Contemporary performance management practice in global context

Performance management is the continuous process of improving performance by setting goals that are aligned to the strategic goals of the organization, planning performance to achieve the goals, reviewing progress, and developing the knowledge, skills and abilities of people (Armstrong, 2016).

Most employees want direction, freedom to get their work done, and encouragement not control.  The solution is to make it a collaborative development system in two ways. First, the entire performance management process – coaching, counseling, feedback, tracking, recognition, and encourage development. Second, when managers and team members ask what they need to be able to do bigger and better things, they move to strategic development (Egan, 1995).

A number of companies have recently introduced radical changes to their performance management systems. One company that has pioneered in transforming their performance management into a continuous feedback process is Cargill , they abolished its traditional approach and implemented a new process, called Everyday Performance Management, The new process was designed to focus directly on driving key behavior’s that matter every day.

TriFinance believes that employees grow when they get the freedom to make their own choices, combined with mentoring and coaching. They refer to their employees as ‘Me Inc’-ers, which stands for ‘Me Incorporated’. This means that every employee is considered as a small company on their own who has plans to develop their career and prepare for the future.

Facebook strongly believes that the manager trumps the brand. In 2011, when Facebook was growing quickly, the company noticed that the gap between their managers that were doing a great job and those who weren’t was increasing. Hence, developing great managers who supported the company culture and values became a priority for Facebook. To this end, they put together a programme called ‘manager effectiveness’, which has become a way of working within Facebook.

In 2008, Google launched its Project Oxygen in order to optimize its management and have it organically fit within Google’s unique culture .Google found that the manager’s quality was the single best predictor of whether employees would stay or leave .Every 6 months, Google surveys teams anonymously to see how their managers are doing. As a result, each manager gets a report with the percentages of favorable answers, measured against their last report and the global average.

In 2009, SodaStream, an Israeli multi-national corporation, introduced ‘strength-based employee evaluations’ to make their Performance Management more meaningful and useful,based on the feed forward interview (FFI). The FFI protocol is intended to enhance employee performance and improve collaboration between employees and managers by focusing on the positive aspects of employee experiences, instead of focusing on what goes wrong.

Conclusion:

HR has an important role in redesigning performance management systems. However, it should not be about HR developing yet another sophisticated process to add or replace existing processes17. Holbeche, L. (2015). Rather than being owned by HR, the process should be owned by those directly involved (employees and managers). This entails that HR needs to start an open dialogue with employees and managers to determine the necessary components of an effective performance management system.

References:

Armstrong, M., (2016).Handbook of Management and Leadership for HR: Developing effective people skills for better leadership and management. 4^th ed. Philadelphia: Kogan Page.

Egan, G., (1995) .A clear path to peak performance, People Management, 18 May, pp 34–37.

Holbeche, L.,(2015). The Agile Organization.  How to build an innovative, sustainable and resilient business. Kogan Page Publishers.

Dewettinck,K & Blondia, H .,(2016). Trends in Performance Management, Report co-created by Hudson and Vlerick Business School Centre for Excellence in Strategic Talent Management.