind of talent and talent development you need. 

According to Dr. Sripada, in the world of specializations, you cannot hire the same talent for sales, marketing or tech. Doing so will defeat the whole purpose of talent management. 

Therefore, for effective talent acquisition, you need to: 

• Create a granular understanding of talent requirements for each role, i.e. what will it take to ensure absolute success
• Focus on both the functional skills as behavioral competencies for each job role
• Ensure your desired skills and competencies align with the overall expectations and culture of the organization 

Read: How to use competency framework for talent development

3. Create an employee value proposition

Based on the identified talent requirements, you will go out in the market to scout for talent, but before that, you need to create a clear employee value proposition, says Dr. Sripada. With numerous opportunities available in the market, you need to: 

• Have a clear value statement of why an employee should join your organization over others
• Differentiate yourself from other companies 
• Illustrate what will you offer the employee in return for their value creation, in addition to the monetary compensation

4. Develop an employer brand

Now that you have a clear employee value proposition, you need to create a brand for your organization as an employer of choice. 

The idea is to create a reputation that makes you the obvious decision for candidates. 

You can achieve so by:

• Building a positive presence on platforms like Glassdoor and other employee review forum
• Focusing on digital engagement through platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram to become more approachable 
• Communicating your values and branding as an employer of choice effectively

5. Set up the infrastructure for hiring by leveraging technology

Once the employer branding is in place, you need to focus on putting the hiring infrastructure in place. 

Dr. Sripada mentions that this includes leveraging the right technology, creating processes and getting the right team to facilitate hiring. 

To ensure the same, you may:

• Leverage technology based hiring which is more targeted, more predictable and more efficient by automating repetitive work 
• Get the right set of people who have the skills to interview and understand the right methodologies for interviewing
• Create a robust process for recruitment lifecycle management — sourcing, engagement, job assessment, negotiation, to onboarding 

With this framework, your talent acquisition will become seamless, as you will know:

• Who to hire
• How to attract high potential talent
• How to set up the right hiring infrastructure
• How to leverage technology to fuel your talent acquisition journey

Best practices for performance management as a part of talent development

Following the acquisition of high potential talent, you need to focus on performance management as a part of the larger focus on talent management and talent development. Organizations that seek to see their talent flourish and promote organizational success, need to take a holistic view of performance management by following the below best practices.  

1. Rethink the meaning of performance management

Conventionally, performance management has been seen from a lens that employee performance needs to be managed. The entire system of performance management is premised on the assumption that employees may or may not perform and concrete steps must be taken to ensure high levels of performance. Furthermore, focus should be on comparing performance which forms the basis of rewards, recognition and incentives. 

However, today’s workforce, especially in growth economies like India, is very aspirational. According to Dr. Sripada, employees do not come into companies wanting to be managed or waiting to be told or waiting to be evaluated, they come with the desire, hope and ambition to perform and make a difference. 

Thus, performance management needs to now focus on not simply managing performance, but as a means to foster an empowering ecosystem for employees. 

2. Facilitate performance discussions using OKRs

Taking cue from the point above, let’s discuss what actually constitutes creating an enabling environment for performance to flourish. You need to move above from the traditional outlook of goal setting where the leadership or managers set goals for employees, premised on the belief that managers know best. 

Rather, there needs to be a focus on performance discussion, which focuses on:

• Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) over traditional goal setting
• Co-creation of performance OKRs between managers and employees
• Audit of performance management, not only limited to the co-creation, but also checking the availability of resources to achieve the set goals

Read: How to create a robust OKR process

A performance discussion must enable an employee to understand what constitutes high levels of performance, its potential impact and how it can be achieved, as a part of performance management. 

3. Leverage the digital environment

Next, it is important to mature and evolve your performance management practices with increasing digitalization.

Dr. Sripada adds that the traditional system of getting people together in a conference room once in a year with the manager leading performance management in an intimidating manner is no longer sustainable.  

Rather, you need to leverage the power of technology and use the digital environment to make performance discussion more streamlined, encourage dialogue and make it more consistent. 

To learn how SuperBeings can help you transform your performance management practices, book a free demo today

4. Move from performance management to performance enablement

As it is evident, performance management must be reimagined as performance enablement. This requires a mindset change as well as a skill set change in terms of how we can co create goals and objectives. Finally, technology needs to be seen as an enabler to facilitate the entire process. 

Feedback in the performance and talent management paradigm

Feedback is an important element of performance management as well as talent development. However, according to Dr. Sripada, in recent times, it has become a tool of anxiety more than an enabler for high performance. ‍

Ensure that not every conversation is considered as a feedback or feedback doesn’t become a source of exerting authority

Here’s how you can ensure effective feedback in the performance management paradigm. 

• Encourage the right skills and professionalism among those who are delivering feedback and ensure that it is constructive in nature
• Encourage the receivers to have the readiness and maturity to accept the feedback with grace and a positive attitude
• Ensure that not every conversation is considered as a feedback or feedback doesn’t become a source of exerting authority
• Diffuse feedback anxiety among employees by preparing all the stakeholders
• Adopt a continuous feedback approach over an annual one by leveraging technology to provide feedback in real time when it is relevant to facilitate immediate impact
• Calibrate the frequency of the feedback strategically based on the magnitude of the task, your company culture, context, etc. 

