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Measuring the ROI of Performance Management Systems

Every successful manager and CEO knows that the organization’s ability to outperform competition and succeed in tough market conditions totally depends on the performance of people working in it. A well-known and popular management consultant, Peter Drucker said “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This highlights the importance of organizational culture and its impact on business’s success. Everyone knows the great saying of Late Apple’s CEO and Founder Steve Jobs, “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” Where he is emphasizing on the importance of employee engagements.

Mr. Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric once said “An organization’s ability to learn, adapt, and innovate is the ultimate competitive advantage.” These quotes are to highlight the importance and impact of active performance management on business’s success. Every business utilize some kind of performance management system to achieve their strategic and long term goals. Without a well-structured performance management system a business can never leverage the true potential of its employees.

We have witnessed surge in demand of digitally advanced performance management system over the past decade. Businesses operating in Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, and all around the UAE are eagerly seeking ways to enhance and elevate their performance management systems. However, implementing a top-notch performance management system alone is not enough. Businesses should have a way to measure the impact and ROI of their performance management system. Whether a business is buying a brand new performance management system or making some changes in an existing system, the impact should be measured.

Measuring the ROI help businesses assess and evaluate the value of their investments in performance management system. It help them understanding how impactful their performance management system was, and what tangible impact does it had on the long-term business growth and strategic goals. Measuring the ROI of performance management system help businesses ensure all their resources are effectively and efficiently utilized and it is a great way of linking your performance management system to your business’s outcomes. In this blog we will briefly discuss how measuring the ROI can improve the impact and efficiency of their ongoing performance management system and strategy.

Measuring the ROI of Performance Management Systems
Measuring the ROI of Performance Management Systems

What is a Modern Performance Management System?

A modern performance management system is a well-structured platform, which is a combination of both strategy and digital tool. The modern performance management system are incomplete without a comprehensive digital solutions. That digital solution is a dedicated performance management software which offers a wider range of data collection and analytical tools. Businesses are increasingly adopting customized performance management systems for their easy implementation and superior alignment with business needs. These tools are designed exclusively to collect in-depth performance management data and then convert it to the actionable insights. Business leaders and managers can leverage performance management data and insights to take informed and timely decisions which help aligning individual performance with high-level organizational goals and objectives.

A modern performance management system is not just a monitoring tool, but it is a comprehensive framework which help increasing employee engagements and satisfaction. The performance management system help streamlining traditional performance management processes. For example, the annual reviews are replaced by much more impactful and efficient continuous feedback and 360-degree reviews. With continuous performance management the employee performance acknowledgment and appraisal processes become transparent and fair. The deficiencies associated with manual workflows and processes, are eliminated from the system. These tools help setting goals effectively, the employee training programs can be enhanced, and the employee engagement and productivity can be improved significantly.

What is a Modern Performance Management System?
What is a Modern Performance Management System?

An investment in a modern digital performance management system can greatly improve the performance, efficiency and productivity of an organization. Studies have shown by adopting to modern performance management systems businesses can boost their efficiency to up to 60%. With the passage of time, every business grows, the market conditions tend to change rapidly, and the overall customer behavior is subjected to evolve. All these moving parts require businesses to be efficiency, proactive and super-fast in adopting to new market conditions. This requires a deeper and highly accurate insights to employee behaviors and skill sets. Businesses can only prepare for future, if they know what to improve and when. Hiring talent is expensive and retaining right employees is vital for business success.

That is the reason many businesses and organizations invest huge resources into performance management systems, solutions and implementing best practices. However, most of the time businesses failed to realize the true impact of their investments. That is why it is crucial to measure the ROI of your performance management system. It will help you identify the areas of improvement and it will also help to estimate the positive impact of performance management system in certain areas. For example, imagine an organization is spending AED 20,000 per year on a performance management system, without quantifiable metrics how would you estimate how much revenue is generated by this investment or how the employee turnover fell? That is why it is extremely important to measure the ROI of your performance management system.

