How Continuous Performance Management Guides Companies in the Midst of Market Disruption

If there has ever been a time of market disruption, it’s now. Generative AI is rewriting how work gets done and which skills matter. Disruption – whether triggered by new technology, shifting preferences, regulatory changes, economic or social shocks, environmental factors, or true black swans – doesn’t knock; it blows the doors off. Leaders face the hardest question: How do we move fast and still execute with precision? Continuous performance management (CPM) is a key tool during market disruption because it provides the alignment, clarity, and flexibility organizations need during uncertainty and volatility.

Disruption rewrites the rules and renders yesterday’s best practices obsolete, inviting bold organizations to rethink what’s possible. It rewards the agile, the innovative, and the intentional, challenging businesses to deliver value not just faster but smarter – with flexible systems, insight-driven leaders, and performance conversations that move organizations toward their goals. 

The future belongs to those who are most adaptable. Continuous performance management is the operating rhythm for that future: It connects goals, conversations, feedback, recognition, and analytics into a living loop so strategy stays visible and execution stays tight amid change.

5 workforce challenges during market disruption

Whatever wasn’t working well before disruption is likely to break down during upheaval. While many factors outside of HR shape how an organization weathers the storm, ensuring your workforce is set up for agility and success is non-negotiable. As Harvard Business Review has observed, the root cause of failed transformations often isn’t the idea – it’s the execution, tangled up in culture, organization, and market development.

Here are five workforce-related barriers organizations often face when markets shift.

1) Structural silos 

In steady states, silos can be productive: they concentrate expertise, keep specialized functions focused, and support geographic realities. In disruption, those same silos become speed bumps or brick walls. Teams that must coordinate most closely aren’t used to communicating, may not share norms, and sometimes don’t trust each other. The result: duplicated work, competing priorities, and missed dependencies at the exact moment you need integrated execution.

2)  Execution quality

Companies often respond to disruption with a flurry of initiatives – but strategy doesn’t equal lift-off. If goals are not aligned and clearly communicated across the organization or if they are inflexible, if dependencies are unclear, or if resources are spread thin, even the best ideas stall. Execution falters not because people don’t care, but because they lack line-of-sight, feedback loops, and the power to course-correct quickly.

3) Cultural barriers 

Evolving a culture to make it “disruption-ready” is a tall order. Disruption asks people to try new things – to be willing to make substantial changes – before the playbook is proven. Without psychological safety, experimentation flatlines. Leaders may talk about agility and innovation, but if behaviors that demonstrate those values aren’t recognized, and if failures are punished, employees play it safe. 

4) Talent retention and morale 

Unclear direction and stop-start decision-making create uncertainty fatigue and erode trust. High performers will leave for places where the mission is visible and progress is real. The broader workforce disengages when they can’t connect their day-to-day effort to outcomes that matter. Engagement drifts downward and managers spend more time firefighting than coaching.

5) Unpredictability and instability 

Disruption generates conflicting signals. Without an accurate, shared picture of progress and risk, leaders may default to intuition or slow consensus cycles. The absence of timely, trustworthy data increases decision latency, amplifies noise, and pushes the organization into reactive mode.

How Betterworks smooths out market disruption

Betterworks’ continuous performance management software addresses the people-side consequences of market disruption head-on. Instead of treating symptoms, like workforce confusion or inconsistent execution, CPM connects goals, conversations, feedback, recognition, and analytics in a way that enables agility, strengthens culture, and makes strategy actionable in the flow of work. Unlike traditional performance management, CPM is agile, forward-focused, and data-rich.

Speed action with transparent, flexible goal alignment

In the haze of disruption, everyone must know what’s changing and how the organization will respond. Teams need visibility into cross-functional work, progress, and bottlenecks – and the agility to adjust quickly. 

Betterworks Goals creates a living map of priorities and progress so leaders can redirect effort immediately, and employees see exactly how their work relates to the mission. With Betterworks AI Assist features, objectives can be set and revised fast and clearly – whether the goals are business-critical, developmental, task-based, or matrixed – while data from third-party tools like Salesforce, Asana, and Jira roll into a single performance view.

Because goals live in the flow of work – in the apps employees use daily – and are surfaced through integrations and lightweight updates, you get a near real-time pulse on progress to make informed decisions quickly. It’s the difference between steering a speedboat and turning a cargo ship.

Execute through clear communications, feedback, and coaching

Disruption is stressful, and unclear communication makes it worse. Research shows that while leadership may see a clear strategy, too often that strategy stalls before reaching the front lines. Why? Because employees aren’t always sure what matters, why it matters, or how they fit in.

Getting execution right under the pressure of disruption happens when coaching is frequent and feedback loops are fast, specific, and supportive, not stale. Betterworks closes communication gaps with in-the-moment, purposeful guidance and feedback loops that keep everyone on track, even in the most dynamic environments. Betterworks Conversations, 1:1s, and Feedback work together to establish a lightweight, structured rhythm for performance dialogue. Managers can drive clarity using configurable templates, while employees initiate Anytime Conversations to stay focused and in sync.

