A lot of books, research papers have been written on Performance Management. Equally a lot of tools have been created to measure it. For every organization in any sector, this mantra is always included, talked about and extensively practiced.

Performance management is one of the most difficult process for a manager in any organization and yet it is the inevitable part of an organizational process. It is a sum total of recognizing, gauging, managing, training and developing the performance of the human resources in an organization. In a nutshell, it’s the process of creating an environment where people perform to the best of their ability in order to meet the company’s goals and they are evaluated periodically by the line managers or bosses.

 

Performance Review Systems

Several types of performance review systems are in common use. Each system has its benefits and shortcomings. Let’s understand each one of these. You could use any of these systems as per your suitability and as per the status of work and your team alignment.

• Ranking:

Ranking systems gradient all employees in a designated group from highest to lowest in order of performance. The main downside is that quantifies the differences in individual performance that is difficult and you could involve depicting much tapered discrepancies that could be pointless at times.

• Competency-based:

This type of system focuses on performance as measured against specified competencies (as opposed to specific tasks or behaviors) that are identified for each position.

• Management by objective:

Management by objectives (MBO) is a process through which goals are set collaboratively for the organization, various departments and each individual member. You can evaluated your team annually based on how well they have achieved the results specified by the goals. MBO is particularly applicable to jobs such as those of managers, project leaders and individual contributors that are non-routine in nature.

• Forced distribution:

The ratings of employees of a particular group are distributed along a bell curve and you allocate a certain percentage of the ratings within the group to each performance level on the scale. The actual distribution of employee performance may not resemble a bell curve and hence you may be forced to include some employees at either end of the scale when they would otherwise place them somewhere in the middle.

• 360-degree feedback:

This process collects information from the employee’s supervisor, colleagues and subordinates about an individual’s work-related behavior and its impact. These are also called multisource feedback or group review. You could use this form of appraisal for employee development purposes.

• Behaviorally anchored rating scale:

Behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARSs) attempt to assess employee behavior rather than specific characteristics. The appraisal tool generally contains a set of specific behavior that represent degrees of performance and are used as common reference points, called “anchors,” for rating employees on various job dimensions. Developing a BARS assessment tool is time-consuming and expensive because it is based on extensive job analysis and the collection of critical incidents for each specific job.

• Graphic rating scales:

Graphic rating scale (GRS) appraisals list several factors, including general behaviors and characteristics (e.g., attendance, dependability, quality of work, quantity of work and relationship with people) on which you rate an employee. The rating is usually based on a scale of three to five gradations (e.g., unsatisfactory, marginal, satisfactory, highly satisfactory and outstanding). This type of system allows you to determine the performance of an employee along a range. GRS tends to be one of the most frequently used forms of performance appraisal because of its simplicity

Irrespective of the type or format of the selected method to review an employee’s behavioral and work expectations, you must provide clear definitions of each level of performance at the very onset.

You must also provide examples of behaviors, skills, measurements and other performance factors to help them understand the bench mark and the criteria on which they will be evaluated.

By Fatema Abbas