Employee Performance Management - Coursework Example

Employee Performance Management When one thinks of a business, it starts with the investment of capital. The capital and the real assets that it takes for establishment and the gestation of the Return on Investment are the thoughts that follow the course. Speaking on assets in business, it can broadly be catagorised into tangible and the non-tangible ones. Just for the information till now, only the tangibles are in discussion. But the most crucial of the lot the intangibles like the brand vision, business values and the ethics, its philosophy, psychology are the inner- most factors that evaluate the long term performance of the business. Most interestingly, the lifeblood of any business that can be touched but has got a complex metabolism of loads of intangible factors is the Human Resource. They are the employees of the organisation that carry tasks of all the said business assets and organisational measures. So, to ponder upon and pay substantial heed of their performance is the sacrosanct of the management of any organisation. The paper will address this rattling vibration of business performance by analysing Employee Performance Management of organisations at the backdrop of the Tandem Mechanism, at a length that connects the employee – business performance. It is by the way also an issue of common sense that the performance of the employees will set the rating factor of efficiency of the work done in an organisation. Provided in a fully equipped organisational structure, a full proof work from an efficient employee will leave no room for any dissatisfaction; thus the work plan of the organisation stays intact and the deadline a lowest common denominator across the industry also does not get deviated. Starting from the shipment or the inception of the order to the delivery of it, the entire process is heavily depends upon the army of the organisation’s employees. Even at the age of system based operation and automation the human involvement still plays a significant roll, as after all it is the human only who sets the ship sail. In practicing the mentioned approach there rests the fusion action of many more sub practices that automatically get attached to the daily organisational practices. The Human Resource Management will infuse the spark of managing individuals and team as well, as that creates the fleet of the employees, meant for higher order of services in organisation. It establishes the understanding of what is to be achieved as goal and leading and developing the employee force means, it is achieved. In fact it is the strategy of any organisational activity in relation to human resource policies, culture, and style or communication system. But this nature of strategy is a variable one and can vary from concern to concern (ARMSTRONG, M. and BARON, A. 2004). The process is strategic and integrated. It takes issues under control which are broader in concept and longer in term. The above two natures help the process to link the various aspects of business, people management and individual and team. All total it encompasses the performance improvement, the development and the behavior management. From a streamlined angle, organisations monitor the performance with the help of managers. Managers ensure the people they manage and understand what is expected of them. Do they have the skill and ability to deliver on the expectation? To make these sure, managers need to oversee the organisational operation whether it is supporting the employees to meet the expectations. It is also about the behavior of the managers and the team members which are to be encouraged and should exhibit positivism. This process is a culture of sharing interrelationship and joint planning of the organisational goal. It also requires measurement of employee’s fact sheet and scoreboard in a holistic and continuous term. To tackle this complex process managers need tools of performance management. Performance and development review is one of its first tools where it considers the historical data of organisational performance, lay down developmental plans and due course of time it captures the reflection of the opportunity it is providing and the positive change it can bring in the organisation. Furthermore, it is discussed in meetings and reviews are made. Learning and Development is another tool where the employees are making aware of the current industrial trends practice. These are held in the training and company workshops. From product knowledge to company plans, everything is discussed in these class rooms. It includes the other development programmes too. Coaching plays a very typical role in educating the employees so to drive them efficiently for the oganisational objectives. After knowing the objectives, be that organisational, departmental or individual; a target can be defined which in turn can set the parameter of the work to be delivered and the time frame assigned. This whole gamut of operational and functional efficiency adds to the performance management. Competences and competencies are the major components of the performance management which includes the behavior working behind the competent performance. It is not only the behavior towards the job or the completion of the job but the behavior of the employee towards the job. Whether is technically competent or not it is a key performance issue. The right, trained attitude of the employee can help avoid the sluggishness to keep the right pace in order to deliver the promise as done the client. It is logical that to improve performance, it is important to know what the present performance is. And here the measurement factor comes to form a platform where the present and the future performance can be evaluated. Possibly the easiest way to measure is to detect the wrongs