Performance Management

What is performance management?

Performance management is the ongoing process by which an organisation aligns employees’ work with its goals, supports their development, and reviews how they are doing. It is far more than the annual appraisal: at its best it is a continuous cycle of setting expectations, giving feedback, developing people, and recognising results.

It is the umbrella over practices such as the performance review, continuous feedback, and goal-setting through SMART goals or OKRs.

Why performance management matters

Done well, performance management aligns effort with what matters, helps people grow, and supports fair decisions, all of which drive engagement and results. Done as a once-a-year, backward-looking ritual, it creates stress and changes little. The trend is toward continuous, development-focused approaches that emphasise coaching over judging.

The performance management cycle

Set expectations. Agree goals and what good looks like, often against a competency framework.
Support and develop. Ongoing coaching, feedback, and development through the year.
Review. Assess performance fairly, via the performance review.
Recognise and plan. Reward, and set the next cycle of goals and growth.

Make performance management developmental

Modern performance management runs on coaching, not just appraisals. Coachello helps managers make the whole cycle developmental, so performance conversations build people up and drive results.

Shift from appraisals to development. Book a demo.

FAQs

What is the difference between performance management and a performance review?

Performance management is the whole ongoing process of aligning, developing, and reviewing performance. The performance review is one part of it, the periodic assessment.

What are the stages of performance management?

Typically setting expectations and goals, supporting and developing through the year, reviewing performance, and recognising results and planning the next cycle.

How is performance management changing?

It is moving away from once-a-year appraisals toward continuous, development-focused approaches that emphasise ongoing feedback and coaching.