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Thus, you need to make feedback more effective to have an impact on performance management by making it a shared responsibility for managers and employees, facilitating a more continuous approach and leveraging the power of technology. 

How to make managers better at enabling their teams?

A key component of talent development is how well managers enable and empower their team members.

Organizations should help managers understand the various stages in the life cycle of evolving from an individual contributor to a manager or a leader and support this critical transition

This requires the right set of skills, competencies and attitude at the end of the manager. However, across India Inc., there are several challenges when it comes to effective management says Dr. Sripada, including:

• A paradox about who is responsible for taking care of managing the employees, the HR team or the direct/functional team leaders
• The title of manager is accompanied by the tenure and seniority and not on the basis of capability to manage and empower team members
• Becoming a manager is an incidental occupation and an accidental privilege, without the right training 

To address these challenges and make management effective in your organization to enable and empower team members, you must:

• View the HR function as a support system and enable to assist, advise and counsel team leaders to manage their teams and not directly play that role
• Adopt a scientific approach to the preparation, development and training of managers
• Help the manager understand the various stages in the life cycle of evolving from an individual contributor to a manager or a leader and support this critical transition
• Document key managerial competencies, generic and function specific, based on global benchmarks and your organizational context
• Focus on training and self-assessment for managers on the key competencies
• Enable budding managers to leverage technology platforms to assess their competencies and educate themselves to bridge the gaps
• Provide feedback post managerial training and assessment to ensure high level of management success

Thus, Dr. Sripada shares that a structured approach, fueled by the power of technology and continuous real world interventions can help you prepare managers that can enable and empower high performing teams, leading to effective talent management. 

Redefining employee engagement for talent development

Any discussion on talent development will be incomplete without focusing on employee engagement. Unless your workforce is meaningfully engaged at work, it will be unable to perform to its complete capacity and talent development will become increasingly difficult. 

However, according to Dr. Sripada, over the years, the meaning and nature of employee engagement has become highly diluted. Entertainment components like team lunches, retreats or budget for other such activities are being considered as engagement efforts. While these are important to keep the team morale high, they alone cannot achieve high levels of employee engagement. 

It is important to gauge a more comprehensive meaning of employee engagement that promotes talent development. This requires an important and strategic investment towards employees to enable them to believe that your organization cares about their development beyond fun activities. To facilitate engagement in its true sense, Dr. Sripada says, you need to:

• Focus on forward looking career development initiatives for your employees
• Encourage employee learning to hone skills for the future
• Encourage your managers to connect with employees on an emotional level, beyond just transactional work
• Understand career roadmaps and career aspirations of employees and guide them in the right direction 
• Leverage technology to enhance engagement and measure it for success 

It goes without saying that disengaged employees are a liability for any organization. Therefore, you must relook at your employee engagement efforts to make them more meaningful for your workforce to facilitate effective talent development. 

Top three priorities of the HR function going forward

Up until now, we have discussed different aspects of talent management and talent development, right from how to get the right talent onboard, to how to engage them, manage them, provide feedback and much more. 

In this last section, we will uncover the top priorities for HR in talent management that are likely to define the future for growing organizations. Dr. Sripada mentions that it is true that organizations in different contexts and with different objectives may not have the same priorities. However, we will talk about some priorities from a macro level that are likely to impact the HR and talent development realm as a whole. 

Invariably, as an organization, if you wish to facilitate effective talent management practices for HR, you should:

1. Create an environment where employees feel valued

Focus on creating an environment where employees feel valued and cared for, mentions Dr. Sripada.

As an employee function, HR and people managers need to focus on developing an empowering ecosystem for their workforce as the primary priority.

Other tasks like performance management, etc. will form a subset of this primary agenda.  

2. Leverage digital transformation to fuel your efforts

The HR team and people managers in your organization must become enthusiastic adopters of technology and should understand, decode and embrace technology in the interest of your employees. Thus, whatever efforts your organization is working towards for talent development, technology must fuel each element for greater effectiveness. 

3. Embrace the news ways of working 

Finally, you need to acknowledge that the talent development ecosystem is transforming. According to Dr. Sripada, the workforce today doesn’t consist of the old career seeking employees who join as a management trainee hoping to retire as the chairman. 

With the advent of freelancing, gig economy, joint working opportunities, etc.  have created a very transient relationship between the employer and the employees. 

Thus, with the new talent ecosystem, as well as an offshoot of technology and the pandemic, leading to the rise of remote work, you need to explore new ways of working including dynamic ways of workforce engagement as well as hybrid work flexibility, as a practice.  

Thus, you need to focus on creating an empowering and valued environment for employees, leverage digital disruption to power your initiatives and revisit work models to attract the new potential talent, says Dr. Sripada. 

Suggested Reading

How to use competency framework for talent development

7 developmental goals for managers

How to go from performance management to employee development

How to measure manager effectiveness: 11 key metrics

How to improve leadership effectiveness at your organization

Every people-manager understands the importance of having an effective performance management system for individual as well as organizational success. Here, using the right performance management software can help you automate many parts of the process as well as enable you to leverage industry benchmarks and AI driven guidance to drive performance in the right direction. 

