We sat down with Aisling Teillard, CEO & Co Founder of TandemHR Solutions, to learn why organisations need to get rid of those those traditional performance management models and start building employee feedback to create rich cultures.
How is Performance Management Evolving?
Performance Management is undergoing a huge transformation. Organisations are redesigning the way work is structured such as introducing matrixed teams, agile scrum methodologies and project teams. With the rise of the Gig Economy, these teams are often a mix of employees, consultants, SME’s and contractors. Traditional Performance Management is no longer working for these environments. It’s broken and there is an urgency to fix it. Often, employees have more than one manager and often have more specialist skills than their manager, making it difficult for the manager to be the sole coach and provider of feedback. Leveraging the network of a team to provide feedback gives a more shared view of who you are and how you are perceived.
The new work generations have also contributed to this change. They want feedback to be immediate, communicated effectively and high quality. They want this development opportunity where feedback can lead them to accelerated growth. We all have an innate need to self actualise and we want to learn and grow, this is the human condition. If employees believe you are giving them frequent feedback that has the intent of using it to rate them and judge them, then it’s harder for them to embrace that feedback. However, if feedback is given to them for the purpose of supporting their growth, then it’s far better received. Often we see organisations using the old traditional performance management models and then making that style of feedback more frequent, but it doesn’t fundamentally change how people are managed, it just makes it more frequent.
Organisations need to transform and focus on building an “Employee Feedback Culture”. Employee Feedback is about leading the employee to self-reflective moments. It’s those moments of reflection that lead to accelerated growth. Employees want to understand how they are perceived by those around them and take ownership over their own development. If they want to change how they are perceived they can take steps to influence that.
Employees then understand their personal brand and that’s something they can take with them no matter where they go. A feedback culture facilitates an employee to own their own development. It’s putting development back to the employee to decide what they want to work on. If they want to be a leader then they need to understand if they are perceived to have leadership skills. If nobody sees this in them they can take some steps to influence the perceptions around them.
What does the future of HR Technology look like?
I recently attended the HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas where there was a lot of focus on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Machine Learning. It’s taking over key HR processes but there is both a positive and dark side. It will make us more efficient but the HR world will look very different and a lot of jobs will be lost.
Within HR Technology, there are so many disruptive technologies emerging into the marketplace. However, there are a couple of disconnects. The first is a lot of these emerging HR technology companies are actually not consulting with HR when developing products. The second is that at these conferences you often don’t see the HR Professionals attending. Even a lot of HR Professionals Association are not focused enough on how HR Technologies are changing and shaping the future for HR skills. We need greater alignment between the HR technologist’s vision of the world and the HR professionals who work in the HR world of today.
How do you keep up with the latest information out there?
The HR Technology Conferences are key to hearing from the Key Note Speakers, talking to other vendors as well as networking with other HR Professionals. This gives you a broader reference of what is going on and critical to continue to innovate your own product.
[Tandem won the 2017 HR Tech World Disrupt HR Start Up Competition and will be part of the judging panel for this year’s competition.]
Who is your favourite business leader and why?
Tony Hanway, who is currently the CEO of Virgin Media. I worked for Tony when he was the CEO of O2 Ireland. He taught me about the value of employee feedback and being honest with people. He was never shy of giving feedback but always gave it with good intent, in an effort to stretch you beyond your comfort zone and grow into bigger roles.