Mahmoud Mansi is a dedicated HR innovation laborer and a passionate CSR activist. Mahmoud has a 360° of experience in HR working as a practitioner, trainer, MBA lecturer, consultant, business journalist, in addition to pursuing his passion as an award-winning author he is now the founder of HR Revolution Middle East Magazine. Mahmoud has spoken at over 50 seminars/conferences (4 times at TEDx) across his 10-year career, and recently granted “Brand Ambassador Award”, Alleem Excellence Awards, Sharjah Chamber of Commerce.

What is currently missing in the way overall employee performance is being managed?

Why do organizations measure performance? In the old days, performance was not documented in form of KPIs or reports, but it was documented through impact, achievements and success stories that were inherited from one generation to the other. Although I strongly agree with today’s business world in being active towards “documenting” performance, a various number of organizations are keen about
building and maintaining a “strong” performance system more than being keen on mentally, emotionally and professionally enhancing their employees towards “performing” better.

Building upon that, what is missing in how employee performance is being managed nowadays is the following:

1- Remembering the purpose behind measuring performance for the sake of enhancing
productivity while generating good spirit among employees.
2- Using performance results as means to motivate employees to move forward, realize their weaknesses and learn how to develop or mitigate them on one hand, and on the other hand learn about their strengths and how it positively impacts the organization and society.
3- Measuring the performance of line-managers on how they evaluate their own employees.
4- Be assured that line-managers in different divisions are measuring performance based on a common understanding to the criteria.
5- No matter how advanced the performance management system is, if the KPIs were wrongfully defined in the first place employees will lose track and the organization’s strategy will be misled. Therefore, I strongly recommend that organizations would regularly conduct a “KPI Audit”.

Given that a company’s workforce now has a significant proportion of virtual and freelance workers, how should performance management include them?

Personally, in today’s world of work, I believe that there will be no big difference in measuring the performance of a full-time employee and a freelancer, because the competencies required to do the job could be similar, however when it comes to a full-time employee we consider extra points such as loyalty, self-development, employee as a brand ambassador, etc.

My point is, performance nowadays is moving towards getting the job done, with quality, with innovation, with customer satisfaction, with intellectual cooperation with stakeholders and colleagues, with a positive impact on the environment and on society, and with a feedback that would enhance the entire process, whether this job is virtual or not.

What are employees, managers and decision makers looking to make performance management more effective?

There will always be this gap between how employees want to measure performance, how managers measure performance, and what decision-makers have in mind for the business when talking about performance management, as long as it is a one-way communication process.

The performance management strategy is better developed in collaboration with all stakeholders which include employees, managers, directors, and consultants, led by the HR team. In my new book to-be; “HR Written By Millennials” I am addressing this issue as part of the “intellectual employee engagement” that can be applied in agile organizations where “strategy” is introduced from a collaborative perspective.

What are some of the new things being introduced in Performance Management that are working/not working?

As simple as it sounds, any performance management system that works on developing the people and the process is a successful one. Any other performance management system that demotivates people and therefore backfires on the work process needs to be considered for modification or replacement.

Each performance system has a gap, yet in the implementation process these gaps can be easily mitigated and converted to strengths.

If not periodic appraisals, then what & how?

Most jobs are divided between routine tasks and projects. Routine tasks are better measured periodically linked to the departmental KPIs. Usually measuring the performance of routine tasks is more concerned with the rate of productivity, service/product quality, customer satisfaction, and process stability. On the other hand, when we measure the performance of projects we focus more on the results, the impact, the uniqueness in presenting the final output, the best practices initiated while
delivering the project and the experience provided to the team and the stakeholders.

Summarizing the above, I recommend that performance appraisals should be divided into two sections:
– The first section will be periodic which measures the routine tasks that impact the regular departmental productivity process. This appraisal shall be responsible for regular promotions and moving from one grade to the others.

– The second section will be a performance appraisal that is accomplished per project where each team member or project manager is appraised according to the project success factors and engagement throughout the process. This appraisal shall be responsible for climbing the leadership ladder and for exceptional career progression.

What advice do have for professionals who long to master performance management in their organizations?

Performance Management is one of today’s most competent branding/benchmarking tools, but we need to continuously remind ourselves that our performance management system should be in line with our organization’s culture. Keep it in mind that with agile organizations we require agile leaders, and in some cases, agile employees should not be absolutely appraised according to the same criteria, but each can have a different KPI based on their competitive advantage to the organization. If you want to
become an agile organization that outstands the VUCA market, you should be agile in your management system.