Essay on Performance Management Process

Through performance management, management and workers collaborate to organize, evaluate, and analyze an employee’s job objectives and contributions to the corporation. Performance management is a continual process of creating targets, measuring progress, and offering continuing feedback and coaching to ensure that workers fulfill their objectives and career goals. Armstrong and Baron (1998) consider it a never-ending process that prioritizes the future over the organization’s past. They stress the strategic and holistic character of the process, which aims to improve the efficacy of firms by enhancing the efficiency of the employees and by expanding the capacities of individuals and team contributors. The main goals of performance management are to communicate a common goal of the firm’s mission, define expectations of the firm, and ensure that the employees understand what high performance means and how to accomplish it. Also, it helps increase worker motivation and allows them to track their progress and determine what should be done to enhance overall performance. The process is more than just an annual performance review. The steps to the process can be broken down into four, including; planning, coaching, reviewing, and rewarding.

While planning, HR must describe the position in detail, including the short- and long-term goals, primary aims, detailed descriptions, and an explicit criterion for evaluating these goals and objectives. The goals should be detailed, quantifiable, attainable, and exact performance requirements should be established. Personnel has an opportunity to provide feedback on the information after managers have completed the defining step (Qureshi et al., 2010). They execute their jobs; therefore, they have a unique perspective on the skills, abilities, and goals that can best help the corporation accomplish its objectives. Both administration and the personnel agree on the role’s description, purpose, and aims. By making the first step of the process collaborative, the management set the tone for the rest of the process to be interactive. Personnel feels participated in goal setting, which is critical.

At the beginning of the process, it is critical to go over performance objectives with personnel, covering both results and behavior they are intended to accomplish during the next cycle. Behaviors are significant because they indicate how employees approach their work, support the team, mentor, and communicate to others (Pulakos, 2014). Some employees produce excellent results, but it is challenging to deal with, unfriendly, and demonstrate maladaptive work behaviors. Behavior is vital to consider in the work environment; such behaviors can be pretty disruptive. On the other hand, a worker can be interpersonally practical, kind, and exceedingly helpful but never achieve significant outcomes.

Coaching is a necessary process and should be done regularly. Employees are coached to solve performance challenges and problems to make an excellent contribution to the corporation. Monitoring performances do not include scrutinizing details of how employees do their allocated duties and activities. During couching, there is an examination of how far the employees have a cone in achieving their goals. Potential roadblocks to the staff’s performance goals and what might be done to overcome them are identified. Thoughts are made on how the team achieves its objectives (Qureshi et al., 2010). Adjustments to the work schedule are determined due to shifts in the corporation’s priorities or when staff is required to take on new duties. The management determines whether more assistance is necessary to help the employee in accomplishing their goals. Setting objectives for specific employees is an integral part of performance management and requires a successful performance evaluation. Thus, there is a need to track how far the employee has progressed towards their objectives. Also, it is important to note how they attained their goals. The idea is to measure frequently and apply the results to coaching and counseling.

A review or appraisal meeting is a chance to examine, analyze, and highlight the employee’s achievements during the appraisal period. Most appraisals include a self-examination component. Workers can analyze their performance in advance of the appraisal meeting by utilizing the performance plan and evaluation form as a guide. The procedure can aid in the identification of discrepancies between the employee’s self-perception and the manager’s perspectives and promote a more in-depth discussion of performance difficulties. To properly analyze employee performance, the manager should evaluate their performance management notes and other documentation collected during the year issues communicated to the employee before the assessment should be included in the record and meeting. Thus, ensuring that the management address performance problems while developing and assuring the employees that the performance evaluation meeting will be free of surprises (Qureshi et al., 2010). A successful review system should include all critical parts of the job, be devoid of contaminating influences, and quantify essential job attributes. It should be trustworthy and free of rating flaws. Equally important, review systems should be fair to everyone as they must meet the criteria of equality legislation.

