Good learning management systems help organisations ensure staff training is effectively delivered and managed. It follows that performance management should be the next consideration. That is, conduct appraisals, facilitate discussion, feedback and analysis between staff and managers – with a view to achieving corporate goals. Empowering organisations with the capacity to measure and manage staff performance enables better human resource allocation.
Totara 2.5 includes a new performance management module. Put simply, its purpose it to make it easy for organisations to improve employee performance.
In recent times, there’s been an increased demand from organisations wanting to integrate performance management with a learning management system. On the same token, the solution needs to be flexible, intuitive and cost effective – this is what Totara delivers: a performance management tool that’s easy to use, customisable, integrated – and naturally, it comes as part of an open-source solution, with no licensing fees.
Totara chief executive Richard Wyles says:
Organisations want performance management capabilities, but we’re finding similar complaints about existing systems that we were seeing about most LMS – the platforms either cannot be customised or are difficult to do so and are not integrated to enable performance measurement to flow into learning and subsequent improved performance. On top of that, thanks to licensing agreements, many can be incredibly expensive to implement.
Here are the highlights of the performance management module:
Goals setting
Many performance management solutions don’t align the system with the organisation’s goals or objectives. Totara addresses the challenge with a flexible approach. Managers and employees can set Personal Goals, for example: Develop sales plan for new product line. HR managers or Administrators can also set Company Goals, for example: Achieve 10% increase in sales revenue, so it may be evidenced how personal goal achievements connect with outcomes affecting the organisation.
Assessment builder
When people discuss performance management, assessment is considered a key ingredient. Totara emphasises flexibility; managers can generate checklists of questions for the assessments, assign the forms to selected groups, define stages for when the forms need to be complete – and send out reminders when an employee has failed to complete their assessment on time. Administrators can see how the process is coming along at any stage.
360-degree feedback
Many organisations are moving away from hierarchical assessment processes between a manager and employee. They want a more complete picture of how an employee functions as part of a team or department. Totara’s 360-degree feedback tool helps managers ask a wider group of participants for feedback thereby ensuring more holistic input on performance.
Reporting
Totara makes reporting easy. The ‘Progress Tracking’ feature allows administrators to see how online assessments are progressing. ‘Metrics’ allow administrators to review the actual appraisal results in a granular, searchable way, with the ability to export reports in their preferred format as required. The ability to track assessment progress and review – help facilitate follow ups.
Integration
The best news is performance management comes fully-integrated as standard with Totara LMS. You don’t need to do anything but upgrade or subscribe to Totara 2.5, no hidden costs or extras. Contact us to learn more about improving performance management in your organisation.