Employee engagement is one of the secrets to success. And, performance management goes hand in hand with this.
When employees feel supported, engaged, and satisfied in their workforce, they’re more likely to perform better in the office, whether that’s actually in a physical office or at a desk in their spare bedroom. Add a performance management system that allows you to check in with your goals, assess your current performance, and have meaningful conversations about your needs and solutions to any issues you may have, and you have all the tools you need to perform well in any industry.
Workday understands how important the connection between engaged employees and an organized performance management system is. That’s why they created the Workday Performance Management module, a single system that allows users to track and assess performance in the workplace, ensuring teams are working towards common organizational goals.
Read on to learn more about how Performance Management in Workday can help optimize your business processes and organizational development.
What is Performance Management?
No matter how large your company is or how many employees you have to manage, having the right technological capabilities to track employee performance and identify new ways to optimize it is important for the current and future success of your organization.
This is where performance management technology comes into play.
In order to keep up with changing industry landscapes and competition with other companies, you need agile technology that can keep up with all of your data and analytics needs. Luckily for you, the world of performance management has grown and the development of systems that allow for continuous performance tracking and flexible analytics is more prominent than ever.
Today, performance management systems offer features that give users a new way to look at goal management, workforce motivation, and the overall employee experience. Whether you want to look into specific skill gaps within your workforce, annual performance reviews for key employees, or anything in between, modern performance management systems have you covered. Effective performance management systems help organizations align their goals, maximize their business processes, reduce overall turnover, and develop their workforce to achieve optimal performance.
Why You Need a Performance Management System
In the past, annually-conducted, surface-level performance reviews were done to assess employee performance and organizational productivity. In today’s ever-changing performance landscape, this approach to performance management no longer cuts it.
Organizations need a continuous performance management system that allows them to track employee productivity, measure operational effectiveness, and easily adapt to change. It’s evident that workforces are changing, and they need the right performance management capabilities to keep up. Here are some of the most important reasons why we think you need to invest in a performance management system like Workday:
- Measure employee goals and company alignment
- Discuss skill gaps and areas of improvement
- Assess performance with accuracy
- Build and maintain trust between managers and their employees
- Highlight potential future steps for a more productive workforce
- Keep all performance data and insights in one system
How is Workday Performance Management Different?
Workday sets itself apart by offering performance management capabilities that go above and beyond the usual performance enablement activities of the modern workforce.
With its single-system approach, Workday Performance Management allows users to track individual performance, compare talent acquisition and management data, and access performance-related tasks that help measure performance and determine future goals and growth opportunities – all in one place. Workday’s complex integration functionality also allows users to connect performance, talent, and overall human resources (HR) data in one system with integrated dashboards, reports, and insights.
Benefits of Using Workday Performance Management
Increased Trust
Trust between employees, managers, and company executives is the foundation of a productive workforce environment. Trust also offers more opportunities for encouragement, collaboration among employees, and more efficient conflict resolution. With a performance management system that focuses on employees as people first, trust is built and maintained a little more easily.
Continuous feedback and periodic performance reviews give employees the opportunity to check in with their own personal goals and allow managers to assess their performance as it compares to company standards. Workday’s integrated HCM, Talent, and Performance Management systems also allow the communication lines between employees, departments, and branches of your company to stay open, leading to more fulfilled potential across the board.
Ongoing Performance Evaluation
Rather than having annual performance check ins through surveys and surface-level employee reviews, Workday Performance gives managers, employees, and executives more opportunities to have frequent conversations about performance-related issues and strategic objectives. This way, your performance enablement system can operate as efficiently as possible, whether your employees are conducting one-on-one meetings, completing periodic performance reviews, or simply checking in with individual experiences.
With a more collaborative, real-time system working in your favor, your talent and performance management systems will operate more efficiently, giving your managers more time to focus on leading and developing their employees without having to worry about the ins and outs of the system itself.
Better Employee Recognition
In a world where employees often feel overshadowed in their workplace, a bigger emphasis on recognizing employees for their work can make a big difference in their satisfaction and productivity. A recent performance study found that 69% of employees said they would work harder if they were given more recognition for their efforts.
Because of Workday’s collaborative nature, public recognition between peers, managers, and executives is possible and feedback is able to be shared in real time. Not only does this help employees feel more supported and recognized in the workplace, but it also facilitates positive communication and experiences for your workers.
Continuous Feedback
As mentioned earlier, successful companies are built on a foundation of trust, and feedback is linked to building trust among workers. By having the opportunity to openly give and receive performance feedback in Workday, employees and managers are able to check in with their own progress and stay engaged with what’s going on in the workforce around them.
More feedback leads to more engaged and more productive employees, helping your organization achieve its goals and enhance the employee experience.
Features You Need to Know About
Now that you’ve learned a little more about performance systems and how the Workday Performance module could benefit your team, let’s dive into some of the key features.
Skills Cloud
Understanding the skills needed to facilitate a more productive workforce is an important aspect of building and maintaining a successful business. Whether your focus lies in finding specific skills needed for new job candidates, verification for suggested skills in the workplace, or gaps found in the skillsets of already existing employees, the Workday Skills Cloud can help.
This feature of the Workday applications give users a broader picture of how different skills are related and how each of them contributes to the success of the organization as a whole. The Skills Cloud allows you to combine HR information and skills data to give you better insight into already existing talent and any opportunities for future growth of employee skill sets. The careful observation and assessment of skills in the workplace not only contributes to employee productivity and engagement, but it also builds the foundation for machine learning solutions, such as the Workday Talent Marketplace.
Succession Planning
Succession planning in Workday involves identifying certain critical positions within your workforce and determining a plan of action to replace them if their position becomes vacant for any reason. The succession process is definitely not a one-time event, and understanding the core capabilities and skills required to do the job and ensure the readiness and fitness of both internal and external future candidates is important.
Having a well-rounded succession strategy also helps maintain a continuous stream of leadership, ensuring that your company is operating as effectively as possible, no matter who has the responsibility of filling that role.
Integration with Other Systems
As is the case with all other Workday applications and modules, Workday Performance Management has integration capabilities that allow users to connect it to multiple other systems, including Workday Talent and Workday HCM.
With Workday integration applications, you’re able to manage all your performance, talent, and HR data in the same system, making it easier to keep track of important information and assess key metrics that influence the optimization of your business processes.
Partnering with the Best
We know that assessing employee performance can seem a bit daunting at times, especially while also trying to navigate through a brand new performance management system. Luckily for you, we have a team of senior level Workday consultants that are here to help you with all of your Workday needs.
Need help integrating your HCM system with your new Workday Performance module? Our consultants can do that. Need an extra hand to help optimize your Workday Talent Management and Performance applications? They can do that too. And, to give you a better idea of how our consultants could fit into your organization, we’ve included a sample profile of one of our top Workday Performance Management consultants.
Surety Senior Workday Performance Management Consultant
- 6+ years of Workday experience
- Workday certified in HCM, Talent and Performance, Learning, and Advanced Compensation
- Acted as a Lead on over 20 Talent and Performance implementations
- Has led multiple Performance Management cycle implementations
- Subject matter expert for the Talent and Performance module
- Experience with simple integrations, custom and calculated fields, advanced reporting and analytics
Want to learn more about how Surety Systems can help with all your Workday Talent and Performance needs? Contact us today to get started!
