How Visual Data Can Improve Performance Management in Business
Nowadays, employees like to be recognized for the work they do. They want to know that the work they put in is valued. One way of doing this is to give them a detailed performance review and performance appraisal.
By ALAN MATHEW
But how do you know if your employees are truly performing at their best?
Workplace performance is a very subjective thing to measure for any employee. The usual way of doing this is through an annual performance appraisal. Although this is a decent way to measure performance, it can often lead to situations where employees try to game the system or are afraid to speak the truth. There are many different tools for measuring workplace performance now and one of them is to utilize visual data for performance management.
This blog will look at some of the ways you can use visual data to improve performance management in your Business.
What is performance management?
Performance management is the continuous process of setting objectives, assessing progress, and providing ongoing coaching and feedback to ensure that employees are meeting their goals and career interests. The primary goal of performance management is to promote and improve employee effectiveness.
Performance management can be used to:
● Align employee goals with those of the organization
● Increase employee engagement
● Improve workforce productivity
● Encourage ongoing development
● Support goal attainment
Performance management is not just annual performance reviews. It includes planning work and setting expectations, continually monitoring performance, developing the capacity to perform, periodically rating performance in a summary fashion, and rewarding good performance.
The primary purpose of PM is to help employees understand how they contribute to organizational success through their individual roles and responsibilities.
Performance management is a stage-by-stage process for managing performance and improving employee performance. It includes the following stages:
● Setting clear expectations
● Monitoring progress against those expectations
● Providing regular feedback
● Celebrating successes and addressing failures
● Rewarding great performance
The performance management process has four stages:
Planning
This stage involves setting objectives that are aligned with your company’s goals, helping employees understand their role in achieving those objectives, and ensuring everyone is focused on the right priorities.
Tracking
Employees need to know how they’re getting along. In this phase, managers should provide regular coaching and feedback on progress toward defined objectives.
Developing
When an employee needs support in meeting their objectives, the development phase kicks in. In this phase, managers work with employees to identify opportunities for learning or skill development or offer training programs or other
Current trends in performance management
Current trends in performance management are changing this approach. They’re moving away from traditional methods and towards more continuous feedback loops that focus on encouraging employee development throughout the year.
There are several reasons for this shift:
● Employees want more feedback – They want to know how they’re doing, where they can improve, and how they can develop themselves further. They want their managers to spend more time with them, rather than just having an annual conversation about their progress (or lack thereof).
● Employers want more transparency – Especially in complex organizations with multiple teams working together, it’s important that leaders understand what’s going on at all levels so they can take action if necessary.
Current trends in performance management include:
Peer feedback
360-degree feedback is gaining popularity as it draws from multiple sources other than direct supervisors. Employees can receive feedback from peers, subordinates, vendors and customers. These multiple perspectives help provide more accurate assessments of employee performance.
Immediate feedback
While annual or quarterly reviews are still commonplace, companies are moving toward providing continuous feedback to employees on their performance. This helps keep employees engaged and motivated throughout the year.
Performance vs. potential
As companies move away from formal annual reviews to more frequent assessments, they are increasingly focusing on potential rather than past performance. This helps identify talented employees who may need additional training or coaching to advance their careers with the company.
How visual data can improve performance
Data is everywhere. It’s in your email, on your phone, and it’s all around you. But how can you turn it into something useful? The answer lies in visual data.
Visual data is any kind of information presented graphically — in a chart, diagram or image. It gives meaning to large amounts of seemingly random data and turns it into something we can understand and use to improve our businesses.
Data visualization can range from simple bar graphs to complex infographics.
A visualization is also a key tool in dashboard design, which presents relevant information to users at a glance.
The right kinds of data visual created using data visualization tool can help decision-makers use information more efficiently and effectively, but only if the visualizations are done correctly.
A great visual presentation can make all the difference. Many people understand things better when they are presented visually. Visuals help us to understand something more quickly and easily. With the increased use of technology, businesses are adopting ways of making their information more appealing and accessible for employees, customers, and partners by turning it into visual data.
As humans, we are naturally visual creatures. In fact, we process visuals much faster than text. 90% of the information that is transmitted to our brains is visual, and we process this information 60,000 times faster than we do text.
What tools can be used for Visual Data?
Visual data is a visual representation of quantitative information or numerical data. It is also known as data visualization and is used to give meaning to large sets of numbers.
Visual data can be represented in the form of charts, graphs, or tables. It is most often used in statistical analysis, business intelligence, data mining, and process control.
Some tools that are used for visual data are:
● Microsoft Excel
● Microsoft Power BI
● Tableau
● Piktochart
● QlikView
● Raw
The most common visualizations include:
● Bar charts and histograms,
● Pie charts,
● Line graphs
● Scatterplots
● Time-series graphs,
● Box-and-whisker plots,
● Heatmaps (or heat maps),
● Contour plots and 3D surface plots,
● Marimekko charts and mosaic plots.
Conclusion:
To effectively manage performance, leaders need to understand what’s going on at all levels within their organization. Data visualization can play a key role in this process by helping to identify patterns, trends, and relationships that would otherwise be difficult to discern.
When used correctly, visual data can help improve decision-making, identify areas of opportunity and spot potential problems before they occur. It can also help businesses to better understand their customers, employees and operations.
