HR.com’s Future of Performance Management 2024-25

If we had to evaluate performance management (PM) today, it would be something like, “Shows potential but needs to improve specific skills to boost overall success.”

Why the half-hearted review? Our research indicates that, although PM has made considerable progress in recent years, it’s still underperforming at far too many organizations.

Here’s one example. The top two performance management objectives reported by our survey respondents are 1) to meet overall organizational objectives, and 2) help employees learn and grow.

Yet, our study also finds that fewer than half of responding HR professionals say their organization’s performance management systems actually meet those goals to a high or very high extent.

In this report, we examine these and many other trends to describe the state of performance management today. We also engage in various analyses in order to discern which strategies and practices are favored by organizations with better performance management systems.

Following are some of the key highlights from the full study.