Traditional Performance Management Systems: Why Organizations Should Follow Suit

Running head: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Performance Management
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1PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Organisations are basically built for serving a specific purpose and the employees
working at all the levels of the organisation are entrusted for living that purpose. Effective
Performance Management System is very essential for translating the efforts of these
employees into performance (Katzenbach and Smith 2015). The way of assessing the
performance has always been an important and one of the very sensitive topics ever since the
organisations have come into existence. For several years, the performance assessments and
the annual appraisals were driven by the traditional performance management systems such
as Bell Curve Methodology. Placing an organisation into the layers of the top and able talents
and the bottom performers was one of the most onerous tasks for any company which was
taking up the assessment process of the performance for closuring via Bell Curve
Methodology (Venkatachalam and Padmanabhan 2017). And then, Adobe, Accenture and
Deloitte decided to abandon the use of this traditional performance management systems with
Agile system. They decided to bury this entire process and this is indeed an effort to
encourage performance. This simply means that many organisations would follow suit and
gradually, the traditional system would become old and inactive. This is really a good news
for several reasons. This essay shall elaborate on explaining why the other organisations
should follow suit in place of traditional performance management systems.
Traditional performance management system is considered to be insufficient for
assessing the contribution of the employees (Podgorski 2015). The main focus of this system
is to set up a wide range of processes for measuring the performance of the employees over
the entire year. Again, this process end up in having an unanticipated impact of the managers
focusing on the weaknesses of the employees. It is very tough to distinguish the performance,
instead of the truly poor performers and the top achievers. As it is a long process, the average
performers cannot be identified early. Therefore, the once-a-year performance review system
of the employees, with little or absolutely no feedback gives no scope for the development to

2PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
the managers and the employees. It is very necessary to have a dynamic performance
management practise which can adapt and involve as per the changing environment.
Therefore, the Agile performance management system was introduced. Agile performance
management is a continuous, collaborative feedback and at the same time, it is a development
practice which is greatly replacing this traditional performance management system (Bai et
al. 2018). Moreover, this system is focused on a continuous growth and development and it
encourages two way communication. This system has three main aspects namely, the regular
feedback, coaching and the communication. All these aspects helps in bridging the gap in
between the performance evaluation and the goal setting.
One of the best example of Traditional performance management systems is of Bell
Curve Methodology. Grading of the employee performances on a bell curve means that in an
organisation, all the performance of the employees is distributed along a bell curve. Using
bell curve methodology for categorising the employees means dividing them into three
different categories- the top performers, the medium performers and the low performers or
the poor performers. The Human Resource department sings paeans regarding the
effectiveness by using the bell curve for identifying the calibre of the people working in an
organisation (Ewenstein, Hancock and Komm 2016). The reason behind this that most of the
HR gives is that using this method makes it easy for them to reward the top performers of the
organisation, goading the average one for putting in extra efforts while identifying the low
performers in order to give a different action plan to them for improving their organisational
performance. It is to mention that whether one should follow the vogue depends on the
purpose that he or she is expecting from their performance management system to serve. Bell
Curve Methodology was long been considered as a very effective tool for promoting
competition by comparing. With the same, it was also very effective in looking at the
misalignment on an annual basis and finally bidding them farewell. Furthermore, it is also to

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mention in this context that the Bell Curve system has not resonated by most of the
individuals as a very positive process with the organisational managers (Evans and Tourish
2017). There are many stories and instances that proves that how the managers have not taken
the performance compartmentalisation well in their tread. There is a propensity for the
company managers for feeling their assessments get lost in the process of translation as the
people need to get slotted.
Furthermore, as per Moon, Scullen and Latham (2016), traditional performance
system helps in the differentiation of the performance in between the high and the average
performers of the organisation. It makes it easy for the HR professionals to reward the top
performers of the organisation and motivate them, goading the average one for putting in
extra efforts while identifying the low performers in order to give a different action plan to
them for improving their organisational performance. It not only helps them in retaining the
top talents but at the same time, it also helps in building the succession pipelines.
Furthermore, this system also helps in managing the strict and the lenient rating of the
organisational managers (Burt 2017). It perhaps is the only process that can be used by the
companies for managing the manager’s ratings’ strictness and leniency. The lenient scores
generally means a larger cluster of the employees in the group of top performers while the
strict scores means that there would be more number of employees in the group of poor
performers. Such an unbalanced scoring might be demotivating the high performers and
retaining the mediocre ones. However, the average of the organisational managers tends to
rate the employees on the basis of lenient scales. Finally, one of the other advantages
identified by most of the HR professionals is that by digging deeper into the career plans,
strengths and competencies of the employees and by placing them into the positions that map
better with their capabilities, the Human Resource manager could play an important part in
the development of those employees (Venkatachalam and Padmanabhan 2017). Companies