Vicki Anderson

There is a lot of talk today about performance management, but confusion about what it is. To me, performance management is about helping people understand what they are expected to do in their jobs and giving them clear and frequent feedback about how they are doing it.  This means that a once a year performance appraisal is not performance management.

So often an employee tells me his supervisor never talks to him about how he is doing unless he messes up. Employees need to know what they are doing right so they can keep doing it and they need to know what they are doing wrong so they can change it. This requires frequent feedback.

Talent management is about developing people’s skills, abilities, and knowledge so they can contribute effectively to your organization. This is not just about putting down a learning goal on a performance appraisal for the next year and sending someone to a seminar. This is about coaching and counseling, giving job assignments for learning and growth, and encouraging people to learn on their own.

Having a good performance management system can be used as a talent management tool if it is used to provide frequent feedback for the employee to know what he or she is doing well or should develop.  Goals can be set for honing skills or for learning new skills to prepare them for future positions.

Even though there are many people looking for jobs today, the time will come again soon when we have a talent shortage, so this is an excellent time to be making the most of the people assets you have by developing a consistent and frequent means of monitoring and measuring performance successes. This will also help you manage the talent you have now into the talent you will need in the future. Execution of your strategy requires that you be intentional about great performance.

One product I have found to be good for this is KeyneLink. It is web-based and very user friendly.  It is designed to facilitate frequent performance-related conversations, which clearly meets my criteria for performance management. It is a way to manage talent by measuring performance. More information can be found on their website.