The performance management process – from goal setting to performance appraisals – can be a vital link between how workers are assessed, engaged, developed, and rewarded. It’s a key element of the employee experience, yet in busy frontline (or ‘deskless’) workplaces it can be overlooked.

Taking deskless worker performance from good to great

Employee performance management is integral to business success. Through both formal and informal processes, performance management helps to align employees, resources, and systems to meet strategic business objectives. However, dissatisfaction from frontline workers, managers and HR about the time-consuming nature of traditional performance management processes have forced many organisations to rethink this key component of talent management.

Our eBook explores what’s going wrong – and what’s going right – with performance management in frontline workplaces. We present four ways to refresh performance management processes, including:

Empowering and supporting frontline managers

This includes training managers to be coaches rather than bosses, how frontline managers can engage in regular employee check-ins with busy frontline workers, and the important role of reward and recognition in the performance management framework.

Switching towards a growth mindset

Some frontline organisations in retail and hospitality are shifting from ‘performance management’ to ‘performance development’, acknowledging that professional development and career paths are crucial to employee engagement and retention.

Focusing on a sense of purpose as the ‘north star’

Research shows that people with clarity about their mission, who feel the organisation they work for is purpose-driven and their role is meaningful, and who receive positive reinforcement for doing the right thing, go the extra mile to deliver. We provide tips to find purpose and meaning in all jobs.

Adopting modern tools and approaches to performance management

From fostering a feedback culture, to the uptake of objectives and key results (OKRs) and 360-degree performance feedback, there are several straight-forward ways to redesign performance management for a modern era. We outline these, and how HR technology can help.

Keen to know more? Packed with independent research, useful insights and handy tips, our performance management eBook can be downloaded by completing the form.