Performance Managemen1 461
Performance Managemen1 461
Performance Managemen1 461
When we talk about the five dimensions of Human Resource Management (HRM), we
list down the following, namely,
Performance Management,
Career Management,
Recruitment & Selection,
Training & Development, and
Compensation & Benefits Management.
These five dimensions, though equally important, often fail to secure equal attention
from Human Resource (HR) managers. The facts that performance management is
not just an annual performance appraisal and training is not the only solution to
effective performance are forgotten by the HR managers and the management team.
As a result, successful organizations, happy with their existing success status, are
actually deprived of a potential growth that could have been achieved should they
have invested more attention to performance management than only performance
appraisal. For instance, the total HR performance of your company is worth $10,
which means your employees performance is resulting revenue worth $10. Among
this set of employees, some are excellent performers, some are good, some
moderate and some poor. This difference in performance level are due to the fact
that some are using 100% of their potentials, some working below their full potentials
and some working at zero or marginal potentials. The challenge of equalizing the
difference in performance level lies in an objective performance management
system.
Prior to explaining what performance management is, it is important to know what
performance management is not, which will help you gain an insight that what your
managers have assumed to be performance management may be just an annual
performance appraisal confined to an hours meeting with a performance appraisal
form to be filled up and signed by the employee and his supervisor.
What Performance Management Is Not:
-
Performance planning
Under individual goal setting, the supervisor and the employee will sit together to set
annual goals at the year end; the goals are to be achieved by the employee at
designated quarters of the following year.
Under performance planning, the supervisor and the employee, during the same goal
setting session, will plan on how to perform in order to achieve the goals most
effectively and efficiently.
In the middle of the following year, the supervisor will review the employees
progress and achievements, advise and coach for better performance, give
recognition and appreciate for achievements so far and make changes in the
performance plan, if required; the progress of employee shall tell the supervisor
whether or not the all preset goals can be achieved in the given year.
At the year end, the supervisor and the employee will sit together to appraise the
employees performance in the given year and the feedbacks will all be fed into
setting new goals and action plans for the following year.
You may find the performance management process pretty easy, however,
implementing each phase of it requires an understanding of how individual
performance of all employees can translate into total organizational performance. As
regard to this, managers need to ask themselves the following questions:
WHAT TO ASK
What does the company want to achieve in
WHAT TO DO
Gain insight into the corporate vision
business?
What are the functional objectives supporting
the strategy?
host a goal setting session between the supervisor and the employee
list down the major goals to be achieved in a year in line with functional
objectives
review goals to assess the feasibility of their accomplishments; make sure the
goals are SMARTER- Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Time-framed,
Extended & Rewarding
host a performance review session between the supervisor and the employee
revise performance plan (if needed) with new deadlines for goals
Performance Appraisal
-
chalk out Individual Development Plan outlining to fill skill gap, motivation &
aspiration gap and communication & cooperation gap
chalk out Reinforcement plan to reward/recognize for success and punish for
deliberate failure
The beauty of this Performance Management process is that it has three dimensions
only, which give three major outputs that can be fed into other four dimensions of
HRM and not to mention Performance Management also. The beauty is illustrated as
follows:
Performance
Performance
Assessment
Performance Evaluation
Measures
Preset Goals
Required competencies
Competency Evaluation
Potential Evaluation
of current role
Required competencies
of future role
Rating Scale
Outputs
5-points
5-points
Development Plan
5-points
Career Development
Plan
Competency mapping
Contemporary Issues
Human Resource Audit
o Objectives and benefits of Human Resource Auditing
o Human Resource Auditing Process
Human Resource Accounting
o Methods of Human Resource Accounting
Human Resource Information Systems
Outsourcing and Crowdsourcing
Employer Brand
Temping or Temporary Staffing
Attrition
Call centers
Exit interviews
Stress Management
Balanced scorecard
Competency mapping
Human Resource Benchmarking
Employee absenteeism
Competency approach to job depends on competency mapping. Competency Mapping
is a process to identify key competencies for an organization and/or a job and
incorporating those competencies throughout the various processes (i.e. job evaluation,
training, recruitment) of the organization. A competency is defined as a behavior (i.e.
communication, leadership) rather than a skill or ability.
DEFINITION:
According to Boyatzis(1982) A capacity that exists in a person that leads to behaviour
that meets the job demands within parameters of organizational environment, and that, in
turn brings about desired results
It is, however, worth remembering that there is a large body of academic research which
suggests that the assessment centre is probably one of the most valid predictors of
performance in a job and, if correctly structured, is probably one of the fairest and most
objective means of gathering information upon which a selection decision can be based.
