What Is Performance Enablement? [+ Real-Life Examples]
Almost nine out of 10 leaders believe their performance management is successful, but two out of five employees see it as a failure. This gap means employees are 17% less productive than leaders and 37% less likely to feel performance-enabled.
A Betterworks’ Global HR Research Report shows that employees are 10 times more likely to see a path for advancement if they feel the company successfully implements performance enablement. But, even though many organizations recognize the importance of managing employees’ performance and regularly providing feedback, many are still in the dark when it comes to enabling employee performance.
This small but powerful shift in the workplace empowers employees to reach their potential, perform at their highest level, and align their professional goals with organizational ones. But what is performance enablement, and how does it differ from performance management?
This article will explain performance enablement, provide examples of enablement in action, and explain how to measure the effectiveness of the performance enablement strategies.
Contents
What is performance enablement?
Performance enablement vs. performance management vs. people enablement
The performance enablement model explained
Example of performance enablement: Sales enablement
What are the benefits of performance enablement?
How to measure the impact of performance enablement
FAQ
What is performance enablement?
Performance enablement offers employees ongoing support, tools, and real-time feedback to empower them to continuously develop their skills, achieve their goals while contributing to organizational goals, and progress in their careers.
Performance enablement is considered an improvement over the typical quarterly, semi-annual, or annual performance review. When employees have the tools, skills, and support they need to maximize their work performance, they are more likely to perform at a higher level and exceed expectations. The ultimate goal of performance enablement is to maximize every employee’s potential so both employee and business thrive.
Performance enablement vs. performance management vs. people enablement
Focuses on ongoing employee support and development to help them meet their KPIs
Focuses on periodic performance reviews or appraisals
Focuses on personal and professional individual growth, which in turn affects employee performance
Dynamic
Static
Shows employees how everyone contributes to company goals
Empowers employees to help themselves
Instructs employees on what they need to do
Equips employees with the tools they need to do their jobs effectively
Maximizes employee potential
Does not recognize employees’ full potential
Fosters a people-first company culture
Future-oriented growth
Retrospective review
Continuous employee feedback collection
The performance enablement model explained
What type of model is performance enablement? The performance enablement model by Colquitt and Goldberg 2021 offers a framework that aims to improve employee performance, consisting of three main steps:
- Guidance, direction, and goals
- Coaching, feedback, and support
- Ongoing development.
How it works:
- Each employee has their current performance and ultimate potential assessed
- Their manager discusses the company’s goals with them and offers guidance and direction on the business’s top priorities
- Both parties then determine how employee targets can align with company goals
- They discuss what will motivate the employee to meet these goals
- Through a mix of coaching and feedback, the manager helps the employee overcome obstacles to achieve their goals and realize their potential
- The employee gains access to resources that facilitate constant growth and development.
HR tip
HR can play a key role in empowering managers by helping them to focus less on operational tasks and instead guide them in successfully coaching their team to get results. Practical, scenario-based training will support managers in becoming effective coaches who collaborate with their employees.
Example of performance enablement: Sales enablement
Performance enablement can have a positive effect on sales performance. Sales enablement is important because it drives sales, which then helps to drive any business forward. Marketing and sales software solution provider HubSpot is a good example, having implemented a detailed sales enablement program that included:
- A sales enablement team that worked closely with the sales leadership, marketing, and product teams to align their goals and strategies and offer support and guidance to their sales reps
- A platform that gave salespeople access to helpful content that could educate and persuade existing and prospective customers
- A certification program that tested their knowledge of HubSpot’s products and features in order to demonstrate employee expertise
- A coaching program that paired sales reps with experienced sales coaches and gave them helpful feedback and advice to improve their skills and overcome challenges
- An analytics dashboard that tracked and measured key metrics of the sales enablement program. This includes certification completion, sales productivity, conversion rates, and revenue growth.
This sales enablement program resulted in:
- A 50% increase in sales reps who met or exceeded their quota
- A 22% increase in average deal size
- A 27% increase in annual contract value
- A 131% increase in customer lifetime value
- A 202% increase in revenue per sales rep.
The sales enablement program helped HubSpot’s sales teams deliver better results and customer experiences. It also helped individual sales reps increase their productivity, aligning with HubSpot’s overall business strategy and vision.
