By Rejoice Esi ASANTE (PhD)
A young graduate posted to a reputable organization to undergo national service expressed frustration at her experience. She majored in information technology with high hopes of building a career from her posting but this did not materialize. Six months into the service, she realized that her expectations were nothing close to the reality.
Her role was not defined, there were no clear goals as to what was expected of her and all she did was made to run personal errands and perform irrelevant odd clerical jobs that did not match her expectation. She was devastated. Disengaged, demotivation and frustrated. This experience relates to what many workers face when Performance Management (PM) is not optimized.
Every business is poised to improve performance to achieve organizational goals and to nurture the personal growth of the human resources. However, traditional PM is faced with challenges of irregular, inconsistent feedback, little or no engagement, inefficient and unclear communication, non-aligned goals, biases of evaluators, low morale and motivation of reviewers and lack of clear goals among others.
Additionally, there are outdated systems and processes, difficulty in integrating systems, lack of necessary skills and expertise to implement and utilize current systems, lack of training of evaluators, use of subjective appraisal systems, resource constraints, resistance to change and evolving workplaces.
Industry leaders believe that PM can be optimized when approached as a strategic tool to instill growth and profitability. The need to move beyond annual reviews to continuous feedback, integrate employee well-being and development into performance strategies, leveraging technology, obtaining leadership and employee buy-in, boosting motivation and engagement, ensuring compliance and fair practices to avoid biases, overcoming budget and resource constraints and using PM to enhance employee retention, success and effectiveness, cannot be overemphasized. This article delves into the strategic shift of PM as a strategic tool and how it can be optimized for organizational success.
Performance Expectations
The dynamic challenges for organisations to remain relevant, requires that they enhance their performance in the light of digitalization, globalization and overflowing information due to artificial intelligence and the-tense global market competition. Organisations have the responsibility to deliberately groom human resources to give off their best. Integrating PM into the organizational culture is essential in the current work environment and it must not be business as usual.
Aligning organizational objectives with individual goals, utilizing data to gain meaningful insights, and establishing continuous feedback loops that enhance productivity and engagement, are the strategies organizations have adopted to optimize PM.
Research shows that organisations with employees who are more satisfied with their company’s approach to PM are 1.4 times more likely to reach financial targets, they are three times more likely to manage change effectively, 3.2 times more likely to encourage risk taking and two times more likely to innovate (CultureAmp, 2025). Performance and engagement are intertwined and so it is difficult for employees to perform their best if they don’t feel enthusiastic and connected to the organization.
Barbier et al., (2012), observe that performance expectations relate to work engagement and when employees are clearly aware of the expectations of the employer, it reflects in their work engagement leading to positive performance. Performance expectations are reflected in the outputs of employees which are the sum of their actions taken and behaviors (UC Berkeley, 2025). Thus, performance expectations go beyond job descriptions. Barbier et al., (2012) show in their study that changes in performance expectations predict future work engagement.
Performance Dimensions
Not knowing what is expected of a job is frustrating, therefore employees need to know what is expected of them. Thus PM begins from the job description which indicates the essential functions, tasks and responsibilities of a job. In addition to objectives and standards (which focus on end results) it is important to consider other aspects of performance.
According to UC Berkeley (2025), performance expectations serve as a foundation for communicating performance throughout the year. They also serve as the basis for reviewing employee performance.
When clear expectations are set about the results that must be achieved and the methods or approaches needed to achieve them, a path for success is established. It involves setting performance objectives and standards (with a focuses on task completion, specifically tied to duties/responsibilities). The performance standards are expressions of performance thresholds, requirements and expectations which must be realistic.
Performance dimensions are defined based on the job and the work itself and may include customer service orientation, teamwork, effective, communication, valuing diversity, analysis and problem-solving, decision-making and results orientation, adaptability, fostering a safe and secure environment. For the dimensions to be an effective means of measuring performance, they must have clear general definition, and well-defined levels of performance at each point along a rating scale.
Performance Optimization Processes
Some of the processes suggested in literature for optimizing PM include organizational justice, employee engagement, building high performing teams, and building and maintaining a performance-driven culture.
Organizational Justice
Optimising PM process requires that organisations build effective processes which drive equity (CultureAmp, 2025). Organisational justice is concerned with fairness in the workplace looking at processes, interactions and outcomes, which impacts on employees in terms of engagement, performance, learning and growth.
It concerns distribution of resources (distributive justice), fairness of procedures (procedural justice), and interpersonal treatment (interactional justice). When employees perceive fairness of the distribution of resources, processes and interaction in terms of decision making, are likely to give off their best. Justice Perceptions in organizations have been found to be related to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job performance, withdrawal behaviors, counterproductive behaviours and self-perceptions.
Employee Engagement
Another way to optimize performance management is to uphold employee engagement. PM should be a platform to co-create the employee experience and this can be done through engagement by understanding employees and taking meaningful actions. Connecting engagement and performance on teams become much easier when proper steps are taken to gather data and commit to listening and taking action (CultureAmp, 2025).
High employee engagement significantly impacts a business’s outcome, delivering a strong Return On Investment (ROI) because engaged employees are more productive, leading to increased profitability, reduced turnover and higher customer satisfaction (Decisionwise, 2025; HeartCount, 2024). The ROI of high engagement shows that more engaged employees perform 15-20% better on average, while businesses with a high number of engaged employees are 17% more productive and 21% more profitable (Gallup, 2024, 2025).
By investing in employee engagement programs, companies can create a culture of appreciation, increase employee satisfaction, and ultimately improve their bottom line (HeartCount, 2024; Awardo, 2025; Gallup, 2025). Employee engagement makes the difference between a team just doing their job and a team that’s truly motivated to achieve results.
It makes employees feel valued and invested in the company’s success. Employee engagement reflects the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace. They become engaged when their basic needs are met, and they have a chance to contribute, a sense of belonging, and opportunities to learn and grow (Gallup, 2025). To optimize PM, employee engagement must be promoted deliberately and strategically.
Building High Performing Teams
Another way to co create employee experience is to facilitate performance by building high performing teams to achieve company goals. This will lead also to development, relevant for growth and retention with continuous development. There is a strategic shift to building high-performing teams to enable organizations to achieve organizational goals. A multidimensional approach situated on strong communication, common purpose, robust leadership, and a culture of trust and collaboration is needed to achieve organizational goals (Institute of Directors, 2024).
A high-performing team is a group of individuals with defined roles and complementary talents and skills who are not afraid to challenge the status quo, actively seeking out new ideas, and adapting swiftly to changing circumstances. They are not afraid to tackle conflict and challenge, but do this in a positive way. According to Institute of Directors (2025), The benefits of high performing teams include enhanced productivity and efficiency, positive workplace culture, Autonomy and empowerment.
Building A Performance Driven Culture
A high-performance workplace is an environment designed to help employees to be as effective as possible in supporting business goals and providing organizational value. According. A performance-driven culture is an organizational culture where employees are motivated to perform at their best and achieve the organization’s goals.
This type of culture is characterized by a focus on results, clear expectations, and regular feedback. (Tripathi, 2023). It leads to increased productivity, improved decision-making, reduced costs and increased employee satisfaction.
In conclusion, PM must be strategically optimized to achieve organizational goals by paying attention to the effective engagement of the human resources. Organisations must look beyond the traditional bi annual PM methods that do not yield much and to strategically optimize PM to ensure success.
