We’re more than half-way through the year, and I’ve got a scary question for you: Where are you with your annual review? Have you thought about it since you walked through it with your boss just before the holidays? Have you made any progress on the goals you set in January?

August is not the traditional time to think about the annual review. But that makes it the best time to reconsider the practice. What is your companies policy on performance reviews?  If you don’t have one, then you have options. If you need to be compliant with your policies, then you have to deal with the best way to handle this important task. 

You see, it’s my belief that the standard performance review fails workers and employers. It’s also my belief that there’s another way. Behavior data allows managers to speak in specifics with their workers to drive progress all year long. Intrigued? Read on.

Where the annual review fails

The annual review fails for three reasons. 

1. It’s taxing.

If you’ve ever managed anyone, you know how much work goes into a performance review. Each review deserves your full attention — after all, that’s the mechanism that will drive workers’ growth (and, not to mention, pay) throughout the next year. But combing through 12 months of meeting notes to devise each reports’ strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities takes serious time and effort. 

There’s another side to consider here: The employee. Performance reviews are a classic trigger for stress and anxiety among workers. The performance review itself, embroiled in nerves and tension, steals the show, taking attention from what’s really demanding: A coming year of hard work and progress.

2. It’s subjective.

Managers are human. That means managers are subjective. One manager may see an employee’s socializing as self-indulgent procrastination, while another may see it as a collaboration-boosting strategy. The difference in opinion could color the tone of a performance review. 

Employees are also human and subjective. An employee may interpret a manager’s firm feedback as a nice-to-have goal rather than the key to their promotion. 

3. It’s vague.

Performance reviews are often littered with vague feedback and hazy goals. This leaves managers and employees in an unhelpful spot: Employees don’t know how to move forward, and managers don’t know how to assess their progress.

Behavior data does it better

The problems with performance reviews leave a lot of room for improvement. And they’ll motivate some to go back to the drawing board entirely. Here’s my preferred option: Behavior data. 

Using scientific tools to unveil the patterns in your employees’ actions, thinking, preferences, and passions, you’ll see how they work and why. You’ll gain the insights you need to propel them toward better performance. And you’ll ascertain where they want to go in the long term.

Let us, at PeopleBest, help you get to your 2022 finish line with a sample or insight of anyone on your team, on us!

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies

If you’re like me, you answered yes to those last two questions. I start to sweat come Q3, when we’ve passed the half-way mark and are barrelling through the summer. Maybe it’s my self consciousness speaking, but I’d like to think a lot of people feel this way. As time starts speeding by, those goals seem less lofty and more imposing.

As I face these challenges, I think a lot about motivation — both mine and my workers’. How do we maintain motivation throughout Q3 and into the end of the year? I’d like to offer three of my go-to strategies.

Offer Personalized Support

The first and best way to keep workers motivated is to offer personalized support: to identify and respond to the issues your workers struggle with. This effort entails some amount of research on the employer end — namely in some kind of listening. Many employers are beginning to recognize both the importance and payoff of listening. Sixty percent say they survey their entire organization at least quarterly, and many survey subsets of their workforce even more frequently.

Employee listening, whether it’s accomplished through pulse surveys, one-on-ones, or town halls, can help employers deliver targeted support to the workers who need it most. And when workers feel supported, they’re much more likely to be more productive and engaged.

Create Opportunities for Upskilling

Now that the year end is closing in on us, how can we help our people develop and use some new skills?  When workers feel stagnant, they quit. According to a LinkedIn report, 94% of respondents said they would stay in their jobs if their employer invested in their learning.

While upskilling certainly offers a boon for retention, it also serves as a mechanism for motivation. Workers who have opportunities to grow are shown to have greater motivation — especially when those opportunities align with their goals and ambitions.

Pair Passion and Purpose

Burnout is rampant in the workforce today. A lot of that can be attributed to overwork and stress; we are still living through a pandemic, after all. Coupled with the end of the year coming around the corner, this is even more of an issue.  When my team members are feeling burned out, I like to just make things simpler.  Instead of a lot of things to do or accomplish, I help them slow down and focus on the BIGGEST things we need to do. Less is more.

