While many L&D teams chase the next big thing, the most powerful tool for proving your value is already embedded in your organisation: performance management. It’s not just an HR process; it's your Trojan Horse for gaining buy-in, aligning with critical business goals, and showcasing undeniable impact.
As Emma Savin, Head of Talent Management at James Fisher and Sons plc, shared on HowNow’s L&D Disrupt podcast, this approach flips the script. She revealed how she uses performance management as a strategic lever: “It allows you to get access to the leadership team... it gives you a bit of an open door to go and have those conversations, understand the strategy, and understand what's going on.”
Here’s what stood out:
For Emma, performance management isn’t just about forms, reviews, or HR admin; it’s the ticket into boardroom conversations.
By tying performance conversations directly to business priorities, she’s able to:
As Emma puts it: “It allows you to get access to the leadership team… draw its connection to the business priorities… sit in meetings, understand the strategy, and understand what’s going on.”
Big cultural shifts don’t happen overnight. Emma’s approach? Pick one business group, throw everything at it, and build a case study.
That means clinics, skills training, guidance, and hands-on support. Once you’ve got a success story, it’s far easier to prove what works and roll it out wider.
Even if it only results in a couple of “meaty conversations” in year one, that’s still progress and proof that performance management can drive change.
Emma’s advice is ‘don’t go it alone’.
Instead, look for business leaders who share your vision, have seen “what good looks like” elsewhere, and are willing to be partners in change.
“If you try and go out on your own as HR, it’s really hard. It’s about finding the right business partners to work with… I am an enabler of that process.”
When those leaders become the face of change, performance management stops looking like an HR initiative and starts being owned by the business.
Transformation rarely runs in a straight line. Emma calls it the “wiggly journey”; balancing immediate business needs with longer-term L&D goals.
Sometimes that means packaging skills development as the solution to a leader’s more tactical challenge (like standardising performance conversations). The important thing is nudging people in the right direction, even if the route looks a little messy.
Performance management only sticks when leaders see the impact.
Emma uses data to showcase progress:
That evidence builds trust. Leaders begin to see that investing time in performance conversations delivers tangible results.
“You’re building trust with that leadership team that if they put that effort in, they do actually see results.”
At its core, Emma’s approach reframes performance management. It’s not just a compliance exercise or annual tick-box. The ‘how’ is the vehicle for L&D to deliver on its strategic why.
By starting small, partnering with the right leaders, and proving value with data, performance management becomes more than a process; it becomes the Trojan horse for lasting impact.
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