SHRM urges managers to rethink performance in hybrid work

Managers need a system, not a snapshot

SHRM’s message lands squarely on the problem most hybrid teams still wrestle with: performance cannot be judged by who looks busiest. As remote and hybrid work become more mainstream, performance strategies have to evolve to sustain engagement and productivity, and the annual review alone is no longer enough. The real shift is toward a continuous system that helps employees deliver against business objectives, with coaching, feedback, and stretch assignments built into the rhythm of work.

That matters inside monday.com because the company’s own operating model already assumes flexibility. Most teams spend three days a week together in the office to collaborate and connect, then work where they do their best work the rest of the time. In that kind of environment, managers cannot fall back on visibility as a proxy for contribution. They need clearer goals, cleaner workflows, and a more disciplined way to connect day-to-day work to results.

What SHRM says good performance management should track

The most useful part of SHRM’s guidance is not philosophical, it is operational. It argues that performance management should be a system that consistently aligns employee work with business objectives, rather than a once-a-year verdict. That system has to account for changing skills, especially when critical thinking, creative problem-solving, adaptable decision-making, and strategic analytical ability matter more than rote task completion.

For teams at monday.com, that is a familiar way of thinking. The company’s jobs pages emphasize measurable business outcomes, dashboards, forecasting rhythms, and cross-functional collaboration, which are all signs of an environment where execution is supposed to be visible in the work itself. If a manager wants to evaluate performance fairly, the questions should be: Did the employee move a business outcome? Did the team hit the agreed goal? Did the work reduce friction for another function?

How monday.com’s hybrid model changes the stakes

monday.com’s hybrid model makes outcome-based management more than a best practice. It is the only credible way to manage a team that is intentionally split between shared office time and flexible work time. When people are not sitting beside each other every day, presence says very little about impact, and assumptions start to fill the gap unless managers create a better system.

That system needs visible goals, workload clarity, and deadline discipline. Employees should know what success looks like before the quarter gets busy, not after it ends. Managers should be using regular check-ins to clarify priorities, remove ambiguity, and catch blockers early, because hybrid teams can drift into false confidence when work is spread across products, sales motions, support escalations, and internal operations.

The data managers actually need

The most credible performance conversations are built on evidence managers can inspect, not vibes. In a company like monday.com, that means looking at customer outcomes, cross-functional wins, process improvements, delivery against commitments, and the business effect of a project, not just activity signals like online status, message volume, or meeting attendance. Those signals can be useful for coordination, but they are a poor substitute for performance.

monday.com’s own scale underscores why the distinction matters. The company says more than 250,000 customers worldwide rely on its platform to unite cross-functional teams and deliver their best work. It reported 2025 revenue growth of 27%, fourth-quarter 2025 revenue of $333.9 million, and customers with more than $50,000 in annual recurring revenue made up 41% of total ARR in FY2025. In a business built around measurable execution at that scale, managers need systems that can show whether teams are actually moving the numbers that matter.

Where companies misuse activity as a stand-in for performance

The trap in hybrid management is obvious: if leaders cannot see the work, they start measuring the noise around it. That is when activity signals become a substitute for actual performance, and the result is usually unfair. People who are loud, always online, or constantly in meetings can look stronger than employees who are quietly shipping, solving, or unblocking others.

SHRM’s framework pushes against that instinct by putting the focus back on sustained productivity and business alignment. Coaching, feedback, and stretch assignments help managers see who is growing and who is just appearing busy. For monday.com teams, that means a stronger review process would reward someone who tightens a forecast, improves a workflow, or helps a product launch land cleanly, even if that person is not the most visible voice in the room.

What employees should document

The employee side of this is just as important. In a hybrid company, you need a record of impact that a manager can actually use when review season arrives. That means tracking the kinds of wins that connect your work to the business: customer outcomes, revenue influence, cross-functional execution, process improvements, and reduced confusion for the next team in the chain.

A practical performance record should include:

• goals you owned and the deadline you met
• blockers you removed for other teams
• customer or internal outcomes tied to your work
• measurable improvements in speed, quality, or revenue impact
• examples of feedback you acted on and how the work changed

That approach fits a company like monday.com, where the jobs themselves are often built around measurable outcomes and collaboration across functions. It also fits the company’s broader identity as a work operating system: the point is not to look busy, but to keep work moving in a way the business can actually measure.

The bigger lesson for monday.com

The clearest takeaway from SHRM’s guidance is that hybrid performance management has to be designed, not improvised. monday.com already operates with a three-days-in-office cadence, flexible work the rest of the week, and a product and hiring model centered on outcomes, dashboards, and collaboration. That makes it a useful case study for the broader workplace shift SHRM is describing.

In the end, the strongest managers will be the ones who can turn visibility into fairness. They will know how to track goals, workloads, deadlines, and delivery without confusing motion for impact. In hybrid work, that is the difference between a culture that measures people and a culture that actually manages performance.