CERA's Performance: HRM System & Measurement Options Analysis

This report examines the effectiveness of performance measurement practices within CERA's Human Resource Management (HRM) system, focusing on how it affects overall organizational performance. The study identifies limitations in CERA's current individual performance measurement approach, which relies heavily on the Management by Objectives (MBO) method and hierarchical feedback. It proposes two alternative measurement approaches: a Quality approach, emphasizing 360-degree monitoring and the Kaizen process for continuous improvement, and a Result approach, using a periodical scoring system with attributes like financial benefit and customer relations. The report analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches, suggesting their implementation to enhance CERA's HRM practices and improve employee performance, satisfaction, and overall productivity. Desklib provides access to similar solved assignments and past papers for students.

Running head: OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
Options for Performance Measurement in CERA
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
Executive Summary
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of various performance
measurement practices within the HRM system. This paper is focused on the human resource
management of CERA that is affecting the overall organisational performance. The paper
examined the current performance measurement policies of employee relationship approach
within CERA. Then the possible way out from this current condition has been identified by
analysing two alternative ways of performance measurement system that can be implemented
in the HRM policies of the company.

2OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
Table of content
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................4
The limitations of CERA’s individual performance measurement:.......................................4
Recommend two alternative measurement approaches and indicative methods:..................7
Quality approach:...............................................................................................................7
Result approach:.................................................................................................................9
Conclusion:..............................................................................................................................11
References:...............................................................................................................................13

3OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
Introduction:
Performance measurement is a system of measuring the capabilities of the workforce
from both collective and individual perspective that can enable the company to improve the
overall productivity of by providing sufficient development and motivation. It is a specific
practice of human resource management system aligned with the overall business strategies
and optimisation (Davila, Epstein & Manzoni, 2012).
This paper has been discussed about the current performance measurement practices
of the company CERA. CERA or Civil Engineering Research Association is a consulting
company that guide their client about civil construction to eliminate the potential loss as the
result of the earthquake or other natural calamities for civil building, roads, bridges, airports
and other construction. Currently, the company is experiencing low productivity and
employee performance that needs a close observation of their current employment policies to
find the possible way of improvement.
This paper is focused on the human resource management of CERA that is affecting
the overall organisational performance. One of the effective human resource management
practices of CERA is performance measurement and rewarding system. The paper has
examined the current performance measurement policies of employee relationship approach
within CERA. Therefore, the possible way out from this current condition has been identified
by analysing to alternative ways of performance measurement system that can be
implemented in the HRM policies of the company. In this paper, the human resource
management of CERA has been suggested to use two additional performance measurement
systems within their HRM practices, namely Quality approach and Result recognition
approach. In order to recover from the current state of performance declination, the advantage

4OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
and disadvantages of these approaches are analysed to find out the correct implementation
process within the HRM system of CERA.
Discussion
The limitations of CERA’s individual performance measurement:
Performance measurement enables the management to introduce the company’s
objectives to the individual employee regarding their job role and operational department.
Performance measurement of any company should have a measurement and appraisal cycle.
CERA follows these measurement cycle through three-stage architecture namely monitoring,
planning and execution. In the planning section, the performance measurement of CERA has
two parallel platforms those are Training for low performers and appraisals for quality
performers. Although this systematic approach has some remarkable benefