Performance Review Management Process
Business functions become complicated with each passing day leading to the emergence and implementation of new and broad business management concepts. Performance Management is one of these concepts. Universally, there is no single performance management model that has been agreed. Different experts provide different explanations of the concept. Managers of an organization together with the employees work cooperatively to formulate, oversee, and evaluate the work objectives as well as the overall contribution of every individual employee through the Performance Management Process.
Performance Management is not just a mere evaluation process. It is more than a yearly review of performance because objectives are set, the progress of workers is assessed, and ongoing coaching and feedback are provided continuously to make sure that employees have all that they need to meet their objectives and achieve their career goals. Corporations such a Google, Amazon, and Deloitte have adopted the performance management approach, which seems to be working better than the former annual reviews system. A practical and comprehensive performance management process has the following primary parts:
Involvement of the Manager: The Performance management process begins with the assessment of employees. The managers have the responsibility to set performance expectations, make reports, and coach as well as identifying outstanding work. This requires active participation in the process of performance management.
Goal Setting and Alignment: Research has shown that there are increased chances of higher performance where particular and challenging goals are set. An effective performance management process should include and support goal setting in a way that encourages teams to achieve more. After the goals have been set, employees should commit to working towards achieving the collective goals; thus, the goal alignment.
Learning and Development: To accomplish the set goals, employees ought to have the necessary knowledge and skills. Therefore, organizations that are interested in high performance should be ready to invest in the learning and development of their employees.
Feedback and Coaching: For employees to know an excellent job, they should be aware of their performance. Therefore, managers should give their employees information concerning their performance regularly. Employees should also be taught the evaluation of their performance so that they can set personal goals.
Ongoing Conversations: All the other parts of the process discussed above are brought together in this component. There is a need for organizations to develop a culture for ongoing conversations that is endless discussions about issues such as coaching, performance goals, and learning, among others.
Advantages of the Performance Management Process
Conversations Based on Performance: With performance management, managers are forced to interact with the staff members and discuss issues concerning performance. The interactions provide an opportunity for consistent coaching, which affects the behavior and development of employees.
Encouragement to Employees: Performance appraisals, which are part of the performance management, present an opportunity for an employee and all achievements to be celebrated. It is also at this part that employees are encouraged. Excellent performance is recognized, and the undesired behaviors are corrected gently.
Identification and Elimination of Under-performers: As much as the positive appraisal is encouraged, employees who do not perform to their level best are identified and in some cases eliminated after documentation. This is done through an active process of performance appraisal. After elimination, preparations are made for smooth transitions.
Documentation: All organizations should keep a record of the performance of each employee. The documentation is essential since it is physical evidence of the historical performance and development of the employee.
Disadvantages of the Performance Management Process
Consumption of Time: Managers have to spend at least an hour with each employee to write the performance appraisals as per the recommendations. Depending on the number of employees up for the evaluation, a lot of time is consumed by just writing the performance appraisals even for only one department.
Inconsistency of Messages: Managers are bound to be unsuccessful in sending consistent messages to employees if they do not keep notes or keep inaccurate employee records. Both positive and negative issues should be documented while still fresh in mind to avoid making mistakes.
Biases: Remaining unbiased in the PA process is complicated. It takes a very mature manager along with a comprehensively structured and objective means to avoid bias throughout the performance management process.
The success of any company relies mostly on the efficiency of the employees as well as their performance. Regular and sincere communication between employees and the managers results in employees gaining clarity and transparency on the goals and expectations of the management.
Besides, it plays a significant role in helping to overcome the challenges of rates of retention and engagement of employees. With performance management, employees enjoy substantial autonomy as the time spent by managers to micromanage employees lessens. Misunderstandings and confusion are reduced as well. By understanding that performance management helps employees to develop their work and gain control over the advancement of their careers, employees feel engaged and empowered.
Advantages to employees
Opportunity for Employee Growth: When employees are motivated, they value development, structure, and growth plan. A good manager who takes pride in witnessing the professional growth and development of an employee will implement an effective performance management system which can help the employee attain their full potential. Both the employee and the manager will have a positive experience as a result.
Development of Targeted Staff: The organization is responsible for preparing employees on their development journey for more responsibilities. A well-done performance management process can help in the identification of developmental opportunities of employees and can also be very useful in the succession planning process.
Rewarding of Staff: Employees are motivated and encouraged to upgrade their performance when the performance appraisal stipulates financial rewards such as the increase of pay or bonuses for exceptional performance by the employees.
