#MyHRDiary: Performance Management, My New Love

Welcome to another episode of my #MyHRDiary. I started this series to take you through part of my HR Journey by sharing real life experiences and stories that would help you in your own career journey.

So you may be surprised that someone who majorly talks about Talent Acquisition and Career Management has now found a love in Performance Management all of a sudden lol

I’m not a newbie in HR so Performance Management isn’t a new aspect to me so why is it my new-found love? Let me give you a brief history of my career.

I learned about what Performance Management was about when I started my career in an HR Consulting Firm without actually practicing it (all I knew was theory). Then I moved to a small firm where I thought I would be able to implement the theory I thought I knew but that didn’t end well because it was a VERY small organization and real HR Practices weren’t valued. Anyway, I did LOTS and LOTS of research and implemented a performance management process with the ‘little’ I knew.

Fastforward, I moved to a specialist role so I forgot about it and now I’m back in a Business Partnering Role (Generalist) and I am practically self-teaching myself.

In my career, I have always wanted to be under someone who I would learn a lot from and literally ‘hide’ under but I just have to make lemonades from the lemons handed over to me (Not everyone would work in a big multinational). For now, I’m in an environment where I am learning on the Go and have the platform to drive as much initiatives and do so much because I’m the Lead HR.

That’s one advantage of working in a small business, you have the opportunity to self-teach yourself, implement, do trial and error and learn on the Go. You may not really get the large platforms multinationals would give you but if you’re good enough and crazy about personal growth like me, you would literally see those little seeds growing.

For me, I had to reteach myself Performance Management because it all lies in my hands and if I’m to effectively help the business grow through its people, then I must get the Performance Management bit correctly.

We moved to the OKR Method and it was indeed a wonderful experience for me because I can’t count how many online courses I did (both free and paid) to ensure I got it right. I also can’t count how many minutes I spent on calling colleagues who already had it in their organizations. Even through it all, I was learning how to make it better every month. I thought I had gotten a hang on it but even last month, I realized something I could do better.

I recently paid for another two day training on “Design Thinking in Performance Management” and that was because I always felt that because everything I implemented was self-taught then something was missing. Even though I learned something new in the training (which I plan to implement soon), listening to others and the content generally, I felt rest assured that ‘Me sef I know work’

So why is Performance Management my new-found love? The whole journey of self-teaching and solo implementation was quite fun and interesting to me. Talent Acquisition and Recruitment is one aspect that has always excited me but now when I go back to the drawing board and begin to think about things I can do better, I realized it’s not really a chore for me unlike ‘some’ other aspects of HR.

Performance Management is a critical aspect of Human Resource Management because if you’re not able to help the organization achieve its objectives through its people then what are you really doing.

Human Resource is a life-long journey of learning for me. I really don’t know it all but I’m proud of the progress I’m making each day through the people in my network who have willingly put me through and which I’m learning from. I may not be working under one big HR Director that has donkey years of experience but I have very knowledgeable people in my network who coach me virtually.

My advice to any HR Professional working in a small organization putting in his/her best to put in best practice processes, it may be tempting to see your mates managing thousands of staff with overstructured processes and get jealous. Just be part of a good HR Network and ensure you prioritize learning and don’t be afraid to acknowledge mistakes while learning. Get Management Buy-In in all you do and no matter how good your processes and policies are, it can always be better.

Stay tuned for more episodes of #MyHRDiary

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