Workers who feel that their job and tasks relate to their interests and strengths are happier and more productive. A positive employee experience can double innovation, improve customer satisfaction and drive profits. In other words, an employee’s happiness at work has a lot to do with their ability to perform.  Remember, ‘work hard, play hard’.

Make the rest of 2022 amazing for yourself and your team!

The PeopleBest platform allows leaders to know their people and offer personalized support, identify opportunities for upskilling, and unite passion with purpose. To see how the platform could boost motivation on your team, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies.

I’m in favor of all these things. Who wouldn’t want to learn more about cheese pairings? But the “bring yourself to work” movement misses a fundamental element of the human psyche: behavior. We can encourage workers to show off their quirks and display their passions, but until we include behavior in our definition of “whole self,” the strategy does little for business.

That would be a huge lost opportunity: By accounting for behavior, employers can encourage openness at work and harness that freedom by aligning employees’ passions and opportunities. There are a million ways this strategy will boost your business, but today we’re going to talk about three areas where behavior spawns benefits.

#1: Revved up recruiting

Imagine recruiting without the resume and cover letter. There’s less work for recruiters and candidates alike. There’s fewer formalities, headaches and papers. But what’s left?

A behavior-enabled recruiting process should eliminate the frustrations once caused by the recruiting tactics of old. Instead, it provides data-driven insights into a candidate’s skill, potential, and passion. It helps you see where job seekers belong in your organization, streamlining and fireproofing the talent decisions that were once messy and haphazard.

#2 Spurred employee growth

Employers that invest in upskilling wield a powerful tool capable of both stalling resignation rates and bolstering engagement.

Upskilling works best when you know something about the workers you’re offering it to. A training on public speaking may terrify someone who excels at independent, numbers-based work. But it could offer incredible motivation to the worker who’s keen on scoring a leadership position in the next couple of years. You just have to know the difference.

#3: Synchronized teams

Organizations can enable teams by respecting individuals, and I’m convinced that the best way to do that is through knowledge. When we understand how and why workers thrive, we can match them to the right teams and the right assignments, respecting their natural inclinations and passions better than we ever did before. With AI-driven insights into how workers operate, employers can study their teams in seconds to determine who excels where and why.

To find out how you can revitalize your people approach with behavior insights, book a demo with PeopleBest and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies

If that weren’t enough, the office is also home to a wide expanse of people. Five generations now occupy the business world, and managers need to have a plan to navigate each group or risk a number of consequences, from frustration to failure.

The 5 Generations

Five groups inhabit the office:

1. The traditionalists: Those who are between 76 and 99 years old.

2. The baby boomers: Workers ranging from 57 to 75.

3. The Gen Xers: Anyone from 41 to 56 years of age.

4. The Millennials: The 26-year-olds to 40-year-olds.

5. And Gen Zers: The youngest of the crop — ages 25 years and below.

Manage people, not age groups

We could spend our time today discussing the common behaviors of these groups. But that so often devolves into age-based stereotyping, even when it’s meant to be positive.

Instead, I’d like to discuss a people-based approach to managing the multigenerational workforce. When managers are mystified by generational differences, they’re actually confronting differences in humans. Sure, these differences may be informed by life experiences related to the year of their birth. But they could just as easily be related to the place where they grew up or the style with which their parents raised them.

My point is that generational gaps may create challenges in the workplace, but the origin of the challenge is less important than the way managers surmount the challenge. In an article for Harvard Business Review, Megan Gerhardt, the director of leadership development at Miami University’s Farmer School of Business, put it this way:

“Just as we wouldn’t expect our actions to be accurately understood or universally agreed with when we travel to other places,” Gerhardt said, “we shouldn’t expect our reasons for approaching our work in particular ways to be clear to people who have grown up and started their professional lives at different points in time.”

