As coronavirus was unleashed across the world in early 2020, Facebook did something unprecedented: It gave its employees a break. For the first half of the year, the tech giant granted each of its 45,000 full-time staffers an “exceeds expectations” performance review rating, ensuring they all got $1,000 bonuses . Google, for its part, skipped its midyear reviews altogether, and in the fall, promoted twice as many people as it usually does. The pandemic has changed fundamental parts of work. As people continue to juggle personal and job-related responsibilities at the same time—often from the same dining room chair—employers are having to rethink the way they evaluate performance . The usual rigid metrics for success have flown out the window, and for many companies, it’s less about how many targets you’ve hit, but how well you’re doing overall. “Empathy, caring, supporting people is really the theme,” Josh Bersin, a human resources analyst and consultant, tells the Wall Street Journal . He anticipates this grace period will last around two years. When “the pandemic is history and we’re back to ‘go, go, go,’ we’ll probably go back to the way things were.” However, if we face this historic moment, , managers and teams can reevaluate some of our performance management tactics for the better. Here are a handful of recommendations. Keep goals fluid Goal-setting looks very different now than it did before the pandemic. Rather than trying to stick to fixed goals that are discussed at annual reviews and then forgotten, managers and teams should start thinking of goals as fluid, updating them on a weekly or even real-time basis. The workplace management team at Gallup emphasizes the importance of an “agile mindset,” which encourages teams not just to expect change, but anticipate it. Ben Wigert and Heather Barrett write “managers should be given the expectation, authority, and flexibility to tailor goal-setting to the team and the individual as their work changes.” Sticking to pre-pandemic expectations is setting employees up to fail. Rather than fixating on KPIs, look at how well your reports are doing with other, often overlooked intangibles: How well are they communicating, both with their managers and their team? Are they bringing clarity to complex situations? Are they contributing positively to morale? As the goal posts for “success” continue to shift, it’s important to adjust expectations accordingly. Read More …
