Skip to navigation Skip to content

Performance management processes

All-seeing performance management

Ensure your talent is on track through clear, fair and consistent performance review processes.

Get in touch

Safeguard your talent pipeline through effective performance management

Formal talent development and coaching is vital to support talent progression, retention and ultimately, performance.

But there’s an area of talent management and development that is easily overlooked – the one that is often left to people managers to interpret and enforce in their own way – performance reviews.

It’s this formal appraisal process – whether quarterly, bi-annual or annual reviews of an employee’s performance – that can lead to top talent going under the radar.

Why? Because too often they are either too vague or over complicated, and inconsistent in their deployment. Even when a framework is in place, people managers are rarely trained on how and when to effectively assess their direct reports.

Why does it matter? Because every single employee goes through this process.

It’s the easily missed yet weakest spot in talent management for any organisation – and a very common one.

These reviews, evaluations, appraisals – however your organisation refers to them – offer a unique opportunity to get a true, accurate picture of your talent at a given moment in time. If they can’t be relied upon, then how can you guarantee you are developing the right people, in the right roles, at the right time?

Our performance management review breaks down your existing process and paperwork, identifying risks such as misinterpretation, bias or lack of clarity.

We consult with you to understand your organisational goals and expectations of talent at set seniority levels, in specific functions, to formulate robust, clear and easy-to-implement frameworks and processes that can be used by everyone, for everyone, to fairly and effectively measure talent.

Crucially, we train your people managers and leaders to use them, and to mitigate human error. We help them to prioritise evidence over personal opinion, so that talent is measured accurately against the criteria that matters most to you.

With our unique psychology-backed insight and talent benchmarking data, you’ll feel confident that all employees are being assessed equally, to give you a true understanding of your talent pipeline. So you know exactly who to invest in – and what they need to thrive – to secure your future.

Get in touch

Our approach to the performance management process

As a team of business psychologists, we use proven, evidence-based methods to accurately and objectively assess and develop talent.

We take a consultative, five-step approach to evaluating and designing your robust performance review process.

Process audit & development
Competency frameworks
Language assessment
Bias reviews
Manager and leader development

Process audit & development

Our first step is to review your existing processes and procedures.

We’ll examine every stage of the process to get a true understanding of how your employees are evaluated, the process they – and people managers – go through and the paperwork and training involved.

Competency frameworks

Competency frameworks should serve as a blueprint for talent measurement across your business.

They set out exactly what you expect from your talent, the skills and behaviours they need to be displaying, based on their role and seniority.

We’ll assess and improve any existing competency framework – or create a new one – with your organisational goals in mind.

We’ll ensure your competency framework uses clear, unambiguous and inclusive language – to create a practical, usable foundation for your performance reviews, talent management and acquisition.

Language assessment

A review of the language used in your performance review processes and paperwork is crucial to identify any unconscious bias or barriers to specific groups of people.

Crucially, it’s about ensuring that the language isn’t vague or open to interpretation – that it provides clear guidelines, for both assessor and employee, to ensure that employees are fairly and accurately measured against the competencies required of them.

Bias reviews

As well as assessing paperwork, we can conduct in-person observations of performance reviews or ‘wash up discussions’ to help you to identify poor practice or unconscious bias in action.

These ‘live bias reviews’ allow for real-time monitoring of bias by one of our organisational psychologists and dynamic intervention where required, to help you identify, spot and overcome biases that may be impacting performance review decisions.

Manager and leader development

Paperwork and policies will only go so far. Training your people managers to use them is vital to ensure consistent, accurate assessment of your talent.

Our targeted, interactive sessions will empower your people managers to confidently navigate performance reviews with an awareness of bias and support their decisions with fair, evidence-based decision making.

Performance reviews should work for everyone involved – and present a unique opportunity to engage and develop talent while keeping your organisation informed about the current state of your talent pipeline, employee performance and productivity.

Contact us for a conversation about your goals.

What are performance reviews?

Whether they are used or tracked effectively or not, it would be hard to find an organisation, large or small, without some sort of procedure in place to regularly check in on an employee.

These processes serve a number of purposes; formally setting and measuring employee performance against their role KPIS, supporting personal development, making promotion, pay and development decisions – and even used for appropriate evidence gathering for performance improvement.

For some, they may be dismissed as a chore or tick-box exercise, a quarterly, bi-annual or yearly obligation.

As with any infrequent process, it’s easy for these to fall by the wayside, and the opportunity performance review processes present organisations with are frequently overlooked.

Pearn Kandola’s performance management review and design services will unlock your ability to understand, track and measure the talent in your organisation at given moments in time.

We’ll support you with your people, policies and paperwork, removing blind spots and ensuring fair, relevant and consistently objective employee evaluations that allow you to turn a periodic ‘chore’ into a vital opportunity.

