Engagedly, a progressive performance management, learning management and people enablement software company released recent survey results on how organizations have changed their employee performance management as well as their learning and development processes in 2020.
This report found significant changes to these two areas of talent management, as workforces overcame heightened productivity challenges such as mass transitions to remote working environments at the onset of COVID-19.
The research found that, despite known obstacles to keep employees engaged and enabled to perform job duties, many organizations have managed to improve employee development processes in ways that will carry forward.
Reported improvements include:
- Leaders are more frequently participating in performance management processes, such as ongoing check-ins (65%)
- Organizations are more frequently participating in talent development processes, such as providing internal online training resources (69%)
Most importantly, the people leaders surveyed expect these changes to a more continuous approach to talent development to stick post COVID-19. This is especially important to note that these changes will become the “new normal” and service providers and practitioners will need to get better at optimizing their processes based on these shifts to better enable employees.
Survey questions focused on these key performance management process areas:
- Pay for performance incentives
- Usage of performance ratings
- Focus on objectives and key results/goal management processes
- Frequency of reviews/assessments
- Ongoing check-Ins with managers/others
Based on the feedback, ongoing check-ins with managers, frequency of reviews/assessments, and focus on objectives and key results/goal management processes have all increased in frequency during the COVID-19 era.
What stood out in the research is that 73.8 percent of leaders anticipate these changes to continue post COVID-19. It makes sense, because 70.7 percent of leaders were satisfied with the process changes related to performance management processes.
With the transition to remote work and organizations’ inability to conduct in-person training, we anticipated an increase in virtual and technology-driven learning and development.