To help you make an informed choice, we have curated this list of the top 8 performance management tools and a quick guide on how to find the best one for your unique needs. 

The top 8 performance management software for 2022

Did you know that choosing the best performance management software can help you accomplish a variety of objectives, including —

• A holistic review of employee performance with 360 degree feedback
• Ability to recognize top performers and offer the due appreciation and motivation
• Preempt risks to performance before they surface as challenges
• Facilitate guided conversations between managers and employees on performance improvement
• Gauge workforce satisfaction and ensure employee engagement

With these benefits in mind, let’s quickly check out the 8 most efficient performance management software for growing organizations.

1. SuperBeings: Flexible performance management software which integrates OKRs, feedback, reviews and employee engagement
2. Lattice: Performance management with public recognition and custom review cycles
3. Culture Amp: Performance management platform used by 5000+ companies
4. Leapsome: All in one people enablement platform with customizable development frameworks
5. 15Five: Continuous performance management software with pre-built competency based assessments
6. Engagedly: New age performance management software to redefine appraisals and succession planning
7. BambooHR: Personalized Human Resources Information System for small and medium sized organizations
8. Peakon: Intelligent listening platform to understand hidden truth behind employee comments 

Now, let us look at all these 8 platforms and learn the pros and cons of each.

1. SuperBeings

Next-gen talent management platform suitable for collaborative, comprehensive and regular performance reviews, tracking and real time feedback to facilitate high performance culture. SuperBeings comes with integrated OKR management and employee engagement modules.

Key features

• Ability to choose flexibility and configure any combination of review options (goals, projects, competencies, values, leadership, qualitative, or something else), frequency (monthly, quarterly, half yearly, annual or custom) and stakeholders (self, manager, peer, reportee, skip level, others)
• Run rating less reviews for comprehensive performance overview
• Facilitate continuous performance management with regular goal based sync ups/ check-ins
• Automation of performance review cycles, automated reminders and nudges to complete reviews to save admin time

Pros

• Individual employee profiles based on top personality assessments
• Ability to identify strengths and blockers for each employee
• Combination of weekly goal and monthly performance check-ins
• Automated 9 box grid of performance and potential snapshot
• Automated annual and 360 feedback and reviews

Cons

• The cycle set ups are handled by the support team, there’s no DIY option yet
• Do not offer a self serve trial. You can contact the team to setup a trial account though

Pricing

SuperBeings is priced at a nominal cost of $3.00 per user per month. It is ideal for growing teams which need flexibility of scale and comprehensive functionalities to create a high performance culture. You can book a quick demo here

2. Lattice

People management software focusing on 360 performance review cycles and engagement surveys, OKR tracking and real-time feedback ideal for teams of 40+ members

Key features

• Ability to offer public recognition, directly in Lattice, in Slack, Microsoft Teams, and on in-office screens
• Option to see historical feedback for context and fairer, faster review cycles
• Option to customize review cycle with automatic rules, make adjustments mid cycle, or streamline calibration progress

Pros

• Intuitive tools for employees to communicate and request feedback
• Seamless administration and management of performance assessment with intuitive UI
• Option to run annual performance reviews, quarterly development cycles, project-based, or automated reviews

Cons

• Too many notifications at the risk of important ones being lost
• Limited integrations 

Pricing

Performance management with Lattice starts at $8.00 per month for each user with a minimum annual agreement of $4000.

Based on the minimum commitment, Lattice is ideal for team sizes of 50+.

There is no free trial, but a demo can be availed by interested users. 

3. Culture Amp

Comprehensive performance management and employee development software with reviews and conversations for managers and employees ideal for companies with 25+ members

Key features

• Built in reminders and shared agendas for collaboration
• Integration feedback from self reflection, peers and managers for 360 assessment
• Provision to request feedback for anyone at any time

Pros

• Flow of work integrations to collect feedback and reviews from preferred platform
• Flexible review templates and calibration tools
• Designed by organizational psychologists, meaningful and actionable feedback powered by machine learning
• Check-in questions focused on whole employee experience

Cons

• Lack of report customization
• Inability to view results in different ways

Pricing

The pricing for Culture Amp is available on request. It is ideal for organizations with 25+ employees. This performance management software provides different feature-clusters for different organizations based on their workforce strength and is, thus, ideal for small, medium sized as well as large enterprises. 

There is no free trial for Culture Amp. However, there’s a 3 minute pre-recorded demo available on request. 

4. Leapsome

All in one people enablement platform bringing together performance management, employee engagement, and learning ideal for teams of any size

Key features

• Ability to define important skills and track development
• Option to create customized development framework based on reviews
• Integrated dashboard with status of each review cycle at one place

Pros

• Predefined best practice templates and frameworks which are customizable
• Development matrix integrated with reviews, feedback and goals

Cons

• Need for more automated messages
• Improvement required in user experience

Pricing

The pricing for Leapsome starts at $6.00 per user per month. There is no minimum commitment, making it suitable for organizations that might be starting up as well as large enterprises. 