Everything – goals, feedback, and progress – lives in one transparent system. Managers and teams always know where they stand and where to aim next. With performance built into the everyday workflow, alignment, communication, and performance become a shared, continuous habit, not a scramble. 

Catalyze behavior change and culture from the bottom up

You can’t decree agility or a growth mindset, but you can reinforce the habits that build them. As the same Harvard Business Review article notes, successful companies “focus on changing behaviors that support specific business outcomes, drawing a clear connection between the two.” They then identify obstacles and use nudges to steer people toward the desired behaviors.

Continuous performance systems make it easy to reinforce and recognize agility, smart risk-taking, accountability, transparency, engagement, and scrappiness in the flow of work, whether through manager-employee coaching or peer feedback. Recognition integrations with Microsoft Teams and Slack give managers and peers the opportunity to acknowledge wins and learning moments in real time, strengthening the cultural muscle you want to build.

Promote talent retention 

Disruption can energize or exhaust employees. Frequent, clear communication, coaching, and recognition reduce doubt and worry, allowing them to focus on what they can control. 

Betterworks Goals, Conversations, 1:1s, and recognition features help managers detect and guide their employees through the volatility and uncertainty inherent in market disruption. Betterworks equips managers with prompts for meaningful and outcome-oriented discussions, whether related to performance or career development, and gives employees clear signals about what success looks like as priorities evolve. The result? Less churn and greater momentum. Learn more about ways to reduce employee turnover.

Plan and react quickly with richer data

Your decisions are only as good as your data. During market disruption, you need comprehensive, accurate data fast. But, when goals are stale, reviews and feedback are infrequent, and data lives in offline spreadsheets and slide decks, blind spots grow and decisions falter.

Betterworks keeps managers and HR in sync with the pace of work. Betterworks AI-powered assistants summarize feedback and conversations, spot coaching needs, and highlight skill gaps in real time. Lightweight weekly updates and integrations with tools like Jira and Salesforce ensure performance signals are always flowing, without extra effort or manual wrangling. HR, other executives, and managers gain a holistic picture of where the workforce stands. Fewer surprises. Faster pivots. A calmer path through chaos.

Betterworks AI and Advanced Analytics translate this rich, continuous data into actionable insight. With pre-built and configurable dashboards plus self-serve reporting, HR and business leaders can surface risks, spot bottlenecks, and guide teams with confidence. 

Traditional systems focus on compliance. Betterworks is built for agility. Our continuous performance management platform captures the now and what’s next, enabling faster pivots, fewer surprises, and smarter decisions in every moment that matters.

Betterworks for market disruption at-a-glance

Challenge	Need	Betterworks solution
Structural silos	Avoid duplicated work, missed handoffs, and slow cross-functional decisions.	Betterworks Goals promotes alignment and transparency for efficiency and agile decision-making.
Execution quality	Deliver clear strategic direction, proper resourcing, and enable near real-time course correction.	Betterworks Conversations, 1:1s, and Feedback work in concert with Goals to drive clarity on action.
Cultural barriers	Initiate needed behavior changes with a shared language to drive success.	Betterworks Conversations, Feedback, and recognition capabilities work from the bottom up to instill desired behaviors.
Talent retention & morale	Retain top talent with clear direction, coaching, and visibility—connecting strategy to execution and recognizing growth along the way.	Betterworks Goals, Conversations, 1:1s, and recognition capabilities provide clarity, build trust, and reward outcomes.
Unpredictability & instability	Reduce signal noise and gain comprehensive insights for better decision-making.	Betterworks AI and Advanced Analytics deliver data-rich, actionable insights that save time and surface risks, bottlenecks, and opportunities.

Easing market disruption for HR

Market disruption renders yesterday’s best practices obsolete and invites bold organizations to rethink what’s possible. HR leaders are uniquely positioned to make that rethink real – by building a system that helps the workforce respond in sync, with clarity and speed.

Flexibility and configurability

Different teams, different needs – same framework. Configure goals and performance cycles by function, tailor conversation and feedback templates, and spin up report dashboards or surveys without an IT ticket. You get consistency where it matters (shared language, shared cadence), and freedom where it helps (team-specific workflows).

Simplicity and adoption

When performance tools are intuitive, people use them. A consumer-grade UI – plus AI assistance – makes it easy for employees to update goals and establish steady and clear communications. That’s adoption in action: employees use it, managers rely on it, HR scales impact.

Expert implementation and support

Change is easier with a guide. Betterworks Professional Services team partners from rollout through expansion, with a 95%+ on-time implementation rate and NPS in the 90s, building confidence and accelerating time to value.

The Payoff: A workforce that moves together

When goals, feedback, conversations, and data flow in a continuous loop – not in once-a-year rituals – strategy stays visible, execution stays tight, and people stay aligned. Employees understand their impact, managers coach with clarity, and leaders pivot with real-time insight. Disruption becomes manageable because the playbook rewrites itself by linking flexible goals, structured conversations, real-time feedback, and actionable analytics into one loop, turning turbulence into traction. With Betterworks, HR enables a workforce built for change: aligned, adaptable, and ready to outperform – no matter how fast the market moves.