This year’s HR Leaders’ Summit takes place on April 4 at the Grand Millennium hotel, Auckland. The conference, now in its fifth year, will see industry leaders come together to discuss the hottest topics in HR consulting. Insights will include the role of human resources in the future workplace, how HR professionals can use artificial intelligence and technology as well as what strategies we can use to engage today’s workforce.
Strategic Pay are excited to announce that our very own Michelle Gapes will be giving a talk on performance management. So, let’s take a look at this subject, and how New Zealand’s approach compares with that of other countries.
Cutting edge practices – what are they?
Instead of the annual or bi-annual performance reviews, which are often very uncomfortable for everyone involved, managers are now moving toward “performance conversations”. These involve more frequent but much less formal meetings.
This cutting edge practice is accompanied by two new innovations – ratingless reviews and crowdsourced feedback. Ratingless reviews dispense with the conventional performance score, while crowdsourced feedback involves getting assessments from other employees through social media.
How effective are they?
According to WorldatWork, 80 per cent of organisations who had introduced them and felt they were able to answer the survey (many hadn’t had them in place long enough to measure results) reported an increase in employee development. Of these companies, 70 per cent also said top performers were receiving more rewards. Meanwhile, only 11 per cent reported an increase in the cost of rewards. Cutting edge practices also increased transparency and employee motivation, and allowed team members to more clearly see the connection between behaviour and rewards.
Who’s implementing them?
This is where HR consulting shows its strength. WorldatWork reported 73 per cent of companies surveyed said top HR executives were involved in the adoption of cutting edge practices to a great or very great extent. The figure was only 45 per cent for top executives.
How does New Zealand compare?
84 per cent of participating New Zealand organisations use cutting edge practices, compared to only 54 per cent for North America, according to a recent performance management survey conducted by Strategic Pay. Ongoing feedback and rating-less reviews were used more in New Zealand than America, but the US led when it came to crowd sourced feedback. Since cutting edge practices are still developing, we expect to see ongoing changes throughout New Zealand businesses in the future.
If you have any questions or want more information about performance management, please contact our team.
