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- Manda Hunt
- TalentQuest
- (404) 441-3455
Interview with Kevin Sessions, President of TalentQuest
Jennifer Forgie, Managing Partner of OnPoint, met with Kevin Sessions, President of TalentQuest, OnPoint’s strategic partner, to discuss current trends in performance management.
Q: Perhaps we can begin by talking about some of the challenges and issues organizations are currently facing with regard to performance management.
One of the biggest challenges organizations face is making sure that they know what competencies are required for success. This is important for several reasons. First, competencies are the foundation of a company’s talent management activities. Secondly, without knowing what competencies are important, performance evaluations are often not specific enough or are not relevant. Another issue many organizations face is the lack of a well-defined and consistent performance management process across the organization.
Q: In your experience, what are the most common obstacles that prevent performance management systems from achieving their intended objectives?
In many cases, managers are not provided with appropriate training to ensure that they have the appropriate skills necessary to support performance management. We also see organizations that do not have a well-defined goal setting process. It is one thing for companies to say “yes, employees have goals”. But how are the goals documented? How often do employees see the goals? Are individual goals linked to department and organizational goals? Finally, we often see missed opportunities to leverage technology solutions. There are a number of different solutions that allow organizations to automate performance management. There is huge value in this for low cost, as these tools increase efficiency, enhance visibility, and increase accountability.
Q: What suggestions would you give organizations on overcoming these obstacles?
Organizations need to step back and assess their entire talent strategy and make sure it supports their business strategy. Understanding this big picture is a critical first step. Next, they should clarify how performance management fits into their overall talent strategy and identify the critical success factors, or competencies. It’s also important to not over-engineer the process. Keep it simple.
Q: Can you provide a specific client example of how the particular client dealt with a common obstacle?
We recently worked with a 1,000 employee manufacturing company where they were introducing a new formalized performance management process. The senior executives knew that they had to understand the talent pool and focus on valuing talent to impact their bottom line. They had done performance appraisals in the past but had not used a consistent process across the board. We worked with them to define the system and get it in place. The biggest obstacle was getting commitment and buy-in from people who believed that they didn’t need the system/process. Therefore, it was important that we had executive sponsorship, which was essential to ensuring that this initiative was a success.
Q: What characteristics or factors differentiate the best performance management systems from those that are less effective?
I think it’s many of the things we touched on already – having support from senior executives, having well-defined competencies, an effective goal setting process, and commitment to development on the back end. If these are in place, these factors can differentiate a poor performance management process from a very effective one.
Q: What advice do you have for companies looking to better align performance management with their business strategy?
Performance management is one component of an overall talent strategy. A comprehensive talent strategy should start with how you assess and select employees. Then, organizations need to consider what they do for performance management, development, succession, and retention. Performance management is just one leg of this stool and the overall talent strategy must support and be clearly aligned with the business strategy.
Q: Finally, what future trends do you anticipate in regard to how organizations use and implement performance management?
Approximately 53% of companies currently use performance management applications and I believe that more companies will continue to adopt web-based software over time. Another trend we see is the introduction of social networking tools into performance management systems.