See Also: 5 Challenges in implementing Performance Management System

It is crucial to measure the ROI of your performance management system
It is crucial to measure the ROI of your performance management system

What are the Key Metrics of Evaluating the ROI of a Performance Management System?

Implementing a performance management system can greatly improve efficiency and productivity, however, it is crucial to evaluate how deeply it impact the entire organization. There is no complex mathematical calculations and formulas involved, measuring the impact of performance management system is simple. For example, after implementing a custom performance management system you can see how much customer complains reduced, how much customer journey is improved, how much revenue increased and how much turnover reduced, etc. These are some very simple indicators to evaluate your performance management system and strategy. Here are some most critical key metrics which will give you a more accurate and clearer picture of the impact of your performance management system:

  1. Employee Productivity: The employee productivity is the primary goal of any performance management system. In order to evaluate employee productivity you must monitor key metrics, such as task completion rate, number of sales by entire sales team, number of successful projects, and number of strategic goal achieved, etc. For example, if your sales risen by 15% after implementing a new performance management system, then this is one of the most clear indicator of its impact and effectiveness.
  2. Employee Retention: For any successful organization the employee retention is crucial. Recruiting and on-boarding is not only expensive, but it can have huge impact on performance and productivity. A new employee takes time to align with the organizational culture, workflows, and internal processes. That is why retaining high-performing employees is a key to long-term success. A good performance management system increases employee engagement, satisfaction and happiness. Thus measuring the employee turnover rate is a perfect indicator.
  3. Time and Resource Saving: Conducting traditional performance reviews and managing appraisal and performance management processes could take huge amount of HR’s administrative resources. The managers also spend significant amount of time in performance management activities. Measuring the time saved in those administrative activities and processes is a great indicator to evaluate a performance management system. The time and resources saved due to automation and digitalization of performance management processes can be converted into monetary value to calculate ROI.

When calculation the ROI of a performance management system you should consider both the tangible and non-tangible aspects. For example, the revenue growth is easy to quantify, hence it is a tangible return, which can be calculated with 100% accuracy. However, there are some factors, such as employee morale, happiness and even the employee turnover which are difficult to quantify and could make your calculations much complex. However, for a simple calculation we can focus on tangible aspects to instantly measure the ROI which will help us making adjustments and further refining the system.

See Also: The Future of Performance Appraisals: 6 Innovations and Changes [Quick Guide]

What are the Key Metrics of Evaluating the ROI of Performance Management System?
What are the Key Metrics of Evaluating the ROI of Performance Management System?

Calculating the ROI for a performance management system might seem complex, but it can be simplified by simply breaking it down into a few easy steps:

Formula to calculate the ROI

ROI (%) = [(Benefits – Costs) / Costs] x 100

Step 1: Determine the Cost:

It is important to include all expenses and not just the cost of the performance management software. All expenses should be calculated annually, for example, if you spend AED 20,000 on the performance management system software and its relevant infrastructure per year. Include the training cost and additional implementation cost as well, such as for employee training and consumed work hours, let say the cost is AED 5,000 including everything. Then the total per year cost would be AED 25,000.

Step 2: Measure the Benefits

As I have mentioned earlier that there are two types of benefits, some are tangible which can be quantified easily, and some are non-tangible which we can’t precisely measure. For the sake of calculation we will only consider the tangible or quantifiable benefits. For example, if you witnessed 15% productivity increase across a team or department generating AED 1 Million annually, then the benefits is AED 150,000. This could be reduction is customer churn, increase in sales, or cost-reduction in specific function, etc.

Step 3: Calculation of ROI

Using the above examples, we can plug the number ins to the ROI formula:

ROI (%) = [(AED 150,000 – AED 25,000) / AED 25,000] x 100 = 500%

In this particular example, we can see a fivefold return over your investments, highlighting the actual tangible impact of your performance management system on annual bases.

You can further refine this calculation by including the intangible benefits such as the employee morale, reduction in employee turnover, the positive impact on customer loyalty or brand reputation, etc. All these factors are very difficult to quantify, however, you can use industry benchmarks and you can conduct internal surveys to estimate the values of these benefits which will further help you refining your mathematical calculations.