Disadvantages to Employees
Discouragement of Employees: However, the experience with the process has to be pleasant for it to encourage employees potentially. In the documentation, the positive achievements of an employee have to be included as well, and the accomplishments of employees celebrated. Sometimes it is difficult to convince people to adopt a system that they are not used to due to the uncertainties. Therefore, the management of an organization must convince the employees to consider the implementation of the process.
An effective performance management process refines the engagement of employees through undertaking open communication. Its effectiveness is as a result of identification and definition of expectations, alignment of the tasks of the employees with the main objectives of the organization, Determination of goals and development of skills, the inclusion of the accomplishments and areas for potential improvement and the routinized review of results.
A clear performance management process is built on compatible and constructive feedback. Continuous feedback and goal setting make employees aware of the fact that they are valued. Consequently, their commitment increase and performance upgrades. Goal setting and alignment in the performance management system saves money and time. It is also appealing to millennials who view the feedback is more useful when received in real-time.
Performance Review Methods
A review of the performance of an employee is the least favorite job for most Human Resource managers because mostly they consume a lot of time. Following this perception, some trailblazing organizations such as Amazon have entirely abandoned their annual reviews. However, despite the abandonment of the formal review processes by some popular companies, some industries have continued with the processes and seem to keep practicing them until further notice. This is because regardless of the means of handling the process, there is a need for constructive feedback to motivate employees and push them to improve their performance at work.
The nature of the organization, the organizational culture, and the employees’ job description determine the means of tackling the performance review method. In some industries, traditional methods are no longer useful. The management, therefore, the administration has to choose and implement new and more convenient means of performance review. Below is a description of some of the methods for monitoring, evaluating, and criticizing the performance of employees.
Rating Scales
In this conventional method of performance review, the use of only one single set of criteria, which can be easily administered, for multiple workers is allowed. Employees are rated using the preferred set of standards and given a score showing the quality of their performance on different tasks, either in the form of a number, or a series of illustrative statements or a matrix. Compared to other review methods, rating scales are cumbersome to manage and susceptible to bias and subjectivity.
Managers are not able to make a clear distinction of levels of performance. They end up drifting upwards or consider average ratings when they are not sure of which score to give an employee. Therefore, the feedback has to be accompanied by supporting documentation of the scores to avoid the reflection of employee’s perception by the manager. It can also be affected by the recency effect- where humans tend to focus on events of the recent past. For this method to be useful documentation should be reserved through the entire period and the time between reviews should be kept shorter.
Self-Evaluation
In self-evaluation, employees are given time to undertake a complete performance evaluation on themselves. After that, managers have the opportunity to see the extent to which each employee understands his or her performance. Judging by the perception of an employee on their work skills, managers can adjust their language and responses; serving as a reasonable starting point for giving their feedback. In a nutshell, the managers can draw a complete picture that could not have been provided through simple observation alone.
This method acts as a significant tool for the reflection of both the manager and employees. It is easy to identify areas that require improvement and those that employees can develop. However, it is most effective when incorporated with another review method. In most cases, employees are more likely to exaggerate their accomplishments and hide some of their shortcomings. Another evaluation method should be combined with the self-evaluation method to come up with a more realistic and reliable conclusion concerning their level of performance.
360 Degree Review
In a 360 degree review, feedback is collected by managers from several sources, including, supervisors, direct reports, and colleagues working at the same company level. Unlike other methods, this method requires a certain level of management for it to be meaningful. It can give an elaborate picture of the performance of an employee perceived from any angle. It is crucial to ensure that the questions asked in this method are as job-related as possible to get specific answers and minimize the possibility of interference of the results by the personal feelings of coworkers. It is also recommendable that when making use of this method, managers should observe anonymity because people are more likely to respond honestly if they are assured of zero retaliation for any given critical response.
Any organization should consider using the 360-degree review method. It is a multi-source assessment in which many different people evaluate and criticize the performance of an employee. The performance is then rated based on specific criteria. This type of feedback is very useful during succession planning, resourcing, and appraisal and also in making decisions related to support pay, making the work of an organization easier and simplified. The focus of 360-degree feedback is primarily on the fundamental competencies showing the behavioral standard as well as interactions taking place within an organization.
There are very few disadvantages of this review method if it is implemented correctly. However, due to human errors, some limitations of this method, such as confusion throughout the entire organization when managers are not on board with the implementation and when some people give false responses may arise. Conclusively, the advantages of the 360-degree review outweigh the disadvantages. The disadvantages come up due to mistakes that can be avoided.