first which brings out the level of competencies, standard of performance and work output. As per the European scenario, the European Foundation of Quality Management indicates the measures like customer satisfaction, employee’s satisfaction and impact on society can be achieved through leadership; and the other economic measures, including the traditional financial measures. In fact measures depend on the type of organisations like public service organisations use different measures than that of the private counter part. Performance management is often related to the performance related pay (PRP). It is not so that every organisation will have this structure of pay, but reckoning all the multinational companies, they have a structure similar to this but christened differently. It can be in terms of cash or kind and it is commonly known as incentive and award. It is important to notice that performance and competence are important and is fair to reward employees their PRP in accordance to their performance, contribution and competence. It is further possible to shift the individual PRP to the team based pay, a kind of PRP for team. Companies have also introduce 360 degree feedback which is mainly used for self development of the employees and organisational development programme and is able to give a cumulative view of people instead of individual bias observation. With this holistic approach it is possible for the organisation to meet the performance management crisis, but in case due to something the process fails, disciplinary action is needed from company end. A bird’s eye view can give an appropriate organisational movement. Like any other profession, through discipline, qualification and regular assessment the status of management has been improved. A negative indicator shows that out of 4.5 million UK managers only 20% is equipped to perform their job. To overcome this kind of barrier qualifying the managers has become the key issue in the corporate culture. But more importantly it is the implication of the education that is needed to keep up the spirit of performance level among the employees through regular revision and assessment. All evidences pointing to improving opportunities for UK managers lead to a self-motivated environment, which can be partly created by the organisation. As discussed earlier, managers equipped with skill to inspire and motivate their staff will be beneficial to the job fulfilment as well as the improved performance of the organisation. And with a level of organisational support that reflects the importance of the managers role in the company; it is likely that employees will feel more valued and be better prepared to do their job. But as the spirit level of the human beings is said to be speculative, a routine practice of the whereabouts of employees’ statues quo in performance management is of utmost importance. And Performance appraisal is an integral part of performance management. Though it is not performance management in isolation, it is one of the most important tools that are used to manage performance. As it is most usually performed by line managers rather the Human Resource professionals, it is important that they understand their job profile and the role in performance management and how performance appraisal contributes to the overall objectives of performance management. The performance appraisal is essentially a platform for the employees and those concerned with their performance; most usually the line managers to get together to engage in a dialogue about the employee’s performance, development and the support required from the management. It should not be a one way vertical process or an opportunity for one person to ask questions and the other to reply only. It is a free flowing conversation in which a range of views are exchanged in length and breadth. Performance appraisals usually review past behavior or the track records thus provide an opportunity to reflect on past performance. But to be successful they should also be used as a basis for making development and improvement plans and reaching agreement about what should be done in the future. The performance appraisal is often the skeleton structure of performance management. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development performance management survey carried out in 2004 found that 65 per cent of organisations used individual annual appraisal, 27 per cent used twice-yearly appraisals and 10 percent used rolling appraisals. To cope up with the fast changing globalisation culture organisations need to increase rate of rolling appraisals (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2005). All managers expected to perform performance appraisal should have a sound training. Ideally this should not just be on the skills of performance appraisal, but the ‘how’ to do it; and also on the reasons for performance appraisal the ‘why’ we do it. Managers should understand how it fits into the wider strategic process of performance management and how the information and data generated contributes to understanding of the capacity of the human capital of the organisation to contribution to business strategy and value. They are required to comprehend the bigger picture of the business and it’s ‘Return on Investment’. A basic requirement is that managers should have the skills to carry out an effective appraisal. This means they ask the right questions, listen to actively and provide feedback. Along with the organisational initiative, the state has also stood by the changing policies of company human resource. Like the then Conservative Government transformed the nations economy in the 1980s under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by moving slow-moving, inefficient state-owned industries into the free-market sector, now her successor, John