The recent improving conditions workwise have taken a downturn with the increase in COVID cases recently. While we were just getting our bearings the COVID cases surge has led to a very tense atmosphere everywhere.

With a vast change in the working conditions, a major concern for Managers is the productivity of the employees. There have been concerns where Managers think that employees will be distracted at home by children, spouses and other responsibilities.

But, a recent survey has shown that the productivity of employees working at home has increased. Numerous factors are affecting the employees as well as the company.

The employees are worried about their families, stressed about work conditions at times, and amidst all this, they are just wrestling with uncertainties regarding everything. So, even due to a lot of reasons they are working more efficiently.

So when it comes to measuring the performance of the employees virtually, well the Managers will have to broaden the horizons.

1. The typical numerical calculation performance evaluation won't work here. You can’t be rigid timewise, but rather you need to be flexible and let the result be goal-oriented rather than time- oriented.
2. The Managers need to manage their emotional quotient and have empathy. You don’t know what the situation of your employee is, so try to understand their situation and offer support rather than judgements.
3. Your traditional performance measures are useless in this situation, so make teamwork a requirement in performance and move ahead from there.
4. Make the employees understand the company goals, mission and values. Make them understand what they are working for.
5. Boost their morale.
6. Dredge lightly with poor performers empathize with them and inspire them to work more. Communication is a must and asks them to do it often.
7. Accept that this is the new normal so your performance evaluations too will have to take a different outlook.
8. Make factors like empathy, positivity, teamwork and communication your performance measures.
9. Rather than monitoring your employee the whole day, develop trust between yourselves.
10. Make some kind of system, say a task system where a few tasks assigned have to be completed in a certain time with a certain efficiency.

So all in all this year get a new outlook towards your employees, forget any bias that you have and perform a different kind of performance evaluation where you communicate business priorities and individual goals, encourage them to develop and come with new ideas.

Set a trend for a different performance evaluation trend in this pandemic, and who knows it will be best for the future.

In the next article, we will see some real-time case studies regarding Performance Evaluation in the virtual world and how some top companies are responding to the changing dynamics.