Rethinking Performance Management
Service Design
How might we revamp our Performance Management framework from a “tick-box” exercise to one that managers and employees get value from?
COMPANY & DEPARTMENT
Company: e& (parent company of Etisalat). e& is a technology and telecoms company, with a portfolio of brands across the world.
Department: Group HR
DURATION
September 2022 - January 2023 (design sprint & phase 1 implementation).
PROJECT TYPE
Employee Experience (EX) and Process/Service Design.
THE CHALLENGE
Create a new performance management framework for the organization starting off with making adjustments to the current framework, and ensuring the perception of performance management is more positive than negative.
MY ROLE & METHODOLOGY USED
Role: I worked within my team (Employee Experience) alongside the Performance Management team. All tasks were done collaboratively and all project team members worked closely together.
Methodology: Design Thinking methodology with an 8 week design sprint.
Problem Setting
THE FOCUS
The focus of this sprint was Performance Management. This is a sensitive topic across the organization as Performance Appraisals are linked to employee bonuses and employees are rated on a bell curve.
THE REASON
Performance Management has a negative connotation across most organizations as people feel they are being judged — employees tend to not look at it as a way to improve themselves. During Performance Appraisals the environment becomes very high pressure and stressful for employees.
RESEARCH FINDINGS FROM EMPLOYEE AND STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS
01. Empathize
DISCOVERY WORKSHOPS CONDUCTED WITH
Employees: to understand their pain points with the current Performance Management framework and system.
Performance Management team: to understand what the drawbacks are with the current system, and how Performance Appraisals are currently conducted.
HR stakeholders: to understand why employees are rated on a bell curve and the level of changes we can make to the current framework.
DATA GATHERING METHODS
Desk research: 10 companies were benchmarked and a deep dive was done on their Performance Management frameworks and systems.
Stakeholder interviews: quantitative data was gathered through a company wide survey filled out by 538 employees. Qualitative data was gathered via one-on-one interviews with 60 employees.
Workshops: 4 workshops were conducted with HR leadership and CXOs at e& and from e&’s operating countries (OPCOs).
Data from discovery sessions and workshops were organized in an affinity diagram to uncover themes.
02. Define
Lack of training to give and receive feedback
In both the qualitative and quantitative data gathered, employees talked about how they felt their feedback was too generic. Line managers talked about how they don’t want to upset their team and tend to not give feedback that could be misinterpreted as “harsh”.
Feeling demotivated
Since employees don’t receive personalized feedback and line managers tend to only highlight the positives, employees get demotivated when they see their final rating as it doesn’t align with their positive feedback.
PAIN POINTS
Lack of a defined timeline
Performance Appraisal season closes by the end of January, but when timelines aren’t enforced correctly, the Performance Management team struggles last minute to make sure all appraisals are completed.
Shift focus
Employees feel like the current Performance Management framework is linked to rewards and not to development and high emphasis was placed on linking Performance Appraisals to development and not rewards.
Problem Statement
Employees and line managers view Performance Appraisals as an obligation and not as an activity that adds value, they also believe that the framework isn’t up to date with the current landscape.
03. Ideate
DIVERGENCE WORKSHOP ACTIVITIES
In these workshops all participants were encouraged to “diverge” from their current way of thinking and to put themselves in the shoes of employees and line managers.
Dreaming Big Exercise: participants were asked to visualize what Performance Management would look like in 2025, the changes they would like to see in employees, and how they envision Performance Appraisals being conducted.
Identifying Our Why & Guiding Principles: participants were given a list of Performance Management drivers and were asked to prioritize and rank in order of importance.
To discover the guiding principles, participants were asked to reflect on the choices and trade-offs we needed to make to ensure Performance Management has impact, meaning, and serves the intended audience.
In these workshops participants were given defined limits and a narrow focus to work with. While Divergence workshops emphasize on creativity, Convergence workshops emphasize on practicality.
Personas, Journeys, and Ideation: participants were divided in groups and given 6 personas — 3 for employees and 3 for line managers. Each persona had a corresponding journey and pain points. Participants broke into groups and listed their ideas to solve the pain points.
Activity Card: participants were given an activity card with 3 sections — How might we, if I had I would/I would not, how would I make it happen.
Prioritization Workshop with CXOs: a final workshop was conducted with CXOs (including the Group CEO of e&) where we took them through the final outcomes and asked them to prioritize according to business requirements.
CONVERGENCE WORKSHOP ACTIVITIES
The final outcome was shared with the Board for their approval.
04. Prototype & Test
The pilot was launched on a small scale with CXOs only — all CXOs reporting to the Group CEO would be evaluated according to the new Performance Management framework.
Changes across the organization will be done in incremental phases so all employees have time to adjust.
Final Deliverables
Communication strategy: a new strategy was created to ensure Performance Management isn’t seen as something that’s stressful and/or a “tick-box activity”.
Online and in person training for Line Managers: these trainings focused on how to give feedback and how to recognize biases.
Guides: these were designed for both Line Managers & employees to help them understand how to give and receive feedback and what to do with the feedback they’ve received.
System updates: these were set in place to make sure timely reminders go to all employees. Additionally, the system was configured in a way where if an employee didn’t receive feedback from their line manager, their HRBP would be automatically notified.
Peer to peer feedback: this was introduced to collect holistic feedback about an employee instead of only relying on their Line Manager’s input.