Major, is applying the same market-oriented ideology to the Government bureaucracy by making it compete with the private sector standard and meet the required performance objectives (Stevenson, 1995). Like many other countries, Britain has put a much emphasis on costs cutting by introducing outside concerns or factors for routine tasks. This effort was estimated to have saved 20 % of costs for the organisations involved. It also airs a warning to the civil servants that they could lose their jobs unless they find ways to cut the operating costs and upgrade the quality of their performance. But Britains human resource programme goes farther by clarifying what is expected of employees, requiring them to set and meet performance deadline, and by giving them more flexibility and organisational support, the rapid changes of globalisation and its escalating cost have not only forced the private tycoons but the government too, to save on expenses that holds the treasury of nation. But the critics have attacked the Government for spending too much in the drive to find more efficient ways of operating. The opposition Liberal Democrats calculated that the Government spent $1.36 billion last year hiring overseas consultants. The level was 17 % higher than the previous year, and very few Government departments would or could identify any resulting savings of this effort. But the experts say a slightly different version. "The U.K. has gone further in reinventing government than any country other than New Zealand," said David Osborne, who runs the Reinventing Government Network, a consulting concern based in St. Paul, Minn. "What they have in place in Britain is a very powerful framework." The reviews covered nearly $3.2 billion of Government work, and resulted in more than $1.8 billion in contracts going to the private sector. The Government calculated the overall savings at nearly $650 million, or about 20 %. Out of the 275 quality targets set by the 104 organisations taking part in the programme last year, 214 were met; according to Government figures. Of 137 financial targets, 109 were met. But critics argued that the statistics overstate the real savings, especially when retrenchments are taken into account. But the Government remains unturned by opponents of its performance management approach. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says, "I do not want to see a situation where we end up with two Australias: one part of the country enjoying boom time conditions while the rest of the country takes the pain of tougher financial circumstances." Yet the Rudd Governments workplace related policies are likely to byphercate the two Australia divisions that the Prime Minister should lament. A movement towards the future, covering a historical dynamic that seems to have been at work at least since the 1980s, if not earlier, drives labour policy. A movement towards postmodernity is not identified by theories but by a tremendous determination to promote a culture of individual enterprise. In Western society since the 1980s, it was the workplace; rather not the Parisian cafe nor the university lecture Dias that has been the key battlefield of postmodernity. Like Work Choices, Labours or Employee’s workplace related policies will be shaped by this historical force, which has been the Brainchild of Globalisation (Hearn, 2008). The paper has covered its length while discussing the advent of changes in Human Resource policies due to globalisation and its aftermath. Thus to support the context, certain case studies have been plotted for a practical and comprehensive comprehension. Case study: Gedas UK: Volkswagen Group: An IT service provider for the automotive industry Volkswagen. It offers advice, planning and support for customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) systems. Keeping mind the recruitment and retention, Gedas aims to attract and retain the best IT talent and one of its specific challenges is to convert IT contractors to payroll employed status. In the past year the Human Resource team has introduced initiatives including a flexible and remote working policy and a programme of e-learning. It also decided to offer employees a flexible benefits package (PRP) more suited to attracting IT workers. Gedas wanted to facelift the benefits programme to suit employees ranging from IT staff and web developers to those working in support functions such as finance and purchasing. Gedas implemented an online benefits delivery system in August 2004 to communicate to staff their benefits package and in June 2005 it launched the online flexible benefits programme to all UK employees. Benefits include childcare, dental insurance, cars, holiday, critical illness cover, a discounted shopping website and health screening. The bottom line is that the site received 910 logins during launch month, with 85% of employees making their flexible benefits choices. The most popular benefit was private medical insurance with 81% take-up. Additionally, out of 20 contractors working with Gedas, the flexible programme has encouraged five people to convert to full employment (Personnel Today, 2008). Thus an organisation should know how to motivate and make the employees love their work more, in case the organisation expects any Return on Investment. With the increasing change in work culture due to globalisation, the undue pressure has also taken the toll on the employee. It is the identity crisis, which has become the root cause of the increasing attrition rate. On the other hand the expanding market has also created a sudden flow of job generation, which has taken away the loyalty to stand by the company, for the company and to value being married with the company. This is the time when the personnel department of the organisation should come up with innovative planes where the