Leapsome offers a 14 day free trial for users.

5. 15Five

Continuous performance management platform which combines software, education, and community to develop successful managers improve employee performance ideal for teams of all sizes

Key features

• Consistent measure of performance with custom weights and actionable ratings
• Promotes insight driven pay and promotion decisions
• Ability to sync employee data automatically sync between HRIS and 15Five

Pros

• Availability of pre-built performance review templates 
• Focus on competency-based assessment with skills and behavior critical for high performance
• Establish a standardized process when measuring performance using rubrics

Cons

• User interface has limited capabilities
• Limited reporting competencies

Pricing

Pricing for 15Five starts at $8.00 per user per month and is ideal for organizations of all sizes. It also has specific capabilities for managers to facilitate performance management starting at $9.00 per manager per month. 

Users can sign up for a free trial

6. Engagedly

New age performance management software redefining appraisals by combining employee engagement and performance reviews ideal for larger corporations with medium sized teams

Key features

• Detailed dashboards for succession planning with 9 box tool 
• Online LMS for training and development
• Built-in competency model and ability for employee development and growth

Pros

• Real time and on demand feedback
• Mentorship platform based on a proprietary behavioral and competency based algorithm
• Alternative workflows for 30-60-90 days reviews or conversations for new hires

Cons

• Too many features can be overwhelming in the beginning
• Limited focus on 1:1 performance management

Pricing

The pricing starts at a minimal cost of $5000 annually. Therefore, having a critical mass of team members makes sense to use this performance management software.

There is a free demo available.

7. BambooHR

Personalized Human Resources Information System (HRIS) focused on performance management for small and medium sized organizations

Key features

• Frequent and actionable reviews and assessments for self and managers
• Strategic assessment planning with regular intervals coupled with impromptu and 30, 60, and 90-day check-ins
• Automated reminders for performance tracking

Pros

• Comprehensive goal status report with review notes and updates in a single window
• Availability of desktop and mobile apps
• Compare performance across years and departments

Cons

• Only satisfactory layout
• Scope for improvement in mobile version

Pricing

The pricing for BambooHR is available on request based on the number of employees and functionality requirements. It is ideal for organizations of all sizes and has a suite of HR services to offer, which can be of better use to organizations in their scale up phase.

There is an availability of free trial

Peakon

Intelligent employee listening platform to provide personalized employee experiences and maximize business performance for large organizations

Key features

• Collect real-time feedback on important aspects of employee satisfaction and performance
• Organizational development-based question sets and custom surveys
• Prescriptive recommendations and action plans based on industry benchmarks

Pros

• Machine learning and NLP to actually listen to employee voice
• Custom surveys and templates with automatic recommendations
• Personalized micro-courses on how to convert insights into action

Cons

• Too many data points can be complicated to understand
• Requires training to use it effectively

Pricing

The pricing is available on request. This performance management software is ideal for large organizations and enterprises.

There is no free trial available. But a pre-recorded 2 minute product walk-through is available on request

How to find the right performance management software?

If you are wondering how to find the right performance management software or how to make a decision from the many options shared above, you need to ask yourself a few questions:

1. What do you seek to achieve?

Start by gauging where you are struggling and what are the problems that you seek to solve with the performance management software. The idea is to enlist all your pain points and intended impact. 

2. How do you want to achieve it?

Once you have your pain points, you will have a clear picture of what you need. Do you only need performance review capabilities or do you also need support with goal management as well as feedback. These considerations are crucial for you to make the right choices.

(Keep reading to learn the key features of top performance management tools) 

3. How much do you want to spend?

Next, you need to gauge your financial situation to decide how much you are willing to spend. While there will be pricing for performance management software available, you will first need to have clarity on your budget. Learn about the possible return on investment before you commit to a software.

Read ROI of Performance Management Tools to make a proper business case

4. How many people will use it?

In addition to the budget, you also need to figure out the number of people who will be using the performance management software, now and in the future. If you are a growing organization, you need to be cognizant of your scale up plan as well. While some performance management software are ideal only for large enterprises, others have solutions for the entire spectrum with flexible pricing. 

5. Do you need additional or basic features?

Finally, you need to consider whether simply gathering reviews and feedback is enough or would you need insights, reports, heatmaps, etc. as well to make sense of your data points. More often than not, having such features and integrations are integral to performance management and thus, this consideration can make a lot of difference.

Based on answers of these questions, you need to look for some features that are mostly non-negotiable if you want to leverage your performance management software to the maximum extent, including:

5. a) Goal setting and management

A key aspect of any performance management software is its ability to assist growing organizations and team members in goal management. There are multiple connotations at play here:

• Goal and OKR setting with focus on both individual as well as organizational goals
• Aligning everyone on the goals and providing complete transparency and visibility
• Tracking performance on the prescribed goals in a regular and real time basis

The right performance management software will enable you to set, align and manage goals seamlessly to contribute to high levels of performance resulting from achievement of goals and OKRs.