From the candidates perspective it is important to be natural and to be oneself when
faced with an assessment centre, remembering always that you can only be assessed on
what you have done and what the assessors can observe. The International Personnel
Management Association (IPMA) has identified the following elements, essential for a
process to be considered as assessment center:
a) A job analysis of relevant behavior to determine attributes skills, etc. for effective job
performance and what should be evaluated by assessment center.
Techniques used must be validated to assess the dimensions of skills and abilities.
Multiple assessment techniques must be used.
Assessment techniques must include job related simulations.
Multiple assessors must be used for each assessed.
Assessors must be thoroughly trained.
Behavioral observations by assessors must be classified into some meaningful and
relevant categories of attributes, skills and abilities, etc.
Systematic procedures should be used to record observations.
Assessors must prepare a report.
All information thus generated must be integrated either by discussion or
application of statistical techniques.
Data thus generated can become extremely useful in identifying employees with potential
for growth. Following are some of the benefits of the assessment center:
It helps in identifying early the supervisory/ managerial potential and gives
sufficient lead time for training before the person occupies the new position.
It helps in identifying the training and development needs.
Assessors who are generally senior managers in the organization find the training
for assessor as a relevant experience to know their organization a little better.
The assessment center exercise provides an opportunity for the organization to
review its HRM policies.
Assessment Centre is a complex process and requires investment in time. It should
safeguard itself from misunderstandings and deviations in its implementation. For this,
the following concerns should be ensured:
Assessment Centre for diagnosis is often converted as Assessment Centre for
prediction of long range potential.
The assessors judgment may reflect the perception of reality and not the reality
itself.
One is not sure if the benefits outweigh the cost.
Assessment Centre comprises a number of exercises or simulations which have been
designed to replicate the tasks and demands of the job. These exercises or simulations
will have been designed in such a way that candidates can undertake them both singly
and together and they will be observed by assessors while they are doing the exercises.
The main types of exercises are presented below. Most organizations use a combination
of them to assess the strengths, weaknesses and potential of employees.
facilitating the employee to come out with his side of the story.
The objective of immediately recording the critical incidents is to improve the
supervisors ability as an observer and also to reduce the common tendency to rely on
recall and hence attendant distortions in the incidents. Thus, a balance-sheet for each
employee is generated which can be used at the end of the year to see how well the
employee has performed. Besides being objective a definite advantage of this technique
is that it identifies areas where counseling may be useful.
In real world of task performance, users are perhaps in the best position to recognize
critical incidents caused by usability problems and design flaws in the user interface.
Critical incident identification is arguably the single most important kind of information
associated with task performance in usability -oriented context. Following are the criteria
for a successful use of critical incident technique:
Data are centred around real critical incidents that occur during a
taskperformance.
Tasks are performed by real users.
Users are located in their normal working environment.
Data are captured in normal task situations, not contrived laboratory settings.
Users self report their own critical incidents after they have happened.
No direct interaction takes place between user and evaluator during the
description of the incident(s).
Quality data can be captured at low cost to the user.
Critical Incidents Technique is useful for obtaining in-depth data about a particular role or
set of tasks. It is extremely useful to obtain detailed feedback on a design option. It
involves the following three steps:
There are two kinds of approaches to gather information:
1) Unstructured approach: where the individual is asked to write down two good things
and two bad things that happened when one was carrying out an activity.
2) Moderate structured approach: where the individual is asked to respond to
following questions relating to what happened when he/she was carrying out an activity.
What lead up to the situation?
What was done that was especially effective or non- effective?
What was the result( outcome)?
Step 2: Content analysis: Second step consists of identifying the contents or themes
represented by the clusters of incidents and conducting retranslation exercises during
which the analyst or other respondents sort the incidents into content dimensions or
categories. These steps help to identify incidents that are judged to represent dimensions
of the behaviour being considered. This can be done using a simple spreadsheet. Every
item is entered as a separate incident to start with, and then each of the incidents is
compiled into categories. Category membership is marked as identical , quite similar and
could be similar. This continues until each item is assigned to a category on at least a
quite similar basis.Each category is then given a name and the number of the responses
in the category are counted. These are in turn converted into percentages (of total number
of responses) and a report is formulated.
