Combining the Power of Employee Performance and Development

In today's ever-changing business environment, companies are looking for simple and adaptable ways to improve performance and stay competitive. With a potential recession in 2024 and ongoing global geopolitical instability, leaders will need to be both strategic and flexible in the coming year. A Gartner study found that executives and investors will be particularly focused on productivity, efficiency and profit margins as profitability drivers in 2024.

However, achieving impactful business results requires more than just prioritization and focus. It requires real investment because improving the company's productivity, efficiency and profit margin requires improving the skills and impact of your employees. This represents a major challenge for many companies as it is difficult to achieve behavioral change among employees without the right systems and processes in place.

This is where the combined power of performance management and development tools comes into play. By leveraging the synergy between these two tools, you can achieve high, enterprise-wide performance at scale.

How performance and development go hand in hand

Performance management and employee development are often viewed as two separate processes, when in reality they are inextricably linked.

At IceHrm, our people scientists recommend “continuous performance management,” which describes a more holistic approach that focuses on continuous improvement through regular pulse checks, coaching, and employee development conversations.

This approach leverages both performance management and employee development tools and offers you numerous benefits, including:

With people-focused performance management, employees recognize where they need to develop.

At its core, continuous performance management is a more human-centered approach to the performance cycle. Creating performance and development touchpoints throughout the year ensures employees know how to achieve their goals, which builds trust and consistency.

Additionally, by implementing continuous performance evaluation, companies can help their employees identify the right areas for growth, leading to continuous improvement. For example, managers can discuss performance feedback and growth in regular 1:1 meetings. Managers can also share feedback from colleagues using 360° feedback features to help their team accurately identify their strengths and areas for improvement. The team can then use this feedback to shape their performance and development goals.

Promote intrinsic motivation through clear development plans and career paths

Deloitte research shows that growth opportunities are a powerful motivator, meaning they directly impact individual and business performance. There are plenty of opportunities for forward-thinking companies: Gartner found that fewer than one in three employees know how they want to advance their career in the next five years.

By using an employee development tool like Develop by IceHrm, you can motivate your employees to change behavior and improve performance with clear, easy-to-access career paths and development plans. In fact, our employee researchers have found that a lack of development opportunities is the number one reason an employee leaves or stays with a company.

Our integrated career path tool helps you create clarity and drive motivation with competency frameworks and role descriptions that reveal a motivating future in your company. You can create career paths within and between teams, giving employees the opportunity to move both upwards and laterally - ultimately promoting internal mobility and providing employees with multiple opportunities to advance within your company.

Support employees in implementing their development plans to achieve both their development and business goals

Employees who feel like they don't have access to clear development opportunities are 41% more likely to leave their company, according to research from IceHrm's People Science team.

To prevent this, you should encourage your employees to create individual development plans. Then prepare them to put their plan into action by providing them with learning resources and goal-setting tools that help them align their individual goals with business needs. Our HR scientists recommend linking learning resources to skills to improve acceptance and performance.

Encourage your managers to make development a central topic in one-on-one meetings with their direct reports. With the right guidance and tools, managers can better drive development conversations and improve the overall employee experience. Consider training tools like Skills Coach, which harnesses the magic of spaced repetition to help leaders develop critical leadership and management skills for the modern workplace.

The benefit of actionable development plans is twofold: employees get the growth they crave and the company achieves better business results. The latter point is backed up by data - IceHrm data has shown that employees who use development plans see an average performance increase of 30%.

The key to developing synergies between development and performance
While most companies use some form of performance management or employee development tools, few are able to fully leverage the potential of these two tools together.

Why is that the case? The most common reason is that companies use isolated tools - one for performance and another for development. If the two tools are not designed to work together, it can be time-consuming and difficult to maximize their impact.

Get ahead of your competitors by investing in an all-in-one employee experience platform like IceHrm whose engagement, development, and performance tools work seamlessly together. Give your employees the opportunity to do their best, increase productivity and accelerate growth.