5.b) 360 performance review

Performance tracking and 360 review are very important aspects of a performance management software. Especially for fast growing organizations, it is important to track progress and performance in real time to:

• Preempt risks and challenges to performance and prevent attrition
• Address performance issues instantly to ensure long term success
• Keep track of individual performance and ownership at all times for retrospective analysis

However, simply focusing on real time tracking is not enough. Performance reviews as a part of the performance management software must also be comprehensive and holistic in nature. This requires a focus on 360 performance review to ensure:

• Feedback is collected from peers, managers, direct reports as well as in the form of self evaluation
• Reduce rater bias by providing a wide variety of responses and offer a true picture of performance
• Get a holistic view of the contribution of the employee towards organizational success, not limited to specific tasks or projects

Thus, the right performance management tools will enable you to frequently conduct employee reviews, involving all key stakeholders in a strategic and streamlined manner by leveraging the power of automation. Put simply, the pre-set review templates and surveys can be set automatically using the software with automatic reminders, reducing admin work while augmenting impact at the same time. 

5.c) 1:1 conversations and feedback

Based on performance tracking and reviews, the performance management software should be able to provide you with insights to offer feedback during 1:1 conversations. Some important aspects include:

• AI driven guided templates for 1:1 conversations based on performance insights
• Conduct continuous conversations focussed on level of goal achievement and developmental plans
• Manager analytics and records to track performance over time with traceable history

Additionally, the various integrations of the performance management software should reduce the admin work for managers for scheduling and conducting 1:1 conversations. 

5.d) Appraisal and recognition

The best performance management software should be able to help managers and organizational leadership ensure frequent and meaningful recognition and appreciation. This generally requires:

• Performance review in real time to appreciate a job well done on the spot
• Insights into performance trends over time to identify development areas which have been worked upon
• Understanding each team member with personality assessments

Therefore, a performance management software must provide insights into these and more aspects of appraisal and recognition. The objective is to enable managers to reward high levels of performance consistently to facilitate motivation and at the same time, identify and address blockers to performance, if any. 

5.e) Reports and analytics

Finally, the performance management software should have robust reporting and analytics capabilities. Simply conducting reviews, feedback, etc. will not bear fruit, if managers are not able to drive change with the results. Therefore, the performance management software should:

• Provide actionable insights about employee pulse and performance in a single window format
• Offer heatmaps for developmental areas for employees as well as the organization as a whole
• Provide learning areas, support and resources for managers to develop key leadership competencies

Thus, reporting and analytics can be a culmination of all performance management efforts as well as the starting points on new priorities and areas of work. Without holistic but crisp reporting, a performance management software might not be able to provide complete insights into the performance culture for an organization. 

Advanced Features of Performance Management Software

5. f) Performance snapshots

In a performance management software, you should look out for the feature of performance snapshots to ensure bias free performance management with feedback captured at regular intervals. Your platform should:

• Provide you with customizable templates to capture performance snapshots at frequency of your choice.
• Aggregate snapshots to offer a holistic view of performance and gauge trends over time.
• Leverage historic feedback throughout the year to check signs of improvement, need for interventions and even compare performance over time.
• Performance snapshots also help you identify high potential employees as well as poor performers with data backed analysis of the same.

Good performance management tools can help you capture performance snapshots across an automated 9 box exercise and track improvement over time. 

5. g) Coaching support to managers

For performance management to be truly effective, your managers need to be trained on providing the right coaching to employees in a strategic manner. This not only enables them to provide feedback holistically but also have 1:1 conversations with employees in the right way. A performance management tool can help this by providing coaching support to managers by:

• Integrating performance management with 1:1s and OKRs to facilitate effective goal setting
• Providing AI driven recommendations for 1:1 conversations which capture key performance insights to ensure they don’t miss out on anything 
• Offering guided templates to master critical conversations which may require extensive coaching

Thus, you must look out for a performance management system which can provide adequate coaching to your managers to help employees navigate their performance in the right direction. 

5. h) Personality assessment/ Talent profiles 

A performance management tool that comes with a feature of talent profiles or personality assessment is important for any growing organization. It can help you understand the strengths, skills and other important aspects of your team members and identify gaps if any. The right tool will enable you to:

• Conduct short personality assessment tests for your employees to understand individual strengths and weaknesses
• Use AI driven recommendations to have 1:1 conversations based on personality tests and use talent profiles to effectively delegate work
• Understand gaps to facilitate hiring, succession planning, etc. strategically

Therefore, the right performance management tools will help you build talent profiles not only prepares you for better performance in the present, but ensures that you are set for the future too. 

5. i) Competency management

Ensuring the right skills and competencies are borne by each employee is an integral part of performance management. Thus, if your tool is able to facilitate this, you will find yourself in a position of success. A good performance management software can help you:

• Undertake skills and competencies assessment for your employees and identify gaps with respect to their roles
• Identify the right certifications, training, development opportunities to bridge the gap
• Communicate the gaps with guided templates to ensure effective exchange of ideas

In a nutshell, the tool will be able to help you draw a blueprint for your organization’s learning and development based on competency management.

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, it is evident that most of the performance management software available in the market today can help you transform your performance management process for the better. However, choosing a software based on its capabilities may not be enough. You need to gauge whether or not it is ideal for your organizational size and type too as well as measure its ROI before committing your resources to any particular software. Use the factors shared above for an informed purchase of your performance management software. 

