Performance Management and Its System

Today’s modern workplace has evolved from the traditional way of rewarding its employees based on their performance to more modern ways of remunerating them based on their development and skills.

Performance management today has taken a more serious role in the corporate world by measuring and improving employees’ performance and productivity.

Since performance management came around in the 1960’s as a source of income justification, it was used to decide how much an employee should be paid according to his performance.

Rather than take annual reviews on employees performance, formal performance management brings to focus an industry broad initiative in order to understand and measure how employees are doing, how much effort they are putting and how well they are doing it.

Just like any kind of business has a means of reviewing its performance through for instance number of sales made, marketing leads, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), policy influence and social media impact so does formal performance management work.

Many organizations opt for anonymity in maintaining confidentiality of employees’ reviews as well as how these reviews will be used and the kind of follow up they should expect.

It’s a process of establishing a shared workforce understanding about what is to be achieved at an organization level.  In so doing, engaging different employees needs effective work plan to facilitate monitoring, evaluation and assessing progress. The evaluation process helps to provide feedback on ongoing coaching and training exercises to ensure employees’ meet their career goals and objectives.

In aligning the organization objectives with the employees agreed measures an organization will focus on its vision through skills development, competency requirements, development plans and delivery of results. The fundamental goal of performance management being promotion and improvement of employee effectiveness, specific jobs covering wide range of tasks must be outlined in order to ensure efficiency in execution and implementation of the set goals.

Emphasis is on improvement, learning and development in order to achieve the overall business strategy and to create a high performance workforce. This is aligned along with the organization culture and direction to enable all the parties involved to streamline their efforts and skills gained through development towards overall organization welfare.

Performance management began as a source of income justification and was used to determine employees wage based on performance. This was aimed at providing an accurate picture of each members’performance.  It included collaborative processes through which clear goals were established and the performance was reviewed based on a two way communication between the managers and the employees.

Performance management was used to drive behavior from the employees to get specific outcomes. The exclusive results obtained brought on board positive feedback for tasks well executed as well as constructive ideologies when certain improvement was necessary. Supporting administrative decision making regarding terminations, promotions, compensation and rewards is a prerequisite to monitoring performance management.  Performance management provides legal documentation to legal challenges which are related to vicarious liability.

In recent decades, the process of managing people has become more formalized and specialized.

Many of the old performance appraisal methods have been absorbed into the concept of performance management which aims to be a more extensive and comprehensive process of management.

Performance management system looks to improve workplace performance and scale it to a higher level where managers don’t have to liaise with employees regarding work done.

This system ensures that employees are accountable in their work and managers don’t have to supervise them.  A formal performance management system ensures that each employee is motivated to improve his/her skills, competencies, development and delivery of results.

Old performance management systems like rewarding employees with financial rewards and recognition has proved disastrous because employees who concentrate on developing and harnessing their skills at the workplace are not fully regarded and rewarded hence the introduction of a new management system that looked into each and every employee’s work record to quantify organizations’ results.

A performance management system is incorporated into a company’s Human Resource Department for its effective working and planning.  By undertaking effective supervision, comprehensive employee orientation and training, a positive and supportive work environment and well-designed jobs and description in an organization will oversee its vision come to effect.

The future of performance management system will be a revolution in the workplace because it will serve business needs and organizations will eventually adopt the system for effective work output. The performance management system will promote growth of individual employees and the organization at large.