Human Capital talks to Chris Phillips, vice president of international marketing at Taleo, about how technology can be used to streamline performance management.

HC: What trends have you noticed in performance management in the last decade?
CP: Our research has shown that performance management has become increasingly important to businesses as they seek to engage and retain the talent within their organisations. However, most performance appraisal processes are perceived by line managers and employees as adding little value to their day to day business activities. The reason for this is that most performance processes, and the underlying systems, were designed for HR to ensure compliance with a corporate process rather than being designed to improve manager's effectiveness.

HC: How has technology changed the way performance is measured in the workforce?
CP: In most organisations technology has not yet had the impact that it should have had on performance measurement. Many performance management systems aim simply to replicate an existing paper form online. Modern, consumer-based web technologies have the potential to create easy to use management tools that can help managers align employee goals to departmental and corporate goals, gather and log feedback on a much more regular basis, and provide a rich set of decision support tools to enhance management decisions.

HC: How do most companies utilise performance management software?
CP: Whilst it's possible to implement performance management as a stand alone solution, many organisations are now looking at a more integrated or unified strategy. The core elements of a unified approach are recruiting and performance management. The recruiting solution manages the matching of people to roles, while the performance management solution provides the basis for aligning, engaging and developing an employee's contribution over time. A unified approach allows an employer to have a single 'person profile' that captures all relevant talent management information for a candidate or employee.

HC: What software does Taleo have in the performance management space?
CP: Taleo Performance provides Performance Management, Goals Management, Career Planning, and Succession Planning. Taleo Performance is part of a unified solution for Talent Management that also includes Recruiting, Internal Mobility and Onboarding.

HC: How does all this help HR?
CP: A primary challenge for HR when implementing new talent management strategies is getting acceptance of new systems and processes from line managers and employees. Too often new processes and tools are seen to add little value and get paid scant attention within the business. Modern performance management tools like Taleo Performance are designed to add value directly to line managers and employees in their day to day management activities. Thereby adoption rates improve across the business, enabling HR to embed new talent management approaches into the operational fabric of the organisation.

HC: How about 360-degree feedback - can your software support input from multiple sources?
CP: It can. Taleo Performance uses embedded 'networking' technologies, familiar from sites such as Linked In, to gather and log feedback from a broad range of relevant sources within the company.