This week I am thrilled to be sharing a guest post on The Leader’s Digest. This post was written for The Leader’s Digest by David Mizne. Have a read of his thoughts on why and how to implement Continuous Performance Management - a growing method that’s already affecting traditional HR practices.

While annual performance reviews were once standard across a variety of industries, an incredibly low 5% of HR professionals believe that they’re still an effective method of judging employee performance. It’s clear that things need to change in the sphere of evaluation, but knowing exactly how to do so is less obvious.

Continuous performance management is a growing method that’s already affecting traditional HR practices. Luckily, there are a range of programs available to assist you in automating your performance reviews. Becoming more familiar with how continuous performance management works and how it can help you evaluate employees can significantly improve employee productivity.

Why Traditional Evaluation Methods Are Dated

Continuous, or at least more frequent, performance reviews give managers the ability to stay in closer communication with employees. This in turn allows all levels of a business to work together and adjust their goals to ensure that each department is helping the others succeed.

These are just a few of the reasons why businesses in all sectors are adopting more forward-thinking practices. Traditional performance reviews are difficult for both sides and make it more difficult to implement vertical communication. It’s clear that automation and continuous evaluation will be heavily involved in the future of performance management.

The Best Performance Management Applications

If you’re interested in moving away from conventional systems, it’s worth looking into the many programs currently on the market. There are applications available at various price points, and different options cater to different automation needs. These are just some of the most common performance management applications:

• Workboard: Workboard is an easy to use performance management program sold through the software as a service model. It enables managers to set goals and assignments for employees, who can mark them as completed. Managers can also easily check current progress and communicate with the group or individual employees.
• Silkroad Life Suite: In addition to the standard aspects, Silkroad Life Suite has features designed to improve employee retention, especially of top-level talent. Managers can evaluate and compare employees who leave the company, helping them find ways to keep their upcoming talent.
• Zugata: While it might sound unconventional, Zugata’s approach—which allows individual employees to leave anonymous feedback regarding their coworkers—has been successfully applied in many contexts. Peer feedback is increasingly valuable at a time when businesses are focusing on communication, and anonymizing contributions allows this to happen without interference.

Although it may seem overwhelming to switch HR practices, especially when conventions were fixed over such a long period of time, the payoff from improved evaluations can be substantial. These programs make the transition simple and easy to understand for everyone involved.

Over time, they will allow you to streamline performance management, thereby increasing everything from productivity to employee attraction and retention. Continuous performance management is the future of HR evaluation, and businesses that put off this update will end up behind their competition.