Research & Insights

Achieve 58% Higher Productivity with Reflektive

In the past year, Reflektive has witnessed some amazing results from our customers. HelpSystems grew revenue 30% with their Reflektive partnership. Brad’s Deals decreased turnover by 76% with improved check-in and recognition programs. 

Now, we’ve observed another impactful metric that showcases the power of performance management: employees at companies that use Reflektive report 58% higher productivity vs. their peer average. 

This higher productivity was noted in survey results from Reflektive customers (79% favorability) versus the general employee population (only 50% favorability). More details on general employee sentiment are coming soon in our 2020 PM Benchmark Report!

Read below on how performance programs impact productivity, and how you can build the right programs to enable your employees for success.

Correlations between performance management and productivity

We’ve observed a relationship between employee sentiment on performance management programs and employee productivity. For instance, employees are motivated to work harder when:

  • The feedback they receive help them improve (3.6X more likely to work harder)
  • They get meaningful recognition when they perform well (3.6X more likely to work harder)
  • They like their processes for reviews, feedback, and goal-setting (2.9X more likely to work harder)

(Source available here.)

Megan Kusanovich on Reflektive’s Employee Success team elaborated: “When employees consistently receive recognition for their work and valuable feedback to improve performance, they know their company is committed to professional development. This makes employees feel more committed and engaged in their work.” 

Building programs that drive employee performance

While it’s clear that performance programs make a big difference in employee productivity, it’s less clear how to leverage them effectively. After partnering with hundreds of mid-size and enterprise companies over six years, we’ve observed success with the below strategies.

Recognition

Best practices for delivering meaningful recognition include:

  • Keep it specific: By informing colleagues of specific actions that positively contributed to a project, they’ll know which behaviors to continue. 
  • Tie it to your values: Seeing company values in employee kudos helps bring the values to life, and helps instill your company culture. 
  • Make it visible: Encourage employees to share recognition publicly — this encourages peers to provide praise too. 
  • Incorporate it into performance reviews: Knowing that praise from colleagues will be included in review cycles is added motivation to give kudos. Additionally, it saves time for managers and reduces recency bias during reviews! 

More recognition best practices are available in our Guide to Effective Employee Recognition Programs.

Feedback

Feedback is most valuable to employees when it is:

  • HR-guided, but driven by employees
    • Programs are successful when HR teams have developed trainings and helpful collateral to drive feedback adoption. However, employees should be empowered to request feedback. 
  • Constructive 
    • To ensure that feedback is perceived as helpful and productive, we recommend that feedback givers:
      • Are in a calm mental state: This will help them better empathize with the feedback recipient when they’re sharing the feedback.
      • Describe the employee’s behavior: Be fact-based rather than labeling or judging the behavior.
      • Share the impact of the behavior: How did it affect people and projects?
      • Give concrete recommendations on how to improve: Actionable steps will make the feedback more helpful to employees.
  • Provided by multiple stakeholders
    • Peers and cross-functional partners observe different employee behaviors, strengths, and opportunities that should be communicated to the individual.

Performance Processes

Across all performance programs that your company rolls out, we recommend that HR teams set clear expectations with employees, and communicate regularly.

  • Start with training: Educate all employees on the “why” and the “how” of your performance programs, e.g. why recognition is important, and how to give constructive feedback.
  • Send an email follow-up: Link out to your slides or an intranet page with helpful resources. Share upcoming milestone dates (e.g., when goals need to be set or review forms need to be completed).
  • Have HR teammates available for employee questions: Budget time for HR colleagues to support employees when new performance programs are rolled out.
  • Capture learnings to continuously improve the process: Use a pulse survey or taskforce to gather employee sentiment on your new performance program. Leverage these insights to improve your performance program for the next cycle.

Employees clearly desire feedback, recognition, and other performance programs that help them learn and grow. By creating employee-centric processes, HR teams can drive ongoing improvements to employee motivation and productivity.


If you’re interested in crafting impactful performance programs, contact us here.