employees can find back their pride, their worth in the company. As it is from both the ways of employers and employees; it is easy to procure but hard to retain. By the way, retention helps company to cut on the cost. Case Study: Post-modern HR system: In the face of continuous change, informal networks, emergent behavior and virtual organizations, strategic planning and overall executive level management may seem almost impossible. And they may be, given traditional approaches to the problem, which demand detailed, concrete solutions. The new approach, in the words of Steve Kerr, may be to concentrate on learning not to be surprised by being surprised. The concept with the most potential for assisting us with this shift appears to be the generation of new breed of organizational expertise and knowledge through an ongoing use of futures narratives and detailed scenario planning. Scenario planning is not a new concept, but its use as an integrative technology for tomorrow’s enterprise is something new in its approach.. Embracing such approaches will allow human resources representatives to learn in detail about the other information or knowledge concepts that have been discussed, then apply them to a set of alternate futures which human resources and its stakeholders can examine and against which they can test the possible responses. Information and now knowledge transfer were backroom functions because it did not have either the technology or the mental maps to envision their full application in the business enterprise of the 1980’s and 1990’s. In its brief time as leader rather than follower of technology, human resources and some of its related disciplines are creating an environment that demands new tools and techniques. If want is to stay in the vanguard of own business, the need to lead the way by defining the want of the new technology to be applied is needed (Stanbaugh, 1999) HR managers must demonstrate the ability to provide stimulating ideas and challenge decisions that do not have business value. To do this, they need to perform at the same intellectual level as their colleagues in an executive meeting. Most importantly, they need to wear a business MASK rather than a HR one otherwise they will be relegated to the traditional administrative or tactical (second-level) role that has bedeviled the human resource function for decades. Moreover the HR managers need to demonstrate to show their ability to add value. Broad understanding of the business is helping the human resource function to contribute to the overall direction of the company. Knowledge of how all activities needs to align, enabling the company to maximize the success of its strategic initiatives. Professionalism in investing in human capital and HR processes, allow HR to help guide employees and the organizations decision making. A unique perspective, allowing the HR function to become an ideas merchant so that people and the outcomes of organizational processes can be made into strategic advantages. They can be the Dream Merchant of the organisation (Price, 2008). Finally, we can consider Gubmans belief that: "HR needs to keep moving itself forward, toward the strategic partner role, by becoming better profit-and-loss business leaders. Be the ones to lead companies back into thinking externally, about customers and markets, and how to create unique value for them. What a surprising and powerful role that would be for HR leaders! Start measuring HR impacts on real business results, not HR activities. Instead of measuring time to hire, measure the people aspects of opening up a new market and the returns they generate." (Price, 2008) Good employees are the greatest assets for any organisation and to invest in them provides a definite return on investment, adding value to the company as a whole. And for this the paper dealt with these aspects through and through. It is also to be sum up here that there is great impact of the market shift and its nature on the employee force. This in turn had forced the HR structures of all the industries to shape up to avoid the consequence of being “shift out.” It even needed to retain my dear good employees from brand switching. Quit clearly today’s job market is a market in real sense where the candidates and even the experienced also take it as the brand statement. The moral sense has gone down up to a large extent. Grossly it can be the result of the market place and the response to stimuli for the employee’s action. The affect of postmodern mind set has its own share. People are not modern anymore as modernity has crossed its limit where the sophistic exist no more and the organisational philosophical law has been taken into hand to mould it as the search of ego satisfy. Reference 1. Armstrong, M. and BaroN, A. 2004. Managing performance: performance management in action. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Available at: http://www.cipd.co.uk/bookstore 2. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. 2005. Performance management. Survey report. London: CIPD. Available at: http://www.cipd.co.uk/surveys 3. Personnel today, 2008. Case study: Gedas UK. available at: http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2005/11/01/32305/case-study-gedas-uk.html (accessed on July 28, 2008) 4. Price, A. 2008. HR And That Elusive Strategic Role, available at: http://www.hrmguide.co.uk/strategic_hrm/elusive-strategy.htm (accessed on July 28, 2008) 5. Stambaugh, R.H. 1999. Post-Modern HR Systems, IHRIM Journal. Available at: http://www.hrchitect.com/articles/PMprt1.pdf (accessed on July 28, 2008) 6. Stevenson, R. W. 1995. Britain Is Streamlining Its Bureaucracy, Partly by Privatizing Some Work, The New York Times. Available at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE7DB153BF935A25757C0A963958260 (accessed on July 28, 2008) Read More