Propose two challenges that an organization may experience when using technology in its performance management process and analyze the overall impact of each challenge on an organization's ability to achieve its performance management goals

Propose two challenges that an organization may experience when using technology in its performance management process.
Analyze the overall impact of each challenge on an organization’s ability to achieve its performance management goals.
Suggest one strategy that the organization can use to address each challenge. Justify your response.

See slide notes below:

Slide #

Topic

Narration

Introduction

Welcome to Performance Management. In this lesson, we will be discussing technology and performance management.

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Objectives

Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to:

Evaluate the use of technology in the performance management process.

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Supporting Topics

Specifically, we will discuss the following topics:

Technology’s role in performance management;

Aligning technology to the goals and purposes of performance management;

Complications created by technology;

Implementing a technology-based performance management system; and,

Best practices of using technology for performance management.

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Technology of the Past

Technology has supported performance management long before the personal computer became standard on every desktop. In particular, two bodies of research relevant to technology and performance management existed in the industrial psychology literature.

We will start with electronic performance monitoring or EPM. This includes surveillance, measurement, recording, and compilation of work-related activities of employees using electronic means to measure performance through indicators such as productivity, accuracy, speed, and errors. EPM’s criticism that it invades worker privacy by being so closely monitored developed an off-shoot of research into guidelines and best practices for the development of EPM.

Telecommuting indeed has its benefits for both the organization and the individual worker, however, from a performance management perspective, there have been some challenges to accurately assess performance when the individual is not physically present with the manager during the performance assessment. The research stresses the importance of developing clear, objective goals; making work agreements or contracts; and monitoring employee achievements of goals in an objective manner, such as based on results rather than activities.

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Technology as an Enabler

Technology can be used to support performance management tasks such as strategic, administrative, informational, developmental, organizational maintenance, and documentational.

In the next two slides we will discuss how technology can be used to serve these six functions.

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Technology as an Enabler, continued

The strategic purpose of any performance management system is to align individual goals with the organization’s larger goals or objectives. Research indicates an increase in employee morale when employees are given the opportunity to see how individually they work to meet the larger goals of the firm.

Therefore, technology can be used strategically to set goals in a systematic way and allow the resulting goals be accessible to all employees. Technology allows these goals to be communicated in real-time, which is an advantage for the organization and employees.

Administratively, technology houses large amounts of data in one place that makes retrieval effortless. Technology, then, should be used to make this data readily available for data extraction, data sharing, summarizing, reporting, and comparing for an individual, a department, or the entire organization. This makes decision making less time consuming than using paper-based files and data.

On the informational side, technology is efficient at updating performance goals, giving just-in-time feedback, and giving performance-focused communication.

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Technology as an Enabler, continued

Technology can aid performance management in individual development efforts towards short-term and long-term career planning. Technology can be used to collect performance feedback and assess career planning efforts underway.

Organizational maintenance refers to workplace planning activities, such as current and future staffing decisions. Technology can also be used to conduct a talent audit, whereas current stock is taken of the workforce’s skills, abilities, and experiences for the purposes of forecasting future needs and making strategic business decisions.

Lastly, technology can house a lot of data and documentation in a more efficient manner than a paper-based system. Whether these are personnel files, performance appraisals, annual goals, or career planning, retrieving data when needed no matter where the individual who needs it is housed, can give a strategic advantage to an organization.

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Check Your Understanding

Technology’s Role in the Process

The process of performance management involves six steps:

prerequisites;

performance planning;

performance execution;

performance assessment;

performance review; and,

performance renewal and recontracting.

In the next two slides we will discuss how technology can be used in each of these functions.

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Technology’s Role in the Process, continued

The first step, appropriately called the prerequisite step, includes the identification of a company’s strategic goals and the completion of job analysis activities for the targeted positions. Technology can assist in accomplishing these by developing and communicating the organization’s mission and priorities as well as ensuring that unit-level missions and priorities are in alignment with the organization.

Performance planning entails developing a shared understanding of expected behaviors and results, which are then specified in a performance plan. Technology may be used to assist an employee and manager in creating and storing a performance plan. Technology makes real-time adaptations easy.

Performance execution involves the activities associated with the performance management system that involves both the employee and the manager. These activities include setting goals, seeking and giving feedback, and preparing for performance reviews, to name just a few of the many activities involved. Technology can be useful here by providing one platform to integrate all these functions into one place, thus making it easy to record data for decision making purposes.

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Technology’s Role in the Process, continued

Many managers, and organizations for that matter, wait until weeks or even days before a performance review to collect and analyze data. Technology can be useful when it comes to performance assessments by collecting a variety of metrics across time, which avoids the error of weighing recent performance more heavily on appraisals. It is also capable of collecting subjective performance ratings, such as quality of deliverables and timeliness of meeting objectives.

The performance review process has been criticized for its inability to generate communication that results in improved performance. Here’s where technology can make the performance review process a bit more effective. A robust performance management system can alert managers to the optimal time for reviewing performance, rather than relying on a standard schedule. When managers wait for the annual or semi-annual appraisal period, improvement communication may be too late. A just-in-time system giving managers the data needed to align performance to the goals will more likely result in communication that will be able to change performance behaviors.

Activities in the performance renewal and recontracting phase refer back to those in the performance planning stage. Here the manager collaborates with the employee to consider revision of the performance plan from the previous cycle, taking into account all available information collected in the intervening time frame.