Communication is key. So is empathy and understanding. So don’t focus on generational gaps or any other cause of differences in the workplace. Instead, get to know the people you’re working for — unlock their strengths and weaknesses, and connect them with opportunities that will make them soar.

PeopleBest can help can help find the unique opportunities inside each of your people and unlock the potential inside all generations operating on your team. To find out how, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies

Meanwhile, essential workers reported to work, masked up and ready to go. But teamwork faced stressors in those environments, too: safety, resources, turnover and other issues threatened the success of teams working in-person during the pandemic.

In-office operations are possible again these days, but many have decided to forgo a total return to the “before times.” And while workplace safety has grown more dependable, other problems spawned and strengthened by COVID still exist. So where does that leave teams?

Why is teamwork at risk?

The pandemic threatened the success of remote and in-person teams alike.

For workforces that could transition to online operations, many leaders attempted to galvanize teamwork by doubling down on employee engagement. This strategy wasn’t necessarily bad, but it didn’t always have the intended effect.

A recent Paychex poll asked respondents to rate the effectiveness of certain team-building measures. Nearly 40% of those whose leaders allowed them to vent about current events during meetings said they felt closer to their teams. Compare that to the 9% who said the same thing after attending virtual or in-person workplace social events.

All those online trivia nights and outdoor happy hours? They didn’t work.

Getting to good

If employee engagement isn’t the answer to broken team dynamics, what is?

A panel hosted in December by the Academy of Management discussed this very topic. California State University’s Hakan Ozcelik concluded that organizations must focus on respect and relationships as they set out to mend and bolster teamwork.

“Organizations and leadership should find ways to foster an emotional culture of love—my research indicates that relationships sustained people during turbulent or trying professional environments, much like we have seen with the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said. “Respect is a huge phenomena right now that we all have to think about—companies who foster a culture of respect will create great teams and will also allow the company to perform better over the long run.”

Hakan is right. Organizations can enable teams by respecting individuals, and I’m convinced that the best way to do that is through knowledge. When we understand how and why workers thrive, we can match them to the right teams and the right assignments, respecting their natural inclinations and passions better than we ever did before. With AI-driven insights into how workers operate, employers can study their teams in seconds to determine who excels where and why.

To find out how PeopleBest can help your team reach its potential, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies

The story is a favorite among motivational speakers, TED Talk hosts, and, yes, bloggers because it illustrates the importance of purpose so well. When workers don’t understand the greater significance of their job, they lose a sense of purpose. Without this, they’re not oriented toward the overarching mission of their organization, and they’re bound to be less satisfied with and engaged in their work.

The multifaceted mission

The man stopped by President Kennedy possessed a keen sense of his employer’s mission. His efforts as a janitor were helping put a man on the moon as much as the work from engineers and mathematicians.

It’s important workers have a sense of mission in other ways, too. They need to feel that their work connects to their personal passion — it motivates them, and it impacts the bottom line. For example, employees who feel that their day-to-day tasks relate to their interests and strengths are happier and more productive. Happy employees are linked to higher customer satisfaction. And according to MIT research, organizations offering a top-quartile employee experience “achieve twice the innovation, double the customer satisfaction, and 25 percent higher profits than organizations with a bottom-quartile employee experience.”

Unite purpose with possibility

There’s another way to think about purpose and mission in the workplace. Companies that teach workers to understand their skills as scalable are in a much better position to retain talent. When workers see how their current job prepares them for another position — one that also furthers the company mission and their own passion — they’ll dig into their work and stay.

This strategy requires a thorough understanding of a worker’s skills and interests. Your moonshot challenge is to make darn sure you know what each person on your team or in your company is passionate about. Your next mission is to help them take that passion into the vision and objective you are trying to achieve.

I’ll leave you with a scene from Alice and Wonderland:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice.

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

Our job is to ignite the passion to help them find their path with purpose! To find out how PeopleBest can help you discover what makes your workers tick, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies