Goes Beyond Basic Evaluations

Discussion response #1 follow up question

RE:” Retraining the general manager on how to efficiently conduct performance evaluations and reiterating the significance of doing so correctly and successfully could have filled in the holes left by the absence of such training.”

Great points about retraining. What might you include in such management training on alignment?

Discussion #1

It is important for performance management systems to be congruent with the organization’s mission, vision, culture, and strategies because businesses tend to experience greater returns when an effective system is implemented. Aligning the performance management system with the organization’s mission and goals ensures that everyone, the company, managers, and employees, are all on the same page when it comes to expectations. For example, reviewing job descriptions, making sure they support the organization’s vision and mission, confirms to the employee what their work entails, how it should be done and what results are expected of them. This helps to support the company’s strategic goal. Another benefit of aligning the two is that managers are able to monitor, encourage and/or correct an employee’s progress towards an agreed upon goal.

One major gap I noticed in my organization’s system alignment is that it isn’t a continuous process. My organization only the traditional, once a year, employee progress report. This puts a strain on communication between employee and employer. Employee’s work performances don’t really improve because it is not being monitored effectively, missing opportunities for motivation or correction. This gap can be closed by conducted periodic check ins with each employee, throughout the year, to ensure they are meeting short term goals and their work ethic continues to align with that of the organization’s.

Discussion #2

Performance management (PM) is the process of ensuring that a set of activities and outputs meets an organization’s goals effectively and efficiently. (Aguinis, 2019).  Managing performance is essential to workplace success, but many teams need a strategy that goes beyond basic evaluations. Performance management incorporates a complete system of goals, reflections, and rewards that encourages team members to do their best work. The performance management system is critical for any organization to ensure quality and to ensure the company’s goals are met. Therefore, it is critical for the performance management system to be congruent with the organization’s mission, vision, culture, and strategies. Specifically, the performance management system is a system that is created from top-down and is closely tied to the company’s mission, vision, and culture (Arnold and Wade, 2015).   As a result, measuring individual performance will be based on the employees’ daily activities that support the organizational strategic plan. Keeping this in mind, the corporate vision, mission, goal, and strategies will directly align with the goals of the company as a whole and the goals of each individual.  

Previously, I worked for an organization in which the alignment of its systems to its overall performance was poor. Despite being explicitly stated in the performance management system, some steps were often skipped when it came to managing performance. Communication and the performance management system were affected as a result of this. In the event of a bad review, a plan for improving the person’s performance was to be in place at the time of the review. In reality, the general manager of the company often delayed that step or skipped it altogether. In my opinion, a performance management system should have been developed specifically for the management team to increase the effectiveness of the review process. It would have been possible to close the gaps if the general manager had been retrained on how to conduct performance reviews efficiently and emphasized the importance of performing them accurately and effectively.    I would improve the organization’s performance management system in many ways if I were HR Director. As a first step, I would retrain the managers who are on the front line with the employees every day. To train them on how to effectively give a performance review and how to reward or improve, I would conduct a seminar. To prevent surprises when it comes time for a performance review, I would meet with the managers biweekly for updates on everyone’s performance.