Finding 6
Half of employees are not getting adequate performance enablement — such as goal setting and tracking, feedback, and meaningful, ongoing conversations.
Performance enablement — comprising goal setting and tracking, feedback, and meaningful and ongoing conversations — is an important way to help employees increase their effectiveness and advance their careers. The half of workers who said they get meaningful performance enablement had stronger feelings of belonging, higher productivity, and a better employee experience across the board.
Performance enablement — comprising goal setting and tracking, feedback, and meaningful and ongoing conversations — is an important way to help employees increase their effectiveness and advance their careers. The half of workers who said they get meaningful performance enablement had stronger feelings of belonging, higher productivity, and a better employee experience across the board.
Performance enablement is performance elevation. It is essential in helping employees succeed. In addition to strengthening the manager-employee relationship with meaningful conversations that incorporate coaching, performance enablement should promote feedback and collaboration with peers and teams. It must also be well-supported by the organization’s technology stack.
Just over half (52%) of people said they are receiving adequate performance enablement to help their performance and long-term career growth. Nearly onethird (32%) would like performance enablement but don’t have it and 16% said they don’t care.
When recalculating for the people who said they don’t currently have adequate performance enablement, 67% said they would like to have it.
Employees who get good enablement are 2x as likely to feel they always belong and are valued at work.
Do you feel like you belong and are valued at work?
Strong performance enablement is one way to ensure higher levels of employee belonging and feelings of value. Employees who feel their organization provides them with proper performance enablement are more than twice as likely to feel they belong and are valued at work.
Enabled employees feel more productive, engaged, and confident. Lack of enablement correlates with high stress and burnout.
Positive Sentiment
 Enabled
 Not enabled- Productive 65%
- 55%
- Confident 52%
- 31%
- Confident 49%
- 26%
- Optimistic 49%
- 30%
- Focused 43%
- 26%
- Resilient 24%
- 18%
Negative Sentiment
 Enabled
 Not enabled
- Stressed 27%
- 45%
- Confident 23%
- 35%
- Confident 17%
- 40%
- Distracted 10%
- 14%
- Detached 9%
- 19%
- Pessimistic 8%
- 18%
When employees do not feel enabled, we see spikes in feelings of stress, overwhelm, burnout, distraction, detachment, and pessimism. The results could hardly be starker, or the case for enablement more compelling.
When employees do not feel enabled, we see spikes in feelings of stress, overwhelm, burnout, distraction, detachment, and pessimism. The results could hardly be starker.
Only about 1 in 2 people have access to dedicated tools for feedback/ performance or career/ skills development
Technology plays a critical role in supporting managers and employees so that positive sentiments can take root and flourish. The numbers we see above track closely to the number of people who have dedicated tools for performance management and career development. Doing both the right way matters.
Of the 57% who said they have a dedicated tool for feedback, performance management, and goal-setting, 31% like their tool.
Similarly, only 53% of people have a process or tool to document their career aspirations and determine the competencies and skills they need to reach them, and of those, 30% have a tool they like.
When we looked closely at those people who said they have (and like) dedicated tools for performance and career development, 92% said they felt adequately enabled — versus 26% of people without those tools.
What’s more, this group had better experiences across the board. A large majority (85%) said they saw a clear path for advancement in their organization versus 26% of those without dedicated tools.
Similarly, 91% of this group said they thought performance management in their company was a success — a 67-point improvement over those who didn’t have either a performance or career development solution.
When we looked closely at those people who said they have (and like) dedicated tools for performance and career development, 92% said they felt adequately enabled — versus 26% of people without those tools.
What’s more, this group had better experiences across the board. A large majority (85%) said they saw a clear path for advancement in their organization versus 26% of those without dedicated tools.
Similarly, 91% of this group said they thought performance management in their company was a success — a 67-point improvement over those who didn’t have either a performance or career development solution.
Only 1 in 4 employees have performance management integrated into the tools they use every day
   
   
  
Another factor in feeling enabled is how integrated performance management technology is into the flow of work. When employees have to log in and out of systems, they are far less likely to use them. Only 23% of our respondents said their performance management process (e.g., feedback, checkins, goal tracking, career development) is fully integrated into the applications they use every day.
Another 26% said it is in some of their tools, but 51% of respondents told us they have to interrupt their flow of work and go to another platform for performance management — and 28% do so only during annual review time.
When we looked at those whose enablement is integrated into the tools they use every day, they were:
Up to 20 percentage points more likely to say they were productive
Twice as likely to say they were being tasked to work on the right things
25-53 percentage points more likely to say they have an easy, intuitive, and flexible way to set, update, and track personal and professional goals
41-60 percentage points more likely to say their current performance management system helps them to perform better in their work
Read our recommendation
6
Better support employees by reexamining your performance management practices.
Ask yourself if your performance management approach is yielding the results you want or is hampering or harming your employees’ ability to perform at their best. Do they view it as biased, a waste of time, or di cult to maneuver?
If so, whatever investment you have made is, at best, being wasted, and at worst, undermining employees’ internal motivation, engagement, and sense of well-being. This could be costly to your business if lower productivity and higher turnover result.
Modern performance management is really about performance enablement, not managing. It is:
• Forward-looking
• Focused on setting agile goals that align with business objectives
• Achievement-oriented
• Delivered through frequent and structured conversations and feedback that strengthen collaboration, trust, intrinsic motivation, and a sense of accomplishment
• Reinforced by recognizing and celebrating achievement
This approach elevates and empowers your people, culture, and organization.
