What is Performance Management and Why it Matters at Work

Performance management has shifted far beyond the traditional annual review. Today’s organizations recognize that performance is best managed as an ongoing conversation, where goals, feedback, and development are integrated into daily work. Done right, performance management boosts engagement, strengthens accountability, and helps align individual effort with organizational strategy.

Why does this matter? Because organizations that adopt modern performance management practices see:

• Improved engagement & retention – employees feel recognized and supported.
• Better goal alignment – staff understand how their work connects to strategy.
• Stronger leadership pipelines – managers can identify and develop talent early.
• Continuous improvement – regular feedback replaces outdated once-a-year reviews.
• Evidence-based decisions – data on goals, competencies, and development drive fairer promotions and succession.

At its foundation, performance management is about clarity:

• making sure employees understand what is expected,
• how success will be measured,
• and where they can develop further.

But in practice, it requires much more — balancing structured goals with flexibility, encouraging real-time feedback, and ensuring that recognition and development go hand-in-hand. Modern performance management also leverages data to make decisions fairer and more transparent, while keeping the human element front and center.

This resource hub brings together practical insights and tools to help you design, implement, and improve your performance management processes. You will find guidance on

• setting clear objectives,
• running effective check-ins,
• designing review cycles,
• and integrating performance data with learning and development.

We also cover emerging approaches such as continuous performance management and strengths-based feedback, which many organizations now use to create a more dynamic and responsive system.

For organizations in regulated industries, you’ll find resources on compliance and audit-readiness, while for growing businesses, we provide strategies to scale performance processes without adding unnecessary complexity. Throughout, the focus is on helping managers and employees spend less time on administration and more time on meaningful conversations about growth and contribution.

Performance management is not one-size-fits-all. Every organization needs to balance structure with flexibility, accountability with development. The resources here are designed to help you build a system that fits your culture, supports your people, and delivers measurable impact. Explore our guides, research articles, and templates to create performance management practices that drive both individual and organizational success.

An evidence-based framework for evaluating performance clearly and consistently. Shows how role responsibilities, goals and core behavioral competencies create a complete picture of contribution—and why technical competencies belong in development and assurance, not in performance appraisal.

A 4 minute video on why performance management often fails — and what actually works in 2026, including role clarity, good goals, evidence-based reviews, and continuous conversations.

Back to basics – Key concepts

Using psychology to understand and shape behavior at work

8 ways performance management fails – and how to fix it.

Conditioning and the ABC at work

Are performance ratings obsolete – Research on their uses and pros and cons of doing away with them

Untangling the difference between competency and performance

The what why, who and when of performance management – advanced strategies and fatal errors to avoid

Pre-requisites for feedback and how to promote it – best practices

For small business – how to improve productivity by aligning processes and job roles with key priorities. Download

Research on the effect of including core competencies in performance management – organizational citizenship behaviours.

6 fundamentals for Next Generation Performance Management