Step 3: Creating feedback: It is important to consider that both positive and negative
feedback be provided. The poor features should be arranged in order of frequency, using
the number of responses per category. Same should be done with the good features. At
this point it is necessary to go back to the software and examine the circumstances that
led up to each category of critical incident. Identify what aspect of the interface was
responsible for the incident. Sometimes one finds that there is not one, but several aspects
of an interaction that lead to a critical incident; it is their conjunction together that makes
it critical and it would be an error to focus on one salient aspect.
Some of the advantages of critical incident technique are presented below:
Some of the human errors that are unconsciously committed can be traced and
rectified by these methods. For example, a case study on pilots obtained detailed
factual information about pilot error experiences in reading and interpreting
aircraft instruments from people not trained in the critical incident technique (i.e.,
eyewitness or the pilot who made the error)
Users with no background in software engineering or human computer
interaction, and with the barest minimum of training in critical incident
identification, can identify, report, and rate the severity level of their own critical
incidents. This result is important because successful use of the reported critical
incident method depends on the ability of typical users to recognise and report
critical incidents effectively.
Some of the disadvantages of critical incidents method are presented below:
It focuses on critical incidents therefore routine incidents will not be reported. It is
therefore poor as a tool for routine task analysis.
Respondents may still reply with stereotypes, not actual events. Using more
structure in the form improves this but not always.
Success of the user reported critical incident method depends on the ability of
typical end users to recognise and report critical incidents effectively, but there is
no reason to believe that all users have this ability naturally.
3) Interview Techniques Competency Mapping
Almost every organisation uses an interview in some shape or form, as part of
competency mapping. Enormous amounts of research have been conducted into
interviews and numerous books have been written on the subject. There are, however, a
few general guidelines, the observation of which should aid the use of an interview for
competency mapping.
The interview consists of interaction between interviewer and applicant. If handled
properly, it can be a powerful technique in achieving accurate information and getting
access to material otherwise unavailable. If the interview is not handled carefully, it can
be a source of bias, restricting or distorting the flow of communication.
Since the interview is one of the most commonly used personal contact methods, great
care has to be taken before, during and after the interview. Following steps are suggested:
Before the actual interviews begins, the critical areas in which questions will be
asked must be identified for judging ability and skills. It is advisable to write
down these critical areas, define them with examples, and form a scale to rate
responses. If there is more than one interviewer, some practice and mock
interviews will help calibrate variations in individual interviewers ratings.
The second step is to scrutinize the information provided to identify skills,
incidents and experiences in the career of the candidate, which may answer
questions raised around the critical areas. This procedure will make interviews
less removed from reality and the applicant will be more comfortable because the
discussion will focus on his experiences.
An interview is a face-to-face situation. The applicant is on guard and careful to
present the best face possible. At the same time he is tense, nervous and possibly
frightened. Therefore, during the interview, tact and sensitivity can be very useful.
The interviewer can get a better response if he creates a sense of ease and
informality and hence uncover clues to the interviewees motivation, attitudes,
feelings, temperament, etc., which are otherwise difficult to comprehend.
The fundamental step is establishing rapport, putting the interviewee at ease;
conveying the impression that the interview is a conversation between two
friends, and not a confrontation of employer and employee. One way to achieve
this is by initially asking questions not directly related to the job, that is, chatting
casually about the weather, journey and so on.
Once the interviewee is put at ease the interviewer starts asking questions, or
seeking information related to the job. Here again it is extremely important to lead
up to complex questions gradually. Asking a difficult, complex question in the
beginning can affect subsequent interaction, particularly if the interviewee is not
able to answer the question. Thus it is advisable for the pattern to follow the
simple-to-complex sequence.
Showing surprise or disapproval of speech, clothes, or answers to questions can
also inhibit the candidate. The interviewee is over-sensitive to such reactions.
Hence, an effort to try and understand the interviewees point of view and
orientation can go a long way in getting to know the applicant.
Leading questions should be avoided because they give the impression that the
interviewer is seeking certain kinds of answers. This may create a conflict in the
interviewee, if he has strong views on the subject. Nor should the interviewer
allow the interview to get out of hand. He should be alert and check the
interviewee if he tries to lead the discussion in areas where he feels extremely
competent, if it is likely to stray from relevant areas.
The interviewer should be prepared with precise questions, and not take too much
time in framing them.