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Technology as a Challenge

Technology never works perfectly, especially when integrating multiple types of technologies to do a variety of tasks with users who vary in knowledge and skills to use the systems.

Next we will discuss some of the challenges associated with using technology for performance management functions. These challenges include:

information overload;

overexposure;

time requirements;

over-reliance on automation;

miscommunication; and,

lastly, technology literacy.

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Technology as a Challenge, continued

The first challenge is information overload. The opportunity to input, extract, summarize, and report data all at the touch of your fingertips may actually cause more stress and more working overtime.

This is a real problem for organizations and can be reduced through the creation of a graphical display of how the system components are organized and where the user currently is located in reference to the system’s broader structure. Offering search functions based on key works can also reduce information overload.

Overexposure is diluting the importance and value of the information being used. A way to overcome overexposure is to develop ways to make inactions with the system engaging and by making sure that every request for data is necessary and includes an explanation as to the reason for the request.

Automation is often viewed as a productivity enhancing tool. However, if the system is slow or clunky, it may actually reduce efficiencies. This will cause great frustration over time for employees who regularly interact with such systems.

A recommendation for reducing the time necessary to input and access performance management data is to take “pulse surveys.” A pulse survey includes a short set of questions that is administered more frequently than traditional annual employee surveys, often in an attempt to measure the “pulse” of an organization over time and with less intrusion on employees.

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Technology as a Challenge, continued

An over-reliance on automation occurs when leaders believe the performance management technology will replace the manager in the performance management system. To combat this attitude, set the expectation that technology supports, not replaces the manger, in the performance management process.

Miscommunication is common whether face-to-face, on the telephone, or through email or instant messaging. Technology makes it so easy to communicate that sometimes the ease of communicating replaces full consideration of the context that needs to be communicated. This is how miscommunication through these technological advances happens. Miscommunication in performance management systems can be mitigated through the use of a separate performance-specific system to enter and access performance management information.

The last challenge we will discuss is technology literacy. In any organization there are varying degrees of technology literacy. Even in a technological company you would find a range of literacy and comfort levels regarding the use of technology. In order to fully interact with a technological based performance management system, everyone who is using the system needs hands on training and job aids in order to interact with the system fully and efficiently.

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Check Your Understanding

Taking Technology System-wide

Technology can automate many of the performance management functions. In implementing a technological strategy there are a few considerations an organization should spend time analyzing.

First, the organization should decide whether they should buy a system or build it. This decision is often based on whether or not internal resources are available to build the system, the level of customization needed in the system, and the financial resources available for the project.

Second, integrating technology into an organization whose employees will have varying degrees of technology literacy requires a change management approach. Enterprise-wide implementations of technology solutions do fail on a regular basis. The failure often stems from employee resistance. Implementation of technology across the organization should be treated like any other large-scale change initiative in the organization.

Significant focused must be placed on developing the content that will be housed within the solution and the tools that will maximize the effectiveness of the content. The content is king when making enterprise-wide solutions regarding technology.

Lastly, an organization should keep integration in mind. An organization that is going to a technology-based performance management system may also have a technology based system for learning and development, for recruitment and selection, and for tracking attendance, sales, and scheduling. Users of these systems will work more efficiently with the systems if integration is considered in the front-end analysis of taking the technology system-wide.

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Best Practices

To conclude this lecture, we will highlight a few of the many best practices for using technology in the performance management system.

In the area capitalizing on the benefits a technology-based performance management system can offer, first, allow ready access to performance management information across the enterprise, making sure everyone who needs the information has access to it. Next, document performance-related conversations and actions and automate requests for performance feedback on a project basis.

In the area of avoiding complications, it is suggested that a user-friendly interface be created in order to make the system efficient to interact with. Also, the organization should provide adequate training on how to use the system and execute a communication campaign to ensure that all those who will utilize the system are familiar and comfortable with the technology prior to its implementation.

Let’s wrap up with three best practices for implementing an automated PM system. One, ensure clear performance management process have been established. Two, establish a comprehensive internal support system for users after the system goes live. And three, create a long-term implementation plan for integration across human resource and operational applications to that the maximum benefits of an automated performance management solution can be achieved.

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Summary

We have now reached the end of this lesson. Let’s take a look at what we covered.

We started by talking about technology’s role in electronic performance monitoring and telecommuting. These two areas made up our discussion about technology of the past.

We then moved to the six performance management functions of a performance management system and how technology can assist.

This was followed by technology’s role in the process of a performance management system. The six roles are:

prerequisites;

performance planning;

performance execution;

performance assessment,

performance review, and,

performance renewal and recontracting.

Along with identifying the six roles, we also addressed how technology could assist the function.

Then we discussed six challenges that technology poses to any organization and offered a reasonable solution or recommendation to the challenge. To recap, those six challenges are:

Number one, information overload;

Two, overexposure;

Three, time requirements;

Four, over reliance on automation;

Five, miscommunication; and,

Six, technology literacy.

We wrapped up the lecture discussing how to take technology system-wide and nine best practices for using and implementing technology for performance management functions.

This completes this lesson.

Propose two challenges that an organization may experience when using technology in its performance management process and analyze the overall impact of each challenge on an organization’s ability to achieve its performance management goals

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