Performance management processes, when properly implemented, will provide you with a clear snapshot of your talent pipeline on a quarterly, bi-annual and/or annual basis.

They support talent retention and loyalty, ensuring your employees feel recognised – that you’re invested in their success – and have the opportunity to be rewarded for it.

They can also help you to identify where talent is underperforming, and allow you to take remedial action swiftly, to reduce the risk of individuals holding your organisation back.

Unlock the true status of your talent pipeline today.

Get in touch

Our performance management review and design process

Programme design
Planning
Delivery
Review

Programme design

  • We’ll work with you to understand your industry, clients and organisational goals, as well as the unique challenges you face when it comes to talent.
  • We’ll assess your existing processes, policies and paperwork to understand what’s working – and what needs improvement.
  • From here, our expert business psychologists will design a performance management program that will help you to unlock insights into talent across your organisation.

Planning

  • Once the programme is defined, our dedicated resourcing and project managers will take care of planning in the works to build out your new processes.

Delivery

  • This is where the process is implemented, where competency frameworks, paperwork, processes and policies come together.
  • Once these are in place, we work with you to communicate this to your people managers, and provide training to ensure they feel confident to carry out performance reviews backed by evidence, against set criteria, to minimise the risk of bias.

Review

  • We’ll keep in touch with key owners of the performance management process, to ensure maximum success, and support you where required for further training and development.

What sets Pearn Kandola’s performance review designs apart?

Accredited psychologists
Inclusive and culturally aware
Holistic approach and unique leadership insight
Proven partners

Accredited psychologists

As a firm of business psychologists, our services are rooted in psychology, backed by research and evidence-based practice.

We understand people, and how processes and procedures can unexpectedly hold talented people back when designed without inclusion, clarity and practicality in mind.

Our deep level of psychological expertise and understanding goes into the design of your performance review process, to help you better understand the performance of employees – and minimise the risk of talent going unnoticed.

Inclusive and culturally aware

As trailblazers in the field of inclusion, our services are rooted in our in-house research and over forty years’ expertise, eliminating assumptions and minimising bias.

Working across more than 90 countries globally, we understand that ‘ideal’ talent and leadership attributes can look different across different locations.

We factor cultural intelligence into the creation of your performance review process, to ensure your talent can be measured, engaged and developed on a modern, global scale.

Holistic approach and unique leadership insight

We’ve been consulting in leadership development, assessment and inclusion since 1984.

As a firm of business psychologists, we see your organisation as a whole, across departments and seniority levels. We consider where you were, where you are now – and where you want to be.

Whether you’re succession planning or identifying future leaders, assessing graduates or training your C-Suite to be more inclusive, we’re with you every step of the way.

We have decades of experience with talent management and leadership development professionals, and understand the nuances and demands of the field.

Working with tens of thousands of leaders, we know the challenges and demands modern people managers face. We support them to feel confident in the employee review processes, to make evidence-backed people decisions in fast-paced and dynamic work environments.

Proven partners

There’s a reason multi-national organisations trust us with talent development and assessment year after year.

We’re in it for the long-run, invested in your talent pipeline as much as you are.

Together, we create a culture of continuous growth that propels individuals, teams and organisations to success.

Our talent development insights

New webinar: inclusive talent management – developing the developers
Insights

New webinar: inclusive talent management – developing the developers

Read more
Psychological safety week live events announced
Insights

Psychological safety week live events announced

Read more
Exclusive pride month webinar series with Professor Binna Kandola OBE
Insights

Exclusive pride month webinar series with Professor Binna Kandola OBE

Read more

Let’s get the real picture of your talent

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
(Required)

Frequently asked questions

Why should organisations invest in performance reviews?
  • Accurate picture – annual health check of your talent
  • Fair and improved decision making
  • Constructive feedback, engaged talent
  • Improved retention and productivity
  • Supporting inclusion/fairness
Why do organisations need fair performance reviews?

In order to develop and invest in talent, organisations first need to identify them in a fair and objective way.

Once you know who has future leader potential in our workforce, and understand their strengths, weaknesses and core development areas you can begin the work of shaping your high potentials into your leaders of tomorrow.

It’s also down to each individual to support their own personal development, and they’ll need to understand their own areas for improvement in order to understand how they can progress and succeed in their organisation.

(also – Strength of pipeline, beneficial for employees, people managers and organisations as a whole.)

At Pearn Kandola, we’ve been experts in assessment and development for over 40 years. Contact us today to transform your talent.

What should the performance review process look like?

There is no one-size-fits all performance review process.

About what’s right for your organisation, goals, culture and industry.

It’s vital that yours are understood, and a programme is designed that will accelerate talent identification and development to ensure your talent are supported to thrive.