If interested, book a free trial with SuperBeings today. No credit card required.

Suggested Reading

ROI of performance management software

8 point checklist for selecting the best PMS

Advanced guide on Continuous Performance Management (PDF)

The right compensation management practices and policies can make or break your employee experience. Of course, there is merit in linking compensation and performance to drive organizational success, it can lead to several questions and implementation problems as well. 

Read on to get all your compensation management related questions answered.

Why is fair compensation important?

Let’s start with the very basic question of why fair compensation is important and the merits it brings along. It is no surprise that if you are paid more and are compensated according to your efforts, you are likely to give in your 100% and stay with an organization longer. However, there are other factors that support fair compensation:

• Reduce the risk of turnover: 50% employees are more likely to leave if they believe they are paid below market
• Retain high-potential performers: High-potential talent brings 91% more value to an organization
• Increase job satisfaction: Compensation/pay and benefits are 2 of the top 3 drivers of job satisfaction 

Thus, fair compensation as a part of compensation linked performance management has the potential to facilitate better employee outcomes such as engagement, experience and performance. 

Should compensation be tied to performance reviews?

To make compensation fair and inclusive in all aspects, it needs to have a clear foundation. Most organizations have relied on performance reviews as a way of reflecting on performance as a means of compensation decisions. However, there are several competing views both for and against tying compensation to performance reviews. 

Benefits of tying compensation and performance reviews

• Compensation can act as a great motivator for employees to perform well, which can be reflected in their performance reviews
• Enable employees to get a clear understanding of what rewards or recognition they get with an increasing level of performance
• Give employees the opportunity to see the direct value of their performance in tangible ways
• At an organizational level, it helps to align inputs (compensation) with outputs (performance), enabling efficient resource allocation
• Ensure that compensation hikes and appraisals are seen as transparent and not arbitrary

Pitfalls of tying compensation and performance reviews

• It focuses on only those aspects of performance which are under review and not the overall and subtler forms of organizational contribution for employees
• Performance linked compensation system leads to employees giving themselves  more lenient ratings during self reflection during 360 performance review. Thus, driving the focus away from self reflection as a development practice
• Biased peer review can also prevent fair compensation, especially when the departmental budgets are limited
• Sometimes, it creates a blame oriented workplace culture and discourages collaborative problem resolution

Clearly, there are both sides to the story.

‍The most favorable outcome will be to keep performance as one of the parameters for compensation, but not the sole foundation.

‍Additionally, as one of the best practices, performance reviews can be conducted on a regular basis, where some are only developmental in nature and others can be tied to compensation management. 

5 compensation best practices today

As discussed, focusing only on performance reviews for compensation management needs a relook. Working with growing organizations, we have curated a list of the top five performance and compensation management practices you can leverage:

1. Keep up with market trends

Ensure that your compensation structure aligns with the market trends so your employees don’t feel underpaid and leave.

• Conduct a dipstick survey to understand appropriate pay scales
• Keep your pay structures updated based on market corrections
• Leverage custom employee pulse surveys to regularly to check their perception on compensation according to market trends

2. Be clear about relationship between performance and compensation

Provide complete transparency and clarity to your employees on what constitutes high levels of performance and what it will take to earn a raise or appraisal.

• Highlight specific job competencies that link compensation and performance management
• Don’t rely completely on performance reviews as a means to determine compensation, let them be developmental in nature
• Gauge performance against pre defined competencies over time

3. Have well defined criteria

Have specific, well defined and measurable criteria for the compensation strategy to ensure that there is complete transparency. 

• Develop or choose metrics which are easy to comprehend
• Try to quantify the value for each criteria, including years of experience, education, etc.
• Account for difference in compensation based on skills, performance levels, among others

4. Communicate benefits effectively

Salary in hand or the pay check your employees receive is accompanied by a range of benefits that are a part of the compensation structure and cost to the company, but are often overlooked by employees. Make sure they are widely communicated.

• Create a list of all benefits offered to employees and communicate to them via different ways, email, discussion sessions, etc.
• Be vocal about the value these benefits are able to add over and above their monetary value
• Illustrate how these benefits also act as tax saving options at times, leading to a more efficient compensation structure

5. Have a standard pay range

Ensure that there is a base pay range for every role and profile with variable additions based on candidate competencies.

• Have clear guidelines and pay range for each position to set the right expectations
• Illustrate the competencies/parameters based on which deviation from standard pay range will be acceptable
• Have a well defined strategy to evolve the pay range and support employee transition from one range to another

How to ensure distributive justice?

The idea of fair compensation and linking compensation and performance management, leads to a very interesting concept of distributive justice. On a broad level, distributive justice essentially focuses on ensuring that the compensation received by employees is fair and equitable and is based on objective and rational grounds which are uniform for all. Here are a few ways to ensure distributive justice:

• Be transparent about the criteria for compensation and what constitutes as parameters for raise
• Ensure that measuring of performance/ other criteria for performance is bias free and doesn’t fall prey to halo, horns or recency effect

‍Measure potential and market value of the employee in addition to experience and expertise to ensure distributive justice for high potential employees 

• Be fair in your compensation and appraisal assessment

Pay transparency: Merits and demerits

Another interesting component of compensation and performance management that you must acquaint yourself with is pay transparency. Essentially pay transparency refers to how openly or freely employees within an organization can discuss their compensation with others. 

