Performance Management Today What We

Performance Management

Today what we are witnessing is a performance focused corporate culture and clearly performance focused organizations are the most successful. Therefore the system of performance appraisal, developmental feedback and the entire performance management process assume great significance from the human resource perspective. Using well-developed job criteria as the basis for assessment of standards is of utmost importance. A good performance management system would consider both the objective as well the subjective factors into consideration in the evaluation process. Performance measures must be carefully chosen depending on the nature of the job so that deficient or irrelevant aspects do not mar accurate employee assessment. It is also equally important that a balanced approach is adhered to in quantifying performance measures since over emphasis of any one criterion, at the exclusion of other factors, might create an unethical atmosphere. The growing number of corporate scandals (Enron, WorldCom, etc.) that have surfaced in recent times clearly show that employees and executives may be motivated to resort to unfair and unethical practices to satisfy over emphasized performance criteria. That is to say that it is essential that both quantitative and qualitative data are considered in the appraisal process. Also, performance management process needs to be adapted to the different cultural settings. (In context of multinational corporations)

Performance appraisal is regularly conducted by organizations to evaluate employee performance in order that areas of improvement can be identified and that employee performances suitably reward. While some organizations use a single performance appraisal system for all the different categories of employees others use different methods for different groups. In a good performance management system the manager plays a vital role. He is responsible to not only identify the employee strengths and weaknesses but also to acknowledge good performance and to provide developmental suggestions. The later part is very important, as it does no good to just spot the deficiency of an employee without providing positive suggestions for improvement. The employees for their part must be encouraged to provide their valuable input during every stage of the process. For example, some organizations even collect feedback from employees to evaluate the performance of their superiors. Thus, an appraisal denotes not just the supervisors assessing their subordinates but also rating from team members, rating by employees of their superiors, review by the HR department etc. Once such active and collaborative participation is achieved then the performance appraisal process attains its chosen objective, that of increasing the overall employee performance.