Calculating the ROI for a performance management system might seem complex, but it can be simplified by simply breaking it down into a few easy steps
Calculating the ROI for a performance management system might seem complex, but it can be simplified by simply breaking it down into a few easy steps

Aligning with Business Goals and Employee Engagement (Intangible Benefits)

A performance management system is not like any other software upgrade that businesses usually used to drive efficiency and productivity. The performance management system is a complete framework of performance management strategy and a highly sophisticated AI-powered analytical engine with intuitive GUI for users. No matter how advanced and high-tech your performance management system is, if it is not aligned with your strategic and long-term business goals, you can never achieve the desired performance. That is why it is equally important to make sure your performance management system is fully aligned with your business goals. Goal alignment is not as that complicated, you have to start by defining your business goals and then enlist all key objectives that can help you achieving those goals.

The performance management system will help you achieving those objectives. You can measure the progress and compare it with past year to understand the impact of the performance management system. Furthermore there is one more one of the most impactful aspect is the employee engagements. A modern performance management system foster employee engagement, encourage a culture of team work and collaboration and provide a well-structured framework for employee recognition and development programs. Furthermore the performance management system encourage employee participation in various processes and offer multiple tools which help bridging the gap between employees and management. These factors can greatly improve the ROI of your performance management system.

Aligning with Business Goals and Employee Engagement (Intangible Benefits)
Aligning with Business Goals and Employee Engagement (Intangible Benefits)

Conclusion

Businesses often doesn’t realize that measuring the ROI for their performance management system is not just a financial practice, but it truly is a great strategic move. By measuring the ROI of your performance management system you can clearly and most accurately evaluate the impact of performance management system on your organization. This will also help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your ongoing strategy and system which his essential for making improvements. A modern performance management system is not just a monitoring tool, but it is so much more. It help businesses aligning employees with strategic and high-level organizational goals. It help retaining talent, and keep on improving employees behavioral and professional competencies.

By evaluating the ROI of a performance management system businesses can easily quantify the benefits and impact of it on their efficiency, productivity and profitability. The ROI can be measured by calculating the positive impact or growth in terms of revenue. However, the performance management system have many untangle benefits such as employee morale, employee satisfaction, reduced turnover, improved decision-making, readiness for abrupt disruptions and market changes and adoptability, etc. Therefore considering these factors too will help you understand the actual impact of a performance management system which could be far higher than the tangible or quantifiable benefits such as increase in sales, revenue or cost-reduction, etc.

In this article we have briefly discussed the subject by exploring the key benefits of measuring the ROI of performance management system, and its tangible and intangible benefits. We have also discussed the actual formula to calculate the ROI. Most of the time businesses don’t realize how important it is to measure the ROI and sometime businesses often think it could be a very sophisticated and difficult process. By following the above instructions and considering the key factors you can easily calculate the ROI of any performance management system. If you want to learn more about the subject or if you want our help to implement a tailor-made performance management system for your organization, please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.


How to Develop Custom Performance Appraisal System in UAE?

The custom performance appraisal system in UAE are not very common. Usually businesses rely on cloud-based or commercial off-the-shelf solutions. The biggest problem with ready-made or stock performance appraisal system is that they are standardized for a particular industry, hence they are not as that flexible. However, every business is different and unique, and all businesses develop a completely unique culture and have different goals, needs and preferences for the performance management. Using a stock or commercial off-the-shelf solution can never fulfill such needs.

Therefore businesses start looking into the possibilities to develop a custom performance appraisal system. For that businesses have two choices either they get it done by the internal software development team, which is very less obvious, and most of the time businesses doesn’t have IT teams who can deliver that kind of sophisticated application. The other choice is to acquire the services of a professional software development agency in Dubai or anywhere else in UAE who is experienced in HR solutions and performance management systems.