What are the benefits of performance enablement?
Employee benefits
- Skills development: Performance enablement makes it easier for employees to develop their professional skills to meet their targets.
- Hidden potential discovery: Performance enablement encourages employees to think strategically, clarifies their goals, and provides a framework for realizing their full potential.
- Greater sense of belonging: Aligning employee and business goals gives them a greater sense of belonging and purpose at work.
- Improved employee engagement and satisfaction: When employees have the opportunity to develop their skills, progress in their careers, and do meaningful work, they feel valued and are happier at work.
- Burnout prevention: A performance enablement plan ensures employees have a clear roadmap at all times of what they need to achieve with actionable steps so they can better manage their time.
Business benefits
- Easier to meet organizational targets: When employees have regular and actionable feedback and the necessary tools to achieve their goals, they can meet targets more easily.
- Greater attractiveness to job seekers: Younger job seekers, in particular, will be more attracted to the flexibility performance enablement offers.
- Higher revenue and profit: Gallup found that organizations prioritizing employee development report 11% greater profitability and improved employee retention.
- Increased employee retention: Continuously encouraging employees to develop their skills and progress in their careers in one organization and facilitating in-house mobility helps reduce turnover.
- Enhanced innovation: Performance enablement gives employees access to cutting-edge ideas, resources, and courses that boost innovation, giving the business a competitive edge. According to Deloitte, companies that strategically invest in learning are 92% more likely to innovate through new products and processes.
- Collective knowledge building: Encouraging employees to share their knowledge and expertise with the entire organization allows everyone to draw on this collective knowledge, which future-proofs the business for when talent leaves.
How to measure the impact of performance enablement
There are several ways to analyze the effectiveness of your performance enablement strategies. These include tracking overall productivity, goal achievement, employee engagement, and retention rates. You can also measure other relevant metrics. In our HubSpot case study, for example, Hubspot tracks sales quota, deal size, revenue, and average annual contract value.
Here are some of the most common relevant metrics, what they measure, and how to use them:
- Turnover rate: To determine your company’s turnover rate for a specific period, you divide the number of terminated employees by the number of employees you had at the beginning of that period. The turnover rate gives you a solid idea of the rate at which employees leave your organization, which can be compared with averages in your industry to see where your company stands.
- Employee retention rate: Refers to how well your organization can retain a consistent workforce over a specific period. You’d calculate it by taking the total number of employees at the start of this period, subtracting the number of employees who left during this time, dividing this figure by the total number of employees, and then multiplying this figure by 100.
- Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS): eNPS helps an organization assess how likely employees are to recommend it as a great place to work, which indicates how satisfied and engaged they are. HR typically uses a standardized eNPS questionnaire to measure this, using a scale of 0 to 10 to ask each employee to rate how likely they are to recommend the company to others.
- Productivity: You can measure productivity in multiple ways. This includes dividing output by input, gathering 360-degree feedback from different team members, deploying time tracking and project management software, and using management by objectives (MBO).
- Employee engagement: This metric tells you how engaged your organization’s employees are, which indicates how satisfied they are with their individual roles and the workplace in general. HR normally tracks engagement through methods like engagement surveys, pulse surveys, eNPS, interviews, and turnover and absenteeism rates.
HR tip
Help managers and employees leverage performance data so employees are held accountable and can see how their performance contributes to organizational goals. With this data, you can also help managers to identify skills gaps and learning opportunities, offer tailored coaching, and recognize good performance.
To sum up
Performance enablement goes beyond the traditional approach to performance management and quarterly, semi-annual, or annual performance appraisals. It continually supports employees, helping them achieve their goals and align them with those of the organization.
By adopting this approach, you can help all your company’s employees improve their performance and reach their highest potential, all while boosting employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention.
FAQ
Enabling performance means empowering employees to maximize their own performance and potential. When employees have the tools, support, and coaching necessary to develop their professional skills continuously, they can more easily achieve their goals and advance in their careers.
Workforce enablement refers to all the interactions and communications within an organization that support employees in performing better in their roles. This includes formal training, informal learning, internal policies, employee communications, and marketing.
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