Why Performance Management Matters: Balancing Accountability and Employee Growth

HR Spot12
Performance Management System

Performance Management System is the process through which a work environment or system is created that enables the employees of an organization to perform to the best of their abilities and ensures that the organizational goals and objectives are consistently met. Performance Management involves the way managers evaluate workers, how workers evaluate their managers and fellow employees, and how individual employees evaluate themselves.

Reasons Behind Performance Management

There are three main reasons behind performance management:

Fixing Accountability for Performance

It can be done by identifying, promoting, and rewarding exceptional performers and managing poor performers.

Development of Workforce Abilities

This can be achieved by enhancing skills, emphasizing desired behaviors, and driving a growth mindset.

Engagement of Talent

Finally, through both of the above, enabling a sense of purpose and helping people find a sense of value in their work and fostering teamwork.

Nowadays, there is a lot of hype around performance management. Organizations are realizing the importance of a hybrid approach balancing accountability and development. Feedback needs to be ingrained in daily work and reviews for it to be continuous, consistent, and relevant. However, that does not lessen the importance of formal periodic reviews of performance. Feedback conversations should focus on performance and the future course of action needed for growth.

It is necessary to identify both exceptional and poor performers. It is also imperative to focus on team collaboration, innovation, and results. Lastly, companies need to have an effective reward system in place to acknowledge superior performers.

Despite all the above, there is no perfect performance management design or system. Each organization has to develop an approach attuned to its business conditions and organizational structures. Even within a company, there is a need for customization based on different talent pools, the nature of work, and the desirable employee behaviors. A performance management framework design needs to keep the employees and teams at the center and be designed around what really drives performance.
Dinesh Divekar
Dear HR Spot12, you have uploaded an article on PMS. You have given three reasons for which PMS should be established. Nevertheless, you have missed one important reason, which is the measurement of organizational performance. It can be added as the fourth one.

Measurement of individual performance

Measurement of individual performance is done in Performance Appraisal (PA). During the former days of personnel management, only PA was done and nothing else. However, the world has moved on, and PA has evolved into PMS. If we restrict our attention only to the three factors that you have mentioned, then how will PMS be different from PA?

Focus on organizational performance

In PMS, the focus should be on the measurement of the organization's performance. While doing so, we need to identify costs and ratios associated with the business and assign them to the HODs of the department, as applicable. If this is not done, I have found that many times people are being rewarded at the expense of the organization. This is far more pernicious.

Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar
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