However, even if a business acquires a professional service provider or vendor, they must still have adequate understand of the performance appraisal system. In this blog we will discuss the important factors which will help businesses to get a high-performance and impactful performance appraisal system in UAE.

How to Develop Custom Performance Appraisal System in UAE?
How to Develop Custom Performance Appraisal System in UAE?

What is a Custom Employee Performance Appraisal System?

An employee performance system is a set of methods, techniques, tools and framework used to evaluate employee performance and progress against a pre-defined objective and it helps identifying the weaknesses, strengths and areas of improvement. The prime purpose of the employee appraisal system is to ensure that all the available resources are progressing in the right direction and their efforts are fully aligned with the high-level organizational goals and strategic objectives.

The performance appraisal system is a foundation stone for growth and stability. Only by leveraging the full potential of the employees, a business can sustain and grow in the highly competitive and fast-paced markets like UAE. The employee performance appraisal system provides a comprehensive framework to collect employee performance data and feedback and transform this into actionable insight which helps management and HR department to take informed decisions and progress towards their high-level organizational goals and vision.

When we say custom employee performance appraisal system the only difference is how the system is developed. A custom employee performance appraisal system is developed exclusively for a particular business as per their exclusive and very unique business needs. That is why it is called a custom employee performance appraisal system.

See Also: What are the Features of a Best Performance Management System?

What is a Custom Employee Performance Appraisal System?
What is a Custom Employee Performance Appraisal System?

What are the Benefits of Using a Custom Performance Appraisal System?

An effective performance appraisal system help businesses drive the productivity, it helps them minimize the problems caused by the lack of technical or behavioral competencies. The employee performance appraisal systems are not a tool to scrutinize the employees, but it is a comprehensive framework which lifts up the performance of the employee, increases employee engagements, and over the time strengthen their technical and behavioral competencies.

A good employee performance appraisal system can have massive impact on a business’s growth and success. That is why it is important that the employee performance appraisal system you use is fully aligned with your business needs and resonate with your unique organizational culture and priorities. Here are the key benefits of using a custom performance appraisal system:

Elevating and Enhancing Communication:

The communication is the backbone of our modern business ecosystems. All business functions should have a fraction-less and instant communication enabled in order to boost the operational efficiency. The lack of communication between employees and managers could devastate the performance and efficiency. It frustrate employees, fuel hopelessness and it kills productivity. The performance appraisal system help managers communicate the goals and objectives, and help employee understand the success criteria. Hence the employee are more motivated to progress in the right direction.

See Also: 5 Challenges to face if Performance Appraisal is not customized as per Organization’s Policies

Appreciate High Performance and Improvements:

One of the biggest concern of employees and managers is with the outdated appraisal practices is their efficacy and accuracy. A modern custom performance appraisal system help building trust and ensures the high performance is well appreciated while the areas of improvements are also noted accurately. Rightful incentive and appreciation not only boost employee morale but also encourage others to do well in the coming performance cycle. The reviews, feedbacks, and evaluation are done with a systematic framework which help employees and managers to understand what has to be improved and how, which also help raising the morale of low-performing employees.

See Also: Appraisal Methods in Performance Management System

Impactful Training and Development:

Businesses who are actively offering training and development programs tend to perform well in UAE. A custom performance appraisal system does the heavy lifting and help the HR in many processes, which also enables them to design high-impact employee training and development programs. A well-organized performance data and intuitive reporting provide a better insight and help the HR to identify the training needs. The employee performance data can be analyzed by multiple angles and can be plugged-in into various other systems to ensure the maximum impact of training and development activities. The same can also be used to convince employee to participate in those programs and help businesses make the most impact of their efforts.

See Also: The Future of Performance Appraisals: 6 Innovations and Changes [Quick Guide]

Guiding the Right Path:

Studies have shown that the biggest reason of employee quitting form a jobs in UAE is the lack of clarity of their career path. A custom performance appraisal system provides you a wealth of performance data, when this data is coupled with employee data the HR can easily identify the suitable path for the employees and guide them with their long-term goals and career path. Such guidance is crucial, it help employees boosting their morale and confidence and it gives them a sense of importance and valued. When employees are guided to a right career path with a better scope and success in future, they become more loyal and satisfied. Happy and satisfied employees always tend to give their best.

