06 Aug
The Olympics have traditionally focused on drilling discipline into the minds of participants to block out the pain and focus on achieving greater milestones.
Focusing on your top players’ competencies and enhancing their skills through rigorous training and useful feedback enable coaches to achieve the best for their teams.
While it may be nice to think of yourself as the best coach in the world, how practical is it for you to get all your employees to perform at their best? Going digital and adopting a performance management software that is agile, incorporates constructive feedback loops and aligns with organizational values can give your business an edge.
The right platform improves how people managers interact and ultimately extracts the best results out of their workforce.
With a performance management system that leverages your employees’ strengths in place, you will have a powerful team that is willing, inspired and productive.
The Olympics are on…
The Olympics buzz is on. Everyone is tuned in to find out how world-class athletes are going to fare against each other. Years of practice and passion, tears and sweat, discipline and dedication churn out pure, untethered performances that create memorable moments of joy and pride.
Have you ever wondered what it is that motivates athletes to perform extraordinary feats at the peak of their physical and mental prowess? And how wonderful would it be to see that happening every day in all walks of life? Wouldn’t it be a sight to see an office filled with motivated, ambitious individuals performing their best all the time? Isn’t that a dream for most businesses and even many individuals?
All these questions might fall in place if we closely understand how Olympic athletes are managed and what their focus areas are. One can learn many valuable lessons and implement efficient practices that can help businesses manage the performance of human resources for optimum productivity.
Imagine you are a coach. You’re a veteran of the track, and you know the whole industry and sport inside out. Your top athletes are out on the greens, stretching and warming up. You notice that one of them isn’t doing their stretches right. You could sit back and keep sipping on your sponsored energy drink, maybe you decide you’ll tell them to correct their posture.
Or
You could go up to them right then and there and let them know that they are at risk of pulling a muscle. Show them the correct posture and make sure they are ready to run that 100 meters at top speed.
Don’t be the lifeguard at the Olympics swimming event. Be the coach.
Performance management systems work much like this. Feedback at the right time ensures the achievement of goals as efficiently as possible for timely course correction and attainment of desired objectives.
The importance of knowing goals
Yay, I Finished the Race!
A star athlete could be running for all their worth. They just won’t get anywhere if they don’t know what they have to achieve. Your athlete needs to know how much effort they need to put in. What kind of preparation is required, and how to achieve those results in the best way.
Similarly, Goal setting with objectives and key results in your human resource performance management software is vital. So, your organization has goals. That’s great! However, it is pointless if you aren’t able to clearly communicate these goals and align your teams’ performance to those goals!
A smartly designed OKR system allows company strategies to be communicated, goals to be cascaded in an orderly fashion and goal periods that efficiently review performance.
Michael Phelps, a multi-medal winning Olympic swimmer, reportedly would write down his goals and keep them on his nightstand. He wanted to make sure he stayed focused. We are pretty sure it had nothing to do with forgetfulness.
Timely & Constructive feedback
Left, No Right, No Faster, Slow Down
https://www.businessinsider.com/weirdest-olympic-sports-2012-7?IR=T
Synchronized swimming is a joyfully relaxing event to watch. That has a lot to do with practice and clear communication. Without which, you might as well be watching humans possessed by demons in water.
Teamwork involves clear and meaningful communication. Letting your team know what is expected of them and creating a platform where they can share their ideas and be able to analyze the loopholes in their team are vital.
A performance management system that integrates constructive feedback, updates and recognizes employee contribution, enhances productivity. Chat-based systems allow clear messages to be sent through the network and enable transparency too. It also allows managers and employees to have direct communication lines open.
Imagine having to shout out directions to the synchronized swimming team, “Jane, a crane followed by a ballet leg double position, into a side fishtail position. Now a knight position that merges a flamingo into a split tub. No! Dorothy, I said a fishtail and then a knight!”
Communication via chat is, without a doubt, easier and comfortable.
You’re Too Tall, You Can’t Do It
Usain, you joke too much. Usain, you’re way too tall. Usain, try something else. The record-smashing Usain Bolt would never have been able to focus on his job with that kind of feedback.
Being able to provide your employees consistently unbiased objective feedback that provides insight on their performance from as many angles as possible makes all the difference. It allows the employee and the business to be able to highlight training requirements and key competencies.
You end up being invested in an employee that feels valued. Like any dominant athlete, focus on self and the determination to be their best self brings out the best results.
Usain Bolt’s coach, Glen Mills’s approach to the record-breaker, was to instill a firm work ethic in him, which wasn’t done overnight. Focus on his strengths, and objective feedback about areas he needed to work on helped get the athlete to the record thrashing speeds he has achieved.
Who Are You after the Olympics?
In the aftermath of the Olympics, we hear stories of athletes who won medals and broke records and then went back to normal lives without ever being truly recognized as heroes. Indian Olympian Sita Sahu should have received a lot more recognition than what she got.
What’s the point of practicing for four years to become the best in the world at something and then have absolutely nobody to recognize your true potential and talent and reward you accordingly?
It isn’t that different in the world of human resource management, show your employees that you earnestly care and they will take care of your business.
A recognition system that ensures that employees who put in the effort receive the appreciation they deserve is vital. Recognition given at the right time and engaging the workforce can spike not only productivity but also improve an organizations’ chances of retaining its top performers.
Motivated, valued employees, much like athletes, are inspired to reach for greater achievements.
Summary
Understanding important performance management techniques used in the Olympics is a smart way to enhance HR performance management in your business. With the right tools, the possibilities have no limit.
PossibleWorks is an HR tech company that focuses on performance management solutions using the OKR framework.
You can also read the following blog posts on Top 5 tips you Need to Know before Picking your Performance Goals and How to justify your investment in HR technology.
