I have been working my way through Josh Bersin’s “High Impact Talent Management” research and pulled out a few things. First, this is not his report on vendors. It’s a survey of what companies are currently thinking. Here’s a few interesting pieces of information:

Average business impact of doing this process with excellence. Priority of impact to the business:

1. Performance management
2. Competency management
3. Sourcing and recruiting
4. Leadership development
5. Learning and development

One interesting point is that that performance management is “management itself” – the daily management of people.

Josh was stressing that organizations must have the processes first. The technology must support the processes. Organizations will see a 5-10 times higher ROI by focusing on the processes themselves; not the systems. Systems are enablers.

Performance management has the highest impact on business results. If it’s enterprise wide, it can drive 40% higher business impact than just having a few standards in place. Also, if enterprise wide, it also positively impacts Leadership development, career planning and pay for performance (and others). Why? It creates a common currency for the alignment and evaluation of people, it creates a culture of performance and it creates a dialogue and process for development.

No ROI for vendor Performance Management Systems

Bersin found that performance management systems are not yet showing return. Organizations haven’t had them long enough and the impact of PM is driven by process, behavior and culture. Performance management as a system must work before you automate it.