This is not only limited to the check they take home but other perks and benefits they are entitled to. Invariably, many platforms today also enable individuals to anonymously share their salaries online and get insights from others doing the same. However, there are diverse views on when it comes to pay transparency for an organization. 

Merits of pay transparency

Those who advocate for pay transparency believe that it can enable large scale impact for the organization across performance management.

• Meet employee expectations, build greater trust and augment engagement and overall experience
• Attract the best talent by showcasing competitive compensation at market standards
• Reduce chances of biases in salary negotiations and increments
• Ensure fair compensation and distributive justice among employees
• Greater employee motivation leading to better organizational outcomes
• Fewer negotiations allowing employees to focus on adding value to their work

Demerits of pay transparency

However, there is a flip side to pay transparency too with some common pitfalls that need to be addressed proactively.

• Risk of resentment and conflict if pay scale is not uniform and balanced
• May lead to comparison of pay scales among peers in the organization with possible backfire
• Requires strategic planning and meticulous implementation
• May lead to high levels of turnover in case employees feel they are paid less than what they deserve, in comparison to others
• Employees might have privacy concerns about their salary being shared with others

How to guide managers to have better compensation conversations?

In the last section of this article, we will focus on how managers play an integral role in compensation and performance management and the best practices to guide managers to have effective compensation conversations with their team members.

Almost 58% organizations do not train managers on pay communications 

This startling statistic clearly highlights how despite the apparent importance of compensation management, the focus on ensuring a seamless process is rather limited. However, organizations today can play a leading role in enabling their managers to have better pay communication and conversations by following these tips:

• Create a communication toolkit with all the resources including compensation structure, criteria, performance linkage, etc. and share it with all the managers 
• Conduct regular surveys to gauge employee pulse and data from employees on their compensation and share insights with managers to help create a conversation flow
• Leverage tools for NLP led sentiment analysis of open ended responses and share guided 1:1 conversation templates for effective compensation conversations
• Encourage managers to keep compensation conversations and performance reviews as separate
• Give proper context, especially during an appraisal or raise, with both internal and external factors that led to the compensation decision
• Communicate the value and importance of the employee to the organization, don’t rely on numbers and monetary increase do all the talking
• Prepare for the conversation and be prepared for response, be an active listener and patiently address grievances, if any

Final Thoughts

It is quite evident that compensation and performance management are intrinsically interlinked and if leveraged well, compensation has great potential to not only drive performance, but also facilitate engagement, retention and much more.

However, to ensure the same, you need to have a very structured, transparent and fair compensation strategy and policy. Furthermore, you must, don’t forget to invest in training your managers to bridge any gaps and constantly gauge and address employee pulse — to ensure fair compensation for all.

Suggested Reading

10 tips for managers to effectively conduct performance reviews

How often should you conduct performance reviews?

How to use competency framework as a talent management strategy

Talent development is critical for growing organizations which see the workforce as their biggest asset. Focus on developing their talent stack not only leads to a pleasant employee experience, it also augments the overall performance and productivity for an organization. 

While you may come across many ways to facilitate talent development, leveraging the competency framework can help you move the needle very quickly. 

Let's see how.

5 Stages in talent development

Before moving directly to how you can implement the competency framework, let’s quickly understand the 5 stages of talent development.

1. Planning

The first stage involves planning for your talent needs based on your organizational priorities and creating the position profile based on the skills, attitudes and other competencies. 

2. Identifying

Based on the position profile, you need to start attracting talent for the position. You can do so by spreading the word in the right networks, through job portal platforms, etc. The objective is to ensure that you are reaching out to the right network. You can also explore the right candidate for the position internally to considerably save hiring and training costs. 

3. Onboarding

Once you have identified the right person, the next stage of talent development is extending the offer to the person after a thorough background check as well as a competency and expectation match. It also requires creating personalized onboarding plans for the first 30-60-90 days of the candidate’s journey within the organization. Read our guide to employee onboarding to learn more about onboarding do’s and don’ts.

4. Developing

The main focus of talent development starts with providing the right development and learning opportunities to your workforce. This can involve upskilling for both technical and soft skills, leadership building or any development intervention based on the need of the role and position. 

Read: How to create employee development plan based on performance history

5. Retaining

Finally, talent development involves undertaking initiatives to retain your talent. While learning opportunities are important, facilitating engagement, wellness, motivation, etc. all contribute to employee retention. 

What is the competency framework?

If you are wondering how the competency framework aligns with talent development, you need to start by decoding what the framework actually stands for. 

Put simply, a competency framework is a set of behaviors, skills, abilities and attributes that an organization considers imperative for creating a high performance culture. 

The competency framework can be implemented at all stages of the talent development or the employee lifecycle within an organization. The idea is to ensure that certain core competencies are kept at the heart of the decision making that in any way impact the workforce. 

