As educational experts in Learning Management Systems, we notice more and more questions about performance management and its connection with the LMS. Some of the questions we are asked:
-
- We want to put learning and development first and offer our employees an individual learning path. Is it therefore possible to connect competencies/talents to employees? Is it possible to assess those competencies? Can we make an individualized learning plan based on this assessment?
- We want to create a culture of continuous feedback and make it easy to give and receive feedback regularly. Is it possible to automate these processes and lower the administrative workload?
- We want to create a result-driven organization and want to keep track of our company, team, and individual goals.
From an educational point of view, these are good questions. Learning and performance are intertwined. Improving your learning culture within the organization also involves being aware of the performance gaps and detecting the needs of the learners.
But, what is performance management exactly? The goal of a performance-management program is to create an environment where people can perform to the best of their abilities and produce the highest-quality work in an efficient and effective way. You can reach this goal by setting clear expectations, identifying goals, setting objectives, providing feedback, and reviewing results, … performance management turns every interaction with an employee into an occasion to learn
… in one system?
Now that that’s settled we get to our second question. Is it all (learn management and perform management) possible in one system? A platform to support all your learning requirements and all your performance requirements, does it exist?
Let’s not keep you hanging: yes, it does! Even more, an LMS is no longer only focusing on Learning. We need to change the name and start talking about Talent Development Systems (TDS)
Important sidenote to keep in mind: just because it can all be done in one system doesn’t mean you have to have it all. It remains essential to focus on your business needs. Just know that a platform nowadays goes much further than just learning and you can dream a little more.
Can you find all your must-haves in one platform? Great! Do you have to make too many compromises to get all your requirements in 1 platform? Maybe it is better to look for two separate platforms and check their integration possibilities.
How To Choose Your Performance Management System?
Who know us, know we have been offering How To Choose Your LMS (HTCYL) session for years now. Due to the latest development in the platform market, we need to reconsider that name.
Our search for the best fit is now expanded to learn and perform. With that in mind, we would like to share some next critical statements and questions we have encountered in our experience with performance management systems. A future-proof performance management tool for a future-proof Talent management strategy should include:
Flexibility
You need flexibility in your performance cycle. Is it possible to use different question types and different templates? Can different roles in the organisations possibly initiate feedback or a coaching session? Make sure you can use flexible dates to automatically plan these sessions.
360 feedback
Feedback is no longer a one-way street. Does the system support 360 feedback and are peer/customer/supplier/partner/… reviews possible?
Roles and permissions
Who should be able to see the performance data and, more importantly, who should not? Flexibility in roles and permissions is mostly desired in an LMS but within a performance management tool, this gets even more important.
Easy in use
Take the user experience in mind. A transparent and visually attractive way to show competencies and goals is key.
Visual aspect
It’s the climb. Having a result-driven organisation is great, but the process to reach your goals is important too. Ensure employees’ progress in competencies can be shown visually and not only with static results.
Linked to learning activities
Link competencies and goals, with learning activities in your platform. For example: make it possible for employees to receive a basic competency level through course completion. Be aware that this is not the preferred approach for every competency or competency level to measure whether it was obtained effectively. For example, it is not possible to become an expert in the competency “leadership” by watching a Ted Talk about the topic.
End-used centric approach
Make automatic course recommendations, based on the performance gaps of an employee, possible. It’s even better to have the possibility to make a personal development plan with concrete actions.
Need analysis
Use the detected performance gaps in your needs analysis for future training development. Find out how you can capture the data from the system to do this.
We plan to organize our very first expanded HTCYL soon and will keep sharing our experiences and insights. Our main focus now is getting a grip on what vendors are offering, and how the market is progressing. We will monitor this closely in the future!
Are you also interested in learning and performance management tooling? Contact us for the ‘How to choose your learning and performance management system trajectory’.