PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Performance management is a process by which managers and employees work together to plan, review and monitor an employee's work objectives and overall contribution to the organization. It is the process of creating a work environment or setting in which people are setting to perform to the best of their abilities. Performance management is a well-constructed work system that begins when a job is specified as needed.

 Source: www.clearpointstrategy.com

Performance management is ongoing process, it involves a process of setting goals and objectives, observing performance, and giving and receiving ongoing coaching and feedback. Performance management requires that managers ensure that employees’ activities and outputs are aligning with the organization’s goals and, consequently, help the organization gain a competitive advantage. Performance management therefore creates a direct link between employee performance and organizational goals and makes the employees’ contribution to the organization explicit. (Aguinis, 2013)

Performance management is a vital feature of organizational effectiveness, because it is the key process through which work is accomplished, it is considered as a weakness of managing human capital and should therefore be a top priority of managers. (Gruman and Saks, 2011)

Performance management is concerned about aligning an individual to organizational objectives and encouraging individuals to sustain corporate core values, empowering expectations to be characterized and concurred in terms of role responsibilities, accountabilities, skills and practices. It is also more concerned on providing opportunities for individuals to recognize their objectives and develop their competencies and skills.

Performance management assumed that performance appraisal is the same thing as performance management. Performance appraisals can be characterized as the formal assessment and rating of individuals by their managers at or after a review meeting. It has been discredited because of the fact that too often it has been operated as a top-down and to a great extent bureaucratic system possessed by the HR department rather than by line managers. (Armstrong, 2009)

INTERNATIONAL PRACTICES

Ball Corporation supplies metal packaging to customers worldwide, they concluded that it could improve plant performance by instituting an improved process for setting goals and for ensuring that the plants leaders’ mind-sets and behaviors were in sync with these goals. Toyota Motors, Camry plant supervisors’ don’t sit with individual employees to fill out forms and appraise them. Instead, teams of employees monitor their own results. TRW supplies automotive steering, braking, and safety and electronic equipment to customers worldwide. Top management decided it needed a new company-wide performance management system to help bring what TRWs employees were doing into synch with the firms new strategic goals. (Dessler, 2012)

CONCLUSION

Performance management is a means of getting better results by providing the means for individuals to perform well within an agreed outline of planned goals, standards and skill requirements. Advantages of performance management to organizations on the assumption that individuals will probably react positively and will probably work to enhance their performance and develop their abilities in the event that they share in the processes of defining expectations and reviewing performance and competency against those expectations, and are engaged in creating and implementing plans for developing their competences and skills. (Armstrong and Taylor, 2014)

REFERENCES

Aguinis, H. (2011) Performance Management, 3^rd edn. Boston: Pearson.

Armstrong, M. (2009) Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 11^th edn. London and Philadelphia: Kogan Page.

Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S. (2014) Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management, 13^th edn. London: Kogan Page.

Dessler, G. (2014) Human Resource Management, 13^th edn. Boston: Pearson.

Gruman, J. A. and Saks, M. (2011) ‘Performance Management and Employee Engagement’, Human Resource Management Review, 21, pp. 1-11.