Research

Building Capability

Why You Need Learning Data for Effective Employee Performance Tracking

All organizations track employee performance, but not all organizations are monitoring employee performance effectively. Performance tracking is crucial to driving continuous improvement and aligning employees and teams with broader business objectives. The only problem is that ineffective performance tracking doesn’t actively contribute to an organization’s success.

In this blog, we’ll dive into how to effectively track employee performance and use learning data to inform performance management.

What is performance tracking?

Performance tracking is a systematic process used to monitor, measure, and assess progress toward achieving specific goals and objectives. It involves assessing employees, teams, and the overall business to analyze performance data. Performance data includes work output, efficiency and effectiveness, and capability mastery, all of which allow leaders to make data-backed decisions about performance and L&D.

How to effectively track employee performance

Effectively tracking employee performance goes beyond a surface-level yes or no answer to whether KPIs have been met. Effective performance needs to be informed by capabilities—the combined skills, knowledge, behaviors, tools, and processes that drive organizational priorities—and associated learning data to highlight opportunities and areas for development.

Here are five strategies for effectively tracking employee performance:

Set clear goals and KPIs
Use technology and tools
Provide regular feedback and check-ins
Implement 360-degree feedback
Track trends over time.

Set clear and measurable goals

It’s not enough to decide to get better at something. A lot of people fail to meet their New Year’s resolutions because they have vague “goals” that don’t consider the tangible steps to get there.

Employees should focus on setting SMART goals to create clear pathways to development. SMART goals are:

Specific, so they’re clearly defined from the name alone
Measurable, so what you’re going to measure and how is laid out in advance
Achievable for employees as well as the business, in that the goal can be supported with the right resources
Relevant to individual development needs, capabilities, and organizational priorities
Time-bound to realistic and specific deadlines for completion to create accountability for employees

Let’s say your goal is to “improve sales”. That’s a little vague, but if that were a SMART goal it would probably be something like:

Specific: Increase sales by 10% in the next quarter through targeted marketing strategies.
Measurable: The 10% increase is a long-term KPI, but you can also set smaller milestones along the way.
Achievable: You need to have a realistic budget for your marketing strategy.
Relevant: Sales are important for your company’s bottom line.
Time-bound: The deadline is the end of the quarter.

Leverage technology and tools

Whatever you do, don’t use spreadsheets as your employee performance tracking system. You’ll just waste time collecting data that can’t even be linked to learning metrics or outcomes. If you want to get strategic about it, you need some kind of performance management system to track employee performance for you. We recommend a performance learning management system (PLMS) because it links performance tracking and reviews to learning and development initiatives.

A PLMS offers real-time tracking tools, automated reporting, and data analytics that can streamline the process of performance tracking and analysis. Even better, it integrates learning and performance management within one system to create learning that has a meaningful impact on employee improvement. It can identify the specific capabilities aligned to particular job roles and assign relevant training to employees to target their development needs.

Provide regular check-ins and feedback

Don’t wait for annual performance reviews to tell employees how they’ve been doing. It doesn’t make employees feel valued or give them opportunities to improve, because by the time the annual performance review comes around it’s too late to provide relevant development. It’s much better to give regular feedback on performance rather than wait until a year has passed to address performance issues (which by then, may have become business issues).

One-on-one meetings are an opportunity for managers to discuss progress on employees’ learning. Employee learning data can be used to make real-time adjustments to specific learning so that performance is addressed and improved as needed.

Implement 360-degree feedback

If your assessments only come from one source then there’s always the risk of bias skewing the results. Instead you should be collecting capability assessments from multiple sources to get a more holistic overview of employee performance and progress.

These can be self-assessments, or assessments done by peers, subordinates, or supervisors. Just make sure you do not include open-ended questions, because that’s where bias can take root. Competencies (the levelled scale capabilities are measured in) are an objective way of evaluating employee performance, and make it easier for managers to provide constructive feedback. It also highlights where an employee still has room for improvement, allowing organizations to assign targeted learning.

Track trends over time

Performance tracking becomes truly strategic when you actually use it to make insights and data-driven decisions on employee development. Analyze learning and performance trends and adjust your learning and performance processes accordingly. Learning metrics like learning effectiveness (i.e., knowledge retention and whether learning has been applied in employees’ day-to-day jobs) is crucial for tracking performance improvement.

If learning has been applied and performance has improved, then learning was effective. If performance hasn’t changed because learning hasn’t been adopted, then that’s a sign that your L&D initiatives need to be adjusted. These performance trends are useful in identifying and developing high performers for succession planning, too.

Don’t forget that as your business needs change, so too will the development needs of your workforce. You’ll need to revisit your goal-setting frequently to make sure employee goals still align with business priorities, which is important to both employees and the business. LinkedIn found that the majority of workers would stay with their workplace longer if professional development was provided to them, including 53% of Gen Z workers (the rapidly increasing demographic in the workplace) who want to learn and develop new skills. Something like Momentum can help you here, and automate the process of linking performance milestones to specific learning content.

Key takeaways

Traditionally, performance tracking has been done manually through the use of multiple spreadsheets. In today’s data-driven world, that just isn’t viable anymore. The only way to track employee performance effectively is to integrate performance tracking with learning data at every level. This way performance data highlights where L&D was successful, and opens the door to more effective L&D initiatives in the future.

The Problem with Performance Review Bias is Systemic—Here’s What You Can Do About It

The problem behind performance review is systemic. We dive into what you can do to mitigate bias in your performance management process…

Why Performance Management Fails—And What You Can Do About It

Performance management is failing to bridge the gap between performance reviews and employee development. Let’s dive into how you can fix it…

What Most Organisations Get Wrong in the Performance Management Process

Performance management often fails to drive development for the workforce. Learn to make the performance management process drive success…