Role of technology in improving employee’s performance appraisals

Many organizations use the annual performance appraisal as a tool to mark employee’s performance. Performance appraisal is an important aspect of career development of an employee. There are many kinds of appraisals like compensation, performance improvement, promotion, termination, test validation, and much more. These ensure fair appraisals to their employees. The performance appraisal is based on the quality of work done, targets achieved, productivity, leadership, cooperation, and supervision. They help in promotions, reorganisation, feedback, training, and development.

Today, technology is knocking down the old methods to make room for an updated and more effective method to improve employee performance. Companies use performance management software that helps them to establish employee performance standards and help managers to evaluate employee’s job performance. These systems are used to manage employee progress, performance, and development in regard to organisational goals. With the proliferation of information technology, today's forward-thinking organization generates more data than ever before. When properly harnessed, this information can help to create opportunities for organizations to use this data to their advantage to drive new opportunities, clarify goals and deliver measurable performance improvements. 

Employee behavior can be transformed into system driven actions. Mr. Sanjay Gupta, Managing Director, South Asia, and the Middle East, NICE, said “Performance Management solutions like NICE Performance Management (NPM) have helped performance-driven organizations across a wide range of industries exceed ever-greater user expectations. By making sense of expanding amounts of available data, such solutions bring accountability, consistency, and transparency to the organization, helping to effect true cultural change. The solution takes employee assessments out of HR’s filing cabinet and moves it into the workroom. In leveraging a more data- and analytics-driven performance management approach, organizations are realizing a number of benefits that range from greater employee engagement to the ability to respond to the increasing pace of change in today’s business environment. Performance Management solutions empower organizations to transform multiple metrics simultaneously, incorporating data from a variety of sources, to align around a common goal and tap into automated reports and tools for driving employee improvement.” 

There are personalised insights with advanced, intelligent and automated analytics which further progress the organisation. Sanjay Gupta added that “Personalized performance management is increasingly a major focus where managers can now operationalize analytics at the individual level through transparent goals, real-time performance insights, and regular feedback. Advanced analytics and reports are delivered according to role type, providing a frontline view for employees, a team-level view for supervisors and an enterprise-wide perspective for executives. Automated alerts allow supervisors and managers to stay in front of emerging service issues, and interaction analytics provide the ability to get to the root cause of a problem with a single click. It’s a way to align an entire firm, from front-line employees to executives in the C-suite, around a central mission and goal. To stay ahead in today’s constantly fluctuating business world, an organization needs to be attentive, agile and focused.”

Hence through innovative and advanced digital technologies, machine learning and artificial intelligence tools, employees have gained a more dynamic role in managing their own performance and careers. The tech-enabled performance developmental approaches have effectively supported employees to adapt to changing the ecosystem. The digitization of performance management not only provides more precise data but also positively influences management processes and strategic development. As Sanjay Gupta said “the beauty of the data-driven approach is that it’s fair, efficient, and it yields concrete results. It can be put to work in nearly every industry. It supports a range of proven methods that promote a dynamic team culture of continuous performance improvement.”