Recognition and reward are the last steps in the process, and it helps employees stay motivated such as leadership opportunities, time-off, recognition, and new projects. Workers should be motivated by a good incentive and recognition system that aligns their objectives with the company. Staff remuneration and recognition for good performance must maximize competitiveness and yielding pay investment in such a framework. Given the high expense of reward programs, it is critical to have a well-thought-out strategy that reflects their goals and expectations. The significant functions of incentive programs are attracting and retaining qualified people, particularly in tight labor markets, driving workers to fulfill their job aims and impacting the culture, reinforcing and defining the structure like status and hierarchy, and encouraging entrepreneurship, flexibility, participation, and innovation. The end of the performance cycle provides the last opportunity for the employees and the management to give feedback on the process and input and feedback for the first stage for the next cycle.

Performance engagement aids in the development of a culture of support and trust among employees and the business. Workers are more engaged when they are aware that their efforts are recognized and appreciated. Staff who receive feedback from their employers once a year, for instance, will be detached and disengaged (Brown et al., 2018). Performance management can also be helpful when building employee development strategies, indicating that one is anticipating employee development requirements thus, boosting the overall performance.

An aging population has two significant HR impacts in terms of the management process. First, the management can ensure the delivery of knowledge held by the older workers before they retire; second, firms have to address how to maintain reliable levels of efficiency among older workers even as they remain in the firm. As the personnel that drive the knowledge-based economy ages, there seems to be a risk that critical expertise will be lost as the older workers go to retirement (Beardwell & Thompson, 2017). Therefore, knowledge transfer ensures a firm’s success, and knowledge is recognized as the most significant business resource. A performance management process is a deliberate approach for providing the appropriate information to the right individuals at the right time and a method for placing knowledge into practice to enhance corporation performance.

Understanding how diversity influences performance has become a preeminent problem for HRM as the workers continue to be more diversified and inclusive. The impact of diverse populations on workplace results has been investigated. Job satisfaction is favorably and strongly connected to diversity management. Well-managed diversity management leads to a more satisfied workforce. It implies that resources should be allocated to diversity management initiatives and training programs at the corporate level (Beardwell & Thompson, 2017). All personnel, especially supervisors, should consider diversity as a fundamental asset. At the sub-organizational level, the management interested in successful performance management should devote time and effort to comprehending the various views of staff groups. Acknowledging and handling diversity present in teams will lead to the success of the organization. Therefore, HR teams must consider diversity management as a primary instrument in the toolset of performance management. They must endeavor to provide diversity-related competencies and elevate levels of awareness and understanding throughout the company.

In conclusion, human resources are significant to a company’s success. Corporations would be unproductive if they did not have efficient personnel, and they would risk missing to carry out their stated objectives and goals. As a result, every company, as part of its strategy, implements appropriate processes of performance management, a system that aids in the commitment of staff members to the company’s goals. If personnel realize that their effort and devotion are being reviewed, they will be more motivated to continue working. To encourage the growth of remuneration or other forms of incentives like praise and appreciation, as an element related to assessment and plays a vital role in engaging workers. Thus, many multinational businesses use remuneration due to good performance in the company structure (Osmani & Ramolli), 2012). The performance review process is perceived as more formal and should be completed by the management. Still, in most instances, the evaluation of the people is done without assessing the actual capabilities and outcomes of staff performance. While the technique of remuneration is used, it all remains a matter of choice as the evaluation is variable depending on narrow political or personal interests as determined by the management or business leaders. In addition, a component that should be present in performance evaluations is a greater emphasis on the discovery and use of strategies for enhancing performance instead of their application with no beneficial consequences.

References

Beardwell, J., & Thompson, A. (2017). Human resource management: a contemporary approach. (8th ed.). Pearson.

Brown, T. C., O’Kane, P., Mazumdar, B., & McCracken, M. (2018). Performance Management: A Scoping Review of the Literature and an Agenda for Future Research. Human Resource Development Review, 18(1), 47–82. https://doi.org/10.1177/1534484318798533

Osmani, F., & Ramolli), G. M. (2012). Performance Management, Its Assessment and Importance. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 41, 434–441. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.04.052

Pulakos, E. (2014). Performance Management A roadmap for developing, implementing and evaluating performance management systems. https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/special-reports-and-expert-views/Documents/Performance-Management.pdf

Qureshi, J., Shahjehan, A., & Afsar, B. (2010). Performance management systems: A comparative analysis. African Journal of Business Management, 4(9), 1856–1862. https://academicjournals.org/journal/AJBM/article-full-text-pdf/0ECF0F532323.pdf