Employee performance review software streamlines your annual review process to improve communication, compliance, and access to meaningful data. Employee performance management software eliminates manual due date tracking, paper forms, and manual calculation of score distribution. It also provides organizations with the information they need to make informed decisions about success planning and career pathing based on employee skills and strengths.

These systems are able to automatically assign performance reviews based on the schedule you’ve created, which might include both introductory evaluations and then periodic (monthly, quarterly, or annual) evaluations. You can also expect a good solution to walk your employees and leaders through the process step by step, offering intuitive design that makes it easy to know where to click and what to do in order to complete and submit the evaluation.

Depending on your preferences, employees may have access to their review data all year long so they can reference strengths and areas of opportunity as they aim to grow and improve. Finally, you can expect a well-working system to provide you with meaningful metrics when the review period is over, simplifying merit increases, succession planning, career pathing, and more. Automating due dates, digitizing performance management records, improving communication, increasing employee access to information about their work, and accessing better data are all realistic goals when implementing a new system.

Choosing the best performance management software helps your organization engage and empower employees through their life-cycle with your company. Moving to a employee management system is one way you can demonstrate transparency and commitment as an employer, improving communication between employees and leaders and empowering employees to achieve their highest potential within your organization.

Recommendations surrounding performance management have changed in the last decade. While many organizations have committed to an annual performance review since the beginning of time, thought leaders and industry experts are now recognizing the downfalls of the annual review:

• The recency bias makes it challenging to evaluate an employee’s performance over a 12-month review period; leaders are likely to rate based on performance over the last several weeks.
• Employee’s might feel energized by both the recognition and ‘call to greatness’ they received during their review…but that energy doesn’t last for 12 months.
• Employees who performed poorly early in the review period and then improved are often discouraged when that misstep is brought up again during the performance review months later.
• Employees who provide feedback to their leaders during their review want to know the outcome of their feedback; if their next review is a year away, the conversation often falls through the cracks, leading to the perception that nothing was done or the employee wasn’t heard.

Going forward, best performance management practices include more frequent check-ins with employees, giving them the opportunity to both receive feedback and improve their outcomes in real time. While these more frequent check-ins can be an administrative nightmare on pen and paper, they’re not only easy to track and complete but helpful and beneficial with a performance management system.

The best employee performance review software systems will allow you determine the right cadence for performance reviews in your organization so you can lead the industry in implementing best practices.

The best performance evaluation software can also provide a platform for evaluating and documenting skills and competencies. Keeping an updated record of proficiencies in employee performance evaluation software provides a range of benefits for the employee and the organization alike:

• They provide you with a clear picture of the skills and expertise of your workforce, exposing gaps so you can strategize accordingly.
• They provide the detailed information managers need in order to draft and implement focused training plans to overcome identified skill gaps.
• They offer information about the skills of your workforce that can be invaluable in selling what you do and bringing in new business.
• They can help you confirm whether your team or organization is ready to take on a new task, role, project, or product or service line with their existing skill set or additional training.
• They give employees clear focus areas when trying to grow their career

Employee evaluation software offered by performance management companies can support skills taxonomy in two primary ways. First, the software can assess skills and compare those to industry benchmarks. Second, the software can compile that information and present it in a meaningful way with the click of a button, allowing you to quickly identify strengths and gaps. While some organizations do start with manual skills tracking methods, manual methods just can’t achieve at this level.

Frequent, intentional performance reviews using a performance review tool can boost employee engagement, align individual employee goals with organizational goals, and help you make data-driven decisions. More frequent evaluations also give you the opportunity to identify and remedy performance problems earlier and – on the other side of the coin – recognize and reward high performers sooner, improving retention and engagement of top performers.

Skill assessment and development programs, supported by the right software, can help you ensure your workforce is proficient in the areas most critical to organizational success and bridge any gaps identified in the process. The information garnered through this process can be an incredibly persuasive sales tool, demonstrating your organization’s commitment to developing a highly skilled workforce to any potential client. Additionally, skills assessment can offer employees the clear, concise information they need in order to ‘skill up’ for future opportunities and promotions, improving their engagement and retention in

While there are still manual work-arounds for performance management and skills inventory work, there is no manual workaround for the meaningful, visual data insights that come from a well-designed performance management software. The information you’re able to receive and analyze when you go digital are simply unmatched by any manual process out there – which means the most relevant organizations today leverage these advantageous performance management tools. While many implement them for ease only, the benefits to those who use all of the features at their full potential impact nearly every aspect of business.