At least once a week, I am on a call or respond to a question posted on Ask the Experts from an organization that is having difficulty narrowing the field of talent management systems for their initiative. The organization asks us to identify five or six solution providers that are best suited for their stated requirements. We are happy to help them, as this type of high-value service is included in our membership program. Inevitably, the organization leads with a complaint that it is impossible to tell the solution providers and their offering apart. I wholeheartedly agree.
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Let’s face it, at most organizations, employees and managers use the performance management system at the beginning of the year to set goals and to establish development plans - and do not return to the system until they are required by HR to enter performance evaluations and make compensation decisions. When they do have to return to the “system”, they view their effort as an arduous, compliance-driven task rather than a business process to support a high performance culture. Moreover, in our Essential Guide to Performance Systems we found that three out of four managers “do not feel their performance management system helps them do their job better”. The problem is that the majority of performance management systems implemented today were designed as automation tools for HR practitioners to collect information and not to support the business user. As a result, these systems are highly transactional, cumbersome, and just plain unintuitive.
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