Once this phase is over, the interviewers should discuss the interviewee, identify areas of
agreement and disagreement, and make a tentative decision about the candidate. It will be
helpful if, in addition to rating the applicant, interviewers made short notes on their
impression of candidates behavior responses; which can then be discussed later. If the
interview is to continue for many days, an evaluation of the days work, content of
questions and general pattern of response should be made for possible mid-course
correction.
4) Questionnaires
Questionnaires are written lists of questions that users fill out questionnaire and return.
You begin by formulating questions about your product based on the type of information
you want to know. The questionnaire sources below provide more information on
designing effective questions. This technique can be used at any stage of development,
depending on the questions that are asked in the questionnaire. Often, questionnaires are
used after products are shipped to assess customer satisfaction with the product. Such
questionnaires often identify usability issues that should have been caught in-house
before the product was released to the market.
a) Common Metric Questionnaire (CMQ): They examine some of the competencies to
work performance and have five sections: Background, Contacts with People, Decision
Making, Physical and Mechanical Activities, and Work Setting. The background section
asks 41 general questions about work requirements such as travel, seasonality, and license
requirements. The Contacts with People section asks 62 questions targeting level of
supervision, degree of internal and external contacts, and meeting requirements. The 80
Decision Making items in the CMQ focus on relevant occupational knowledge and skill,
language and sensory requirements, and managerial and business decision making. The
Physical and Mechanical Activities section contains 53 items about physical activities
and equipment, machinery, and tools. Work Setting contains 47 items that focus on
environmental conditions and other job characteristics. The CMQ is a relatively new
instrument.
b) Functional Job Analysis: The most recent version of Functional Job Analysis uses
seven scales to describe what workers do in jobs. These are: Things, Data, People,
Worker Instructions, Reasoning, Maths, and Language.
Each scale has several levels that are anchored with specific behavioral statements and
illustrative tasks and are used to collect job information.
c) Multipurpose Occupational System Analysis Inventory (MOSAIC): In this method
each job analysis inventory collects data from the office of personnel management system
through a variety of descriptors. Two major descriptors in each questionnaire are tasks
and competencies. Tasks are rated on importance and competencies are rated on several
scales including importance and requirements for performing the task. This is mostly
used for US government jobs.
d) Occupational Analysis Inventory: It contains 617 work elements. designed to yield
more specific job information while still capturing work requirements for virtually all
occupations. The major categories of items are five-fold: Information Received, Mental
Activities, Work Behavior, Work Goals, and Work Context. Respondents rate each job
element on one of four rating scales: part-of-job, extent, applicability, or a special scale
designed for the element. Afterwards , the matching is done between competencies and
work requirements.
e) Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ): It is a structured job analysis instrument to
measure job characteristics and relate them to human characteristics. It consists of 195
job elements that represent in a comprehensive manner the domain of human behavior
involved in work activities. These items fall into following five categories:
Information input (where and how the worker gets information),
Mental processes (reasoning and other processes that workers use),
Work output (physical activities and tools used on the job),
Relationships with other persons, and
Job context (the physical and social contexts of work).
f) Work Profiling System (WPS): It is designed to help employers accomplish human
resource functions. The competency approach is designed to yield reports targeted toward
various human resource functions such as individual development planning, employee
selection, and job description. There are three versions of the WPS tied to types of
occupations: managerial, service, and technical occupations. It contains a structured
questionaire which measures ability and personality attributes.
5) Psychometric Tests
Many organizations use some form of psychometric assessment as a part of their
selection process. For some people this is a prospect about which there is a natural and
understandable wariness of the unknown.
A psychometric test is a standardized objective measure of a sample of behavior. It is
standardized because the procedure of administering the test, the environment in which
the test is taken, and the method of calculating individual scores are uniformly applied. It
is objective because a good test measures the individual differences in an unbiased
scientific method without the interference of human factors. Most of these tests are time
bound and have a correct answer. A persons score is calculated on the basis of correct
answers. Most tests could be classified in two broad categories:
a) Aptitude Tests: They refer to the potentiality that a person has to profit from training.
It predicts how well a person would be able to perform after training and not what he has
done in the past. They are developed to identify individuals with special inclinations in
given abilities. Hence they cover more concrete, clearly defined or practical abilities like
mechanical aptitude, clinical aptitude and artistic aptitude etc.
b) Achievement Tests: These tests measure the level of proficiency that a person has
been able to achieve. They measure what a person has done. Most of these testsmeasure
such things as language usage, arithmetic computation and reasoning etc.