6 Ways an HRIS Makes Performance Management Better

A recent Gallup poll shows that only 44% of employees know what's expected of them and 29% aren't encouraged to develop in their roles. This lack of guidance can stem from many things, but better performance management tools could help keep your company and your workforce on the same page.

A good performance management system sets expectations. It communicates what your employees are doing well, what they need to work on, and how they can learn more, all while reinforcing the behaviors that make your business a great place to work.

From peer feedback and manager reviews to regular goal tracking and recognition, we know a lot goes into an employee performance strategy. But if your system is backed by an HRIS, it's easier for you to keep those moving parts in motion all year long.

Companies of all sizes trust BambooHR to provide award-winning solutions for hiring, payroll, benefits, and everything in between. Learn more about how you can use an HRIS to level up your performance management program.

What Is an HRIS System?

HRIS stands for human resources information system. This all-in-one HR software lets you organize employee information, automate repetitive tasks, and make data-driven company decisions. Many HRIS platforms also incorporate self-service tools, which empower employees to manage their own information and give HR more time to do what they do best. The main functions of an HRIS include:

• Hiring and onboarding
• Time tracking
• Payroll and benefits administration
• Employee engagement
• HR data and reporting
• Performance management

Top 6 Ways an HRIS Optimizes Performance Management

With an HRIS, you can manage the entire lifecycle of your employee performance program from one place. Plus, it's packed with helpful tools and features for collecting data and using it to your advantage. Here are just some of the things you can do with an HRIS to optimize performance management:

1. Give Continual Performance Feedback

One significant perk is that an HRIS facilitates more frequent feedback. Rather than saving information for that annual review, recording performance-related data on a shorter cycle lets managers provide feedback that feels more relevant to their teams at the moment. Giving useful, actionable guidance more frequently also increases the likelihood that your feedback will positively impact performance.

Using your HRIS, it's easy to manage multiple review cycles across your organization. Simply set each employee on an appropriate review frequency in your system. You can customize this feature to pertain specifically to remote employees, in-office workers, and entire teams or departments.

2. Automate Employee Performance Reviews

An HRIS with automated reminders keeps each team's performance management cycle running like clockwork. After you've set someone on a review schedule, your HR software reminds you and them when to complete an assessment. So, you can spend less time reminding multiple people per month or quarter to do their reviews without missing a beat on performance management.

3. Create a Long-Term Performance Management System

With HR software, simple recordkeeping can go a long way in helping you keep your performance management process running smoothly. An HRIS stores perspectives from different touchpoints that go far beyond a year in your employee database. As a result, you have a digitally recorded history spanning the entire tenure of each person that isn't hidden away inside a file cabinet—and with this bigger picture comes the opportunity to review key trends and patterns at a glance.

This longer perspective also connects performance management to career planning. Along with short-term goals, an HRIS lets you set broader career objectives, identify the support needed to achieve them, and monitor employee progress.

4. Integrate Your HRIS with Your Favorite Tools

You don't have to give up all the software you know and love to switch to an HRIS. Many platforms support API integrations, which means they're compatible with separate HR applications. For example, our customers access a host of performance and recognition tools that connect to BambooHR®, such as:

• 15Five
• Engagedly
• GoalSpan
• HelloTeam
• Lattice
• Nectar
• PerformYard

And using flexible HR software isn't just convenient—it adds value to your investment while streamlining your workflow. These separate systems in your HR tech stack sync with a single source of employee information, which increases accuracy and eliminates the double data entry that bogs down your workload (and the risk of human error that goes along with it).

5. Easily Collect Peer Feedback

An HRIS makes gathering meaningful feedback from an employee's peer group a breeze, which could include close team members or colleagues from different departments. Gathering insights from a variety of sources paints a clearer picture of how this person impacts your organization and helps managers create more personalized professional development plans.

For instance, an HRIS can facilitate 360-degree reviews, which include feedback from managers, peers, direct reports, and other people about a single employee. Coupled with silo-crossing communication tools that build your employee community and gamification features (like peer recognition that incentivizes favorable behaviors), you can deliver feedback in real time and even make it fun and motivational.

6. Refine Your Performance Review Process

There's always room for improvement, especially as your company grows through the years ahead. An HRIS makes it easier for HR teams to dig deeper into the performance review process, analyze key data points, and adjust as needed. You can use it to gauge things like:

• How often teams complete their reviews and meet their goals
• Where employees fall short of improving performance
• If your performance program positively impacts your organization overall
• Where feedback leads to meaningful development and where it doesn't
• What self-evaluations say about the overall employee experience

As far as improvements, this could mean updating your questions to learn more about your workforce, recalibrating for unconscious biases, or adjusting your performance metrics. Eventually, you may also need to revise your goal-setting framework and performance improvement plans (PIPs) to ensure they're still relevant to your company's future and your compensation structure.

The Perfect Matchup: HRIS + Performance Management

An HRIS is great for streamlining all kinds of HR processes—and performance management is no exception. Running your program with all-in-one HR software can change the way you approach employee reviews, feedback, development, and recognition and create a system that supports your company's culture for the better.