Market Perspectives

Performance management helps organizations understand, optimize and align performance through a variety of methods and processes and is an essential part of what is called digital business. For many organizations, engaging employees through a series of check-ups, goal tracking and kudos to encourage and motivate them helps ensure that expected people and operational performance is realized. But in a changing world and workplace culture where workers prioritize mental health and organizations view working from home as a positive change, vendors of performance management applications must provide tools that help leadership adapt.

With WFH approaches, a smaller physical presence means more use of technology to bridge the gap between on premises and remote. Ventana Research has identified a need for newer approaches to performance management, objectives and key results that support an organization’s transition into new styles of working while maintaining high productivity, employee satisfaction and effective performance management. By 2023, one-fifth of organizations will standardize use of OKR methods in software to align the purpose and aspiration of workforce achievement to desired outcomes.

Quantum Workplace provides tools to optimize worker and manager engagement, benefitting satisfaction while reducing frustration in any misalignment of expectations. Through advanced one-on-one meetings, artificial intelligence implementations, and shorter pulse surveys, Quantum Workplace seeks to increase an organization’s productivity by reducing stress on the business. Quantum’s Intelligence Analytics analyzes survey answers and one-on-one results to provide easy-to-digest visualizations, identifying which employees have a higher chance of turnover as well as providing options to solve managerial problems. Quantum has a team commitment planning board that highlights progress on projects, showing the advantages of in-person work to demonstrate that WFH can be just as productive as on-premises work.

Furthermore, Quantum Workplace produces a newsfeed purely for attained goals, giving managers a way to encourage and cheer on employees thousands of miles away. As business communication platforms become more prominent in a distanced working world, integration with platforms like Microsoft Teams and Salesforce’s Slack proves critical. As the performance management market adapts to create products for virtual organizations in addition to traditional office culture, Quantum Workplace provides buyers solutions to make the switch easier and faster without sacrificing employee enjoyment, keeping OKR measurement and accomplishment on track.

Ventana Research finds that, as the world shifts into a hybrid of virtual and physical presence in the office, some companies will operate entirely virtually, while others will be fully on premises. A majority may need to support a combined virtual and physical workforce. Leadership may find their existing human capital management system lags behind and cannot provide the necessary functionality to manage the expected performance of a distributed workforce. During the pandemic, many organizations found themselves stuck between workers at home and software unable to handle the transition.

Where many applications for performance management focus on review cycles and increasing the number of features in that area, Quantum Workplace has also invested in shifting its products to make them effective for organizations to use with increasingly distributed and remote workers. Quantum’s products are designed for easier feedback and more reliable responses from upper management, as managers can use products from Quantum Workplace’s Intelligence Dashboard and Intelligence Data Feed for providing self-service access to insights.

Finding a new product to replace what are now dated approaches to performance management makes every process easier and moves organizations forward as productivity and worker enjoyment rise above the competition. Quantum Workplace engagement products provide additional support in a hybrid work environment, with one-on-one and pulse survey capabilities for engaging workers about their situation and mental health. As the stigma lessens and focus on the human experience becomes greater, Quantum Workplace provides questions tailored for well-being, which can be implemented in engagement and feedback programs and should be core to the value of its offering.

Organizations of all sizes have a human resources department or function that constantly seeks the best from the workforce using performance management or current approaches to talent management. Performance management may not be the responsibility of HR groups but is necessary for business leadership to advance what is required to understand, optimize and align performance in a more methodical manner. When existing performance management software falls behind the needs of workers, business leaders and HR teams must examine new approaches and potential vendors that can provide solutions to emerging problems. Remote work ethics and mental health importance will eventually play a role in most organizations, so staying ahead of the curve by implementing performance management applications will ensure organizational goals are focused on these issues to ensure workers recognize they are valued, keeping productivity and enjoyment high.