See Also: Characteristics of a Good Employee Appraisal System

Raise Employee Satisfaction:

A modern custom performance appraisal system is a great tool to maximize the employee engagements. The employee appraisal system provides a systematic approach to engage employees at various levels and decision making processes. The digital aspect increase their trust, successful training and development programs raise their loyalty and satisfaction. With transparent evaluation practices, reward and recognition programs and frequent feedbacks and interactions the employees gain more confidence and become more satisfied with their job, knowing they are important and their concerns are addressed and their voice is heard. The employee engagements can greatly reduce the employee turnover too.

See Also: Performance Appraisal System for the HR Department

Help Under-Performers:

Here in UAE business leaders and HR specialists are agreed that the under-performers are the employees who can seriously undermine the organization’s overall performance. A custom performance appraisal system helps HR to accurately identify the under-performers, closely monitor their performance and the impact of coaching and training and give them a fair chance to improve. The performance appraisal system is very much capable of identifying the reasons of poor performance which greatly help HR to address the real issues. It also help managers to provide right guidance, coaching and mentorship to encourage under-performers and to boost their morale.

See Also: Why Organizations need Performance Appraisal System in UAE

A good performance appraisal system not only align employees with the organization goals and objectives, but it also help developing and nurturing a highly productive organizational culture where the employees can improve and grow over the time.

What are the Benefits of Using a Custom Performance Appraisal System?
What are the Benefits of Using a Custom Performance Appraisal System?

How do I design a custom performance appraisal system?

Most of the time when businesses decide to adopt a custom performance management system they think it is a very sophisticated and time-consuming task. However, designing a custom performance appraisal system is not difficult at all. It is a very simple process, all you need is to consider following important aspects of performance appraisal and you can design a high-impact custom performance appraisal system:

See Also: Performance Management System: Best Practices

Understand Modern Performance Appraisal System:

The modern performance management is way too different than the traditional/annual appraisals. More than 80% of the employee, business leaders and HR experts have shown distrust form the annual appraisals, as they majorly focused on the most recent events, and progress. However, the modern performance appraisal system facilitates more frequent and even continuous performance monitoring. Another drawback of traditional appraisals is that it is very time consuming. However, the modern performance appraisal systems leverage digital technologies and software based tools. Which ensures continuous monitoring, more contextual and comprehensive data, and highly accurate reports.

See Also: The Impact of Performance Management on Organizational Culture

Set Your Goals and Objectives:

Whenever a business is acquiring a new system or implementing a solution they have clear goals and objectives, what they want to achieve with that system. Same is applicable here too, if you are designing a custom performance appraisal system you should set goals and objectives for that, it would be simply what you would want to achieve by implementing that system, such as getting better and deeper insight to employee performance, communicating the expectations, increase employee performance, driving efficiency and reducing redundant work, reducing the time, effort and cost of the appraisal process and so on. Setting up clear objectives for the system will help you maximizing the ROI as well.

See Also: 5 Performance Management Problems and How to Solve Them

Define Benchmarks and Setting up Standards:

It is important to do some research on industry standards and define benchmarks and set up your standards accordingly. It is very important to include the most effective elements and features in your custom performance appraisal system. In order to understand the impact of different strategies and features the market research is the key. Furthermore the case studies can help you understand different features of the performance appraisal system and accordingly you can vision your custom performance appraisal system. Studying market trends is equally important. That is why it is crucial to do some research and consult experts to define the scope of your system.

See Also: Linking Performance Management to Business Outcomes

Develop Metrics and Establish Success Measures:

Since you already have a clear understanding of what you would want to accomplish with your custom performance appraisal system, it is absolutely essential to setup metrics and establish clear success measures. So, you can gauge your performance against your objectives. Furthermore establishing success measure will also help you to evaluate the efficacy and impact of your custom performance appraisal system. It is not as that complicated as it may sound, let us take an example of a goal which is ‘improving employee performance’ for that your custom performance appraisal system should be able to communicate what is expected from the employees, it should have tools to measure employee performance against pre-set goals and it should have features to ensure employee alignment with goals.