Importance of talent development for employee retention

Competency framework based talent development is very important for employee retention. Talent development practices when undertaken effectively have the potential to encourage team members to stay with the organization for long and at the same time become ambassadors to help attract high quality peers. 

Here are the top reasons why competency framework based talent development matters:

• Recruit the right person for the right job
• Provide the right learning and development opportunities
• Be an active participant in professional growth for employees
• Train and develop employees for professional obstacles
• Enable employees to navigate through challenges with mentoring support
• Enable employees to see a clear career growth path within the organization

Implementing the competency framework: Process, steps and ownership

Now that we have covered the basics of talent development and competency framework, let’s understand how leveraging the latter to advance the former can create a far reaching impact for organizations. 

Step I: Create a competency framework

The first step is to create a competency framework which involves identifying the key competencies which will be instrumental in guiding all decisions around talent development. Depending on the nature of your organization, there can be categories within the competency framework that you seek to focus on. Your competency framework should focus on behaviors, skills and attributes which are critical for performance and overall success. The following steps can help you create a competency framework for talent development:

1. Identify key competencies

• Establish core competencies that are required to be possessed by everyone in the organization, for instance, teamwork or collaboration
• Highlight the functional competencies that are required for specific roles and positions, for instance, situational awareness and the ability to think on one’s feet for those in business development roles
• Identify competencies that align with your core values and are non negotiable, for instance, if your core value revolves around innovation and experimentation, a key competency will be a risk taking attitude

2. Determine behaviors and attributes

• Define the key parameters for each identified competency i.e. what are the factors that collectively contribute to presence or absence of that competency
• Establish metrics to judge the level of competency alignment across the workforce and identify the gaps

3. Link to organizational goals

• Create a business statement of how the competencies can advance overarching organizational goals
• Focus on the value add they bring along for organizational success

The responsibility of creating the competency framework is collective. It starts with involving the executive leadership to ensure alignment with the vision, people managers to ensure they are ideal for the culture you are trying to build and functional managers to ensure inclusion of right competencies for each role and position. Furthermore, involving those on the ground can be fruitful as they have the best idea of what competencies are critical and others which are good to have. 

Step II: Align the competency framework with recruitment

Once the competency framework for talent development is ready, the next step is to align it with your recruitment process to ensure precise and effective hiring. There are a few steps along the way:

• Mention the keywords from the competency framework in your position profile or job description
• Specifically identify 5-7 key competencies for each role important for high level of performance
• Identify behaviors for each competency to look out for during the selection process
• Leverage psychometric assessments customized with your competency framework to test your candidates
• Conduct competency based interviews and assignments for a comprehensive view
• If there is a significant competency match, identify gaps if any for competency based development later
• Document results to align performance management for selected candidates

The onus of implementing the competency framework during selection lies primarily with the HR team and recruiters who assess the candidates with different tests and assessments. Team managers and leaders also play a role in assessing functional competencies and fit. 

Step III: Facilitate competency based performance management and development opportunities

Irrespective of whether an employee is onboarded before or after you have implemented the competency framework for recruitment, you need to ensure competency based performance management and development opportunities. 

Performance management

• Align OKRs and goals with competencies; focus on behaviors that can help drive the key results. For instance if a key result is expand to 5 new markets, a key competency can be adaptability
• Conduct competency based 360 feedback review; encourage your managers to review performance not just on outcomes but presence or absence of competencies that made the outcomes possible
• Encourage competency based self reflection for employees to assess their performance based on the competency framework
• Identify development areas based on competency needs for particular roles as well as the next career path in the trajectory
• Reward competency based performance and outcomes
• Measure competencies on an ongoing basis and compare results with recruitment analysis

Talent development interventions

• Define competency gaps for each position and identify talent development interventions to bridge the same. For instance, if communication is a key competency for a sales role, learning can be oriented towards better communication skills
• Align developmental interventions with competency based OKRs
• Identify learning objectives for each role and position and determine how they connect with the competency framework

From a talent development perspective, the focus of the competency framework should equally be on developing employees for their next or subsequent role based on the specific competencies for the same. 

The onus of aligning performance and development with the competency framework lies with team managers as they are best able to determine the performance gaps. Furthermore, employees with their managers can identify competency gaps for better performance and focus on the right learning and development interventions to bridge the same. 

Step IV: Leverage competency framework for succession planning

Finally, the competency framework must also impact the subsequent rungs of talent development where an employee moves up the ladder from one position to the next. Based on the organizational matrix and competencies for each level, you need to identify key attributes that differentiate one level from another and ensure the same is communicated to your employees. 

You should:

• Help you employees create a career development plan based on your competency framework to help them understand which competencies will enable them to grow
• Make succession planning a key organizational priority and focus on talent development from that lens

Final Thoughts

In a nutshell, it is quite evident that the competency framework can inform and advance every stage of talent development for fast growing organizations. If you implement such a framework across the employee lifecycle, you will significantly reduce your chances of a wrong hire and will be able to nurture a workforce that aligns on the vision, goals and overall organizational culture. 

A clear competency based talent development approach can help you achieve high levels of performance which is observable and measurable.

‍