In 2016 Harvard Business Review published an article entitled ‘The Performance Management Revolution’ that showed how more and more companies are moving away from the traditional annual review towards a system which favours giving people instant feedback. Companies in Denmark are also rethinking their performance management – as the NOCA meeting on the 28th of November showed, where Nets talked us through how they have been changing their performance management system in the past two years.
Informal check-ins between manager and employee
The core of the new performance management system at Nets are the regular check-ins between managers and employees. A check-in is a forward-focused dialogue where the employee sits in the driver’s seat. The focus is on helping the employee perform as well as further develop. These check-ins are facilitated by several one-page guides for both the leader and the employee about how to set priorities, give feedback, and talk about development. A key difference with the former process is that it is no longer dictated top-down; instead, it is the employee who takes the initiative.
How to ‘formalize the informal process’
Since the check-ins are key to this new approach it is essential that the employees have a high-quality dialogue with their manager. Managers need to be able to ask the right questions and employees need to be able to drive the process. So, Nets trained both parties – in some cases together. Other factors that contributed to the success of the new approach is that Nets first did a pilot study in one part of the organisation. This also helped them convince top management of the value of this new approach. When the new approach was then rolled out in the organisation, HR focused on communicating the new approach – something you can never do enough of. Finally, Nets recommends learning from others (e.g. Adobe) and see what would work for your own organisation – after all, context is important!