See Also: How to Customize Performance Management System

Evaluate Your Current Appraisal Processes:

It is important to scrutinize your existing performance management and appraisal processes and practices. This will help you identify the areas of improvements and missing tools or features which you can include in your new custom performance appraisal system. It is also important to collect user feedback, in this case the employees, supervisors and managers are your audience. You should conduct interviews with a sample from different audience/user pools and consider their recommendation as well. The next step is to analyze that data and revisit your success measures and ensure your success measures and goals are fully aligned with the benchmarks you are planning to achieve with your new custom performance appraisal system. We are still in the planning phase so any step can be revised and adjustments can be made if needed.

See Also: The Role of Performance Management in Employee Engagement

Establish the Scope of the Project:

Above all steps are mostly part of the planning. Forming a clear scope of the project is what you will hand over to the development team and get the system done accordingly. It is important to understand that the scope of the project is a high-level technical guideline or in fact a blueprint of your custom performance appraisal system. Make sure you add enough details and also expected outcomes. This will help the development team to build the features and functionalities in your custom performance appraisal system. At this stage you can also engage IT/Technical teams to make this charter more contextual, descriptive and technically understandable for the development team.

See Also: How to Design a Modern Performance Management System?

How do I design a custom performance appraisal system?
How do I design a custom performance appraisal system?

How to Implement a Custom Performance Appraisal System?

Once you have a completed the planning phase and prepare a detailed scope of the project with all the features you need. Now is the time to appoint a custom software development team to execute the project. Remember the employee appraisal system and performance management is not just a method or strategy, but it is actually a very powerful software application which lifts the heavy load and enable the HR to effectively implement their employee appraisal and performance management strategies.

This requires a powerful software engine which can collect performance data, analyze it as per your needs, and produce intuitive reports to let the management understand the performance status and provide them administrative dashboard with required features to acquire insight and take informed decisions and then effectively implement their decisions and action plans to course correct and take measures to ensure the set-goals are achieved at the end of the performance cycle.

The software development team will follow the scope of the project document, and build that software engine for you. You can hire in-house team to build custom appraisal system for your business or you can outsource it to a well-reputed and experienced vendor who can further help you refine your system and provide required training for the system to ensure maximum impact can be created with it.

See Also: Benefits of Implementing a Modern Performance Management System

How to Implement a Custom Performance Appraisal System?
How to Implement a Custom Performance Appraisal System?

Conclusion

Businesses who are operating in Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi or any other emirate of UAE are well aware of the fact that the employee retention is one of the biggest obstacle in growth. The overall UAE market is very competitive and it is relatively easier to switch the job. In such scenario retaining good talent is quite difficult. Furthermore the markets are very competitive and the businesses have to ensure their customers are having a satisfactory experience and excellent service which is nearly impossible with your employee performing with optimum level of productivity and efficiency.

Therefore businesses tend to implement various different types of performance management and employee appraisal systems to ensure they achieve their high-level organizational goals. In order to achieve your organizational goals and strategic objectives, the employee must be aligned with your goals, satisfied with their job role, motivated, guided, trained and engaged. This all can be achieved only when you implement a systematic framework to measure and monitor your employee performance and offer them a highly transparent and fair appraisal system.

A business have two choices, either they can acquire a commercial off-the-shelf solution or they can develop a custom performance appraisal system. The bespoke solutions tend to deliver more comparing to standardized off-the-shelf solutions. In this blog we have discussed how a business can develop and highly-effective and most impactful custom performance appraisal system. If you want to learn more or if you need our help to develop a custom performance appraisal system for your business in UAE, please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

See Also: Choosing a Performance Management System A Buyer’s Guide

See Also: How Performance Management Impact on Organization’s Culture?