Performance Management System Software: Frequently Asked Questions

If you’ve got ques­tions about employ­ee appraisal soft­ware, you’ve come to the right place

As a provider of con­tin­u­ous per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware, we get asked a lot of ques­tions about this kind of soft­ware. Busi­ness­es want to know exact­ly how it will ben­e­fit them, how to get their man­agers and staff to adopt it and how to use it to improve over­all pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. They also want to know what to look for when invest­ing in per­for­mance man­age­ment software.

Below, we will cov­er the most fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions we’ve received regard­ing per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware. We’re always eager to help out exist­ing and prospec­tive cus­tomers, so if you have any oth­er press­ing ques­tions or con­cerns, book a per­son­al demo with us and we can answer them and show you our soft­ware at the same time.

What should I be look­ing for in per­for­mance man­age­ment software?

This is the most impor­tant ques­tion to ask in rela­tion to per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware, giv­en that no two pack­ages and providers will be the same.

We rec­om­mend you look for per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware that is:

• Sim­ple and straight­for­ward — Soft­ware needs to be real­ly sim­ple and intu­itive oth­er­wise peo­ple won’t use it. Don’t be seduced by lots of fea­tures — less is more when it comes to per­for­mance man­age­ment. If you think you’d need to train your employ­ees on how to use a piece of appraisal soft­ware then it’s too com­plex and you should avoid it.
• Able to work across many devices — Busi­ness is evolv­ing. Peo­ple are work­ing remote­ly, they are work­ing on the go and they are even work­ing on hol­i­day! As such, you will want mod­ern soft­ware that will work across devices, includ­ing tablets, smart­phones, PCs and Macs.
• Safe and secure — You need to have con­fi­dence that your data is pro­tect­ed at all times. While you want your data eas­i­ly acces­si­ble to you via the cloud, you are prob­a­bly also right­ful­ly con­cerned over com­pli­ance issues. Talk to your prospec­tive soft­ware provider and dis­cuss who hosts their soft­ware and where it is host­ed. Do they use a rep­utable host­ing com­pa­ny such as Ama­zon Web Ser­vices, Rack­space or Microsoft Azure? Are they ISO 27001 data secu­ri­ty cer­ti­fied? Any reli­able and help­ful soft­ware provider will be hap­py and will­ing to answer these ques­tions for you.

Cre­at­ed by HR experts — When invest­ing in a piece of HR soft­ware, wouldn’t you be hap­pi­er know­ing that your soft­ware providers are expe­ri­enced per­for­mance man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als who have designed it based on real-world expe­ri­ence? The back­ground of your soft­ware team mat­ters. They need to know the strug­gles you are fac­ing and you are like­ly to face, so do your research and make sure your soft­ware providers are per­for­mance man­age­ment gurus who are experts in their field.

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Will peo­ple actu­al­ly use the software?

If you choose per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware that is sim­ple and pro­vides gen­uine val­ue for man­agers and employ­ees (rather than just being use­ful for HR) then your users will embrace it. As such, you will get bet­ter user adop­tion with pur­pose-built con­tin­u­ous per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware than with soft­ware built for annu­al appraisals.

To illus­trate this, in just the first 10 weeks of going live with Clear Review, employ­ees at Clydes­dale & York­shire Bank set 50,000 goals, gave 16,000 pieces of feed­back and had 2,000 check-in meet­ings. They nev­er achieved any­where near this lev­el of activ­i­ty with their pre­vi­ous annu­al appraisal software.

Can per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware help with employ­ee development?

Employ­ee devel­op­ment should be a pri­or­i­ty for all HR depart­ments. It is this process of learn­ing, train­ing and ded­i­ca­tion that helps employ­ees grow the rel­e­vant skills and com­pe­ten­cies that will dri­ve the com­pa­ny for­ward. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, employ­ee devel­op­ment is often an area that is often set aside, or sim­ply paid lip ser­vice to. For any com­pa­ny eager to excel, this is unac­cept­able. For­tu­nate­ly, con­tin­u­ous per­for­mance man­age­ment offers the solu­tion to this prob­lem as is ensures employ­ee devel­op­ment is reg­u­lar­ly dis­cussed and spe­cif­ic per­son­al devel­op­ment objec­tives are agreed and act­ed upon.

Using per­for­mance appraisal soft­ware that is pur­pose-built for a con­tin­u­ous per­for­mance man­age­ment approach, the employ­ee and man­ag­er can sched­ule reg­u­lar check-ins and mon­i­tor progress against per­son­al devel­op­ment using an inter­face that can be updat­ed in real time on both desk­tops and mobiles.

How can per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware improve com­pa­ny culture?

Every com­pa­ny has a cul­ture, so it’s impor­tant to nur­ture a moti­va­tion­al, inspir­ing one if you want your employ­ees to remain engaged and hap­py. Per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware is just a tool like any oth­er, so of course it can’t solve all prob­lems on its own. How­ev­er, when com­bined with appro­pri­ate inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion and train­ing, it can gen­uine­ly rein­force your com­pa­ny culture.

Using per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware, instant feed­back can be giv­en and solicit­ed at any time via com­put­er, mobile or tablet and linked to your com­pa­ny val­ues — some­thing that has been shown to be tremen­dous­ly ben­e­fi­cial to morale and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Man­agers can also har­ness a cul­ture of appre­ci­a­tion and recog­ni­tion by using this real-time feed­back fea­ture to con­grat­u­late employ­ees on their achieve­ments and efforts.

How will per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware improve pro­duc­tiv­i­ty levels?

Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty has become an issue for Britain late­ly. If you’re expe­ri­enc­ing a stall or drop in employ­ee pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, the rea­sons behind this are like­ly var­ied and com­plex, but a great place to start is the top­ic of SMART objectives.

It’s essen­tial to make sure your employ­ees are clear on their goals and eager to achieve them. Per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware enables employ­ees and their man­agers to col­lab­o­rate to set and achieve SMART objec­tives that are aligned to the goals of the organ­i­sa­tion. Soft­ware helps to keep objec­tives fresh in the minds of every­one involved and also enables objec­tive progress and obsta­cles to be dis­cussed reg­u­lar­ly dur­ing per­for­mance check-ins. This is what dri­ves improve­ments in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and performance.

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Is it worth an SME invest­ing in per­for­mance man­age­ment software?

This is a fair ques­tion to ask — after all, all SMEs need to be con­cerned with the bot­tom line. They can’t be friv­o­lous with mon­ey, so they need to make sure every invest­ment will secure them a good return. The answer to the ques­tion of whether or not SMEs should con­sid­er per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware is yes. In fact, it’s some­thing they should do now, as a mat­ter of urgency.

Incred­i­bly, SMEs account for 99.9% of all pri­vate sec­tor busi­ness­es and yet, remark­ably, only a quar­ter of these com­pa­nies are cur­rent­ly invest­ing in soft­ware and cloud com­put­ing, despite the many advan­tages mod­ern soft­ware has to offer. Per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware can be a sig­nif­i­cant dri­ver of inno­va­tion and per­for­mance, it can prompt huge growth and soft­ware can even lev­el the play­ing field between SMEs and glob­al con­glom­er­ates. To find out how per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware can save you mon­ey in the long term and add real busi­ness val­ue, read our detailed blog on the advan­tages of HR soft­ware to SMEs.

Clear Review per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware is a per­for­mance man­age­ment tool that can help you move from out­dat­ed, inef­fec­tive annu­al appraisals to reg­u­lar, mean­ing­ful per­for­mance con­ver­sa­tions. To find out more, book a free per­for­mance man­age­ment demo today.