This may be the happiest season of the year, but for many managers and employees, things aren’t all that merry and bright.
Many are stressing about whether they’ve put in enough face time with the boss or clocked enough hours at the office. Why the trepidation? Because they’re about to have their dreaded year-end performance review.
Things maybe different this year, however. Thirty-seven percent of people in the United States work from home an average two days per month, and we’ve seen the number of those telecommuting full-time swell by 103 percent over the past decade.
This fast-rising rate of remote workers, combined with the ever-present talent war, is forcing companies to reexamine not only their stance on staffing telecommuters, but also the ways in which they go about evaluating their performance.
Millennial employees now make up a significant part of the workforce — more than one in three, to be exact — and they are driving the biggest overhaul of performance-management standards in decades. Both millennials and Gen-Xers see work and life as closely intertwined; they tend to want a different kind of relationship with their managers, and more frequent feedback.
No trophy necessary
Never ones to accept the “that’s just the way it’s done” mentality, most millennials — or, more precisely, 62 percent of them — report staying with their employers longer if they feel like they can talk to their managers about anything, including non-work-related issues.
This new wave of workers craves employer-employee relationships based on growth, not rewards.
In the past, professionals wanted swanky corner offices, company cars and personal secretaries. Today, the focus is on work-life integration. People want the flexibility to move to a new city, state or country and pursue their passions while they’re still working for your company.
Throw remote workers into the mix, and you can really measure your team members’ productivity only by the quality of their output, not how many hours John put in or how long Jill came into the office for. As salespeople have long known, results are what truly matter.
Instead, focus on outcomes to evaluate productivity and determine opportunities for future improvements. The worst performance-management decision you can make is to reward employees who try but consistently fail to reach needed outcomes by working hard, not smart.
New performance standards
Performance evaluation often quantifies how much face time employees put in, not necessarily the quality or outcome of their work….