Virtual performance management
By Kim Jong-nam
For the past two weeks, I have been conducting online performance management training for several companies. Since this is the time of year when we usually do performance appraisals for the past year and make performance plans for the next, we discussed what desirable performance management means and what specific managerial activities will have the greatest impact. Surprisingly, the managers and executives were not focused on virtual performance management; rather, their attention was on traditional performance management. This was especially strange because they all seemed to agree that virtual task management capacities will become more and more essential for leaders.
I think this contradiction is chiefly because their underlying assumptions of performance management stem from their old perceptions: that performance should be evaluated by outcomes, and that managers need to see with their eyes how their employees are working. However, these assumptions must be reconsidered. Instead, I think there are several things that managers need to take into account in order to become effective virtual performance managers.
First, managers now need to provide more context to their employees. If employees are working alone at home, they may tend to become obsessed with their results and unable to see bigger perspectives. However, in order to get employees to produce more meaningful work, managers need to inform them about the industry's status, business trends and competitors' strategies. This will help employees with declining motivation and accountability that may be a result of their isolation. Employees need to know what changes are happening in the industry so that they can evaluate for themselves their companies' current level of performance. Virtual management must combat the negative effects of fragmentation by letting employees know what changes are happening in the world outside.
Second, managers need to remind employees of the larger cause and purpose of their work. Another negative consequence of becoming too results-oriented is that employees may lose the sense that what they do is meaningful. Virtual performance managers should help their employees make meaning by asking them to think about various work-related improvements, such as how to provide higher value to customers, what new products and services could be created, what problem areas could be resolved, etc. These questions can change the evaluation-centered perspective. Companies can grow when they emphasize customers, not employee evaluation. That is, virtual performance management should attempt to make the company more customer-oriented rather than employee-performance-oriented.
Third, it is essential to remember that goal and indicator management are done through managing employee's core behavior. However, virtual managers cannot see how their employees are behaving, so they will focus only on results, because they think that behavior cannot be evaluated or managed in this setting. This means that core behavior, which is so essential, will not get the attention that it requires; remember that core behavior is connected to bigger impacts on the organization. Since there are fewer and shorter opportunities to give feedback online, managers need to make even more of an effort to define core behavior and to ensure that it is maintained in their employees.
Fourth, virtual managers tend to rely on norm-centered performance appraisal methods such as forced distribution, paired comparison, or ranking methods because they cannot see their employees' behavior, which makes them more tempted to use technical evaluations. However, managers must also think about how to motivate and facilitate employee learning and growth. Since employees are not physically nearby for virtual managers to take care of, managers must become more actively interested in employee development. Company growth coexists with employee growth. Virtual mangers need to ask what employees have learned through and felt because of their roles and responsibilities. Motivation and a sense of accomplishment can come from feeling a sense of learning and growing.
Performance management requires that managers not only have technical skills, but can also help employees discover meaningful work and grow competencies. This is only possible when managers are agile and flexible enough to help their employees navigate a changing environment. That is why virtual performance managers must be even better than usual at understanding what capabilities will be needed, and developing them in their employees and in themselves, given the unpredictable new world.
Kim Jong-nam is the founding CEO of META (www.imeta.co.kr) and a global organizational development consultant who works both virtually and in person.