Fix Performance Management by Aligning it with Employee Mental Health

Most companies agree that performance management is broken. Employees dread annual reviews with their remorseless 1–5 rankings. Managers know they have little positive impact. Yet companies dutifully trudge through the process every year, with no strategy to fix it.

COVID-19 has obviously taken an enormous toll on employee mental health, which directly impacts performance. It also made the already-tense evaluation process even more uncomfortable and nerve-wracking by shifting millions of employee reviews to Zoom.

As companies take tentative steps to figure out what the “new normal” is going to look like, they have an ideal opportunity to reinvent performance management for workplaces that have been turned upside down by COVID-19. The question is, where to start?

ThriveNYC is promoting one promising approach. By looking at performance management through the lens of employee wellbeing, the organization believes reviews can be transformed into an important tool for creating a workplace culture that prioritizes mental health and supports worker productivity.

That’s certainly a step in the right direction.

A Gallup workplace survey found just 14 percent of employees strongly believe performance reviews inspire them to improve. To turn this around, ThriveNYC suggests providing employees with regular development and coaching opportunities throughout the year, rather than just holding annual evaluations where managers sit as judge and jury over individual performance.

This approach allows employees to get feedback and improve skills in real-time. It creates a workplace environment that promotes constant learning and growth. It makes employees feel more valued and appreciated. And it allows employees and managers to work together to set better goals and raise performance.

All these factors will contribute to greater employee wellbeing and a more psychologically safe workplace. There are additional steps companies should consider in building a performance management process that actively supports mental health.

Canada Life’s Workplace Strategies for Mental Health website offers several tools and resources to guide companies looking to align performance management with mental health support.

For starters, employers can adopt a “rule out” rule, where mental health issues are ruled out before any steps are taken related to performance concerns. This provides an opportunity to offer mental health resources and support to employees who may be struggling, rather than escalating the problem with a poor performance review.

Employers should also communicate with employees in ways that are supportive, not judgmental. Work together to set goals and create objective measures of performance. And create a follow-up process that offers regular opportunities for reviewing performance, sharing praise and providing course corrections where needed.

If you’re an organizational leader trying to decide how to fix performance management, now is the time to start. Integrating mental health support into performance management can not only make the process less stressful and anxiety-ridden, but it can also promote a more emotionally supportive workplace and may actually help employees perform better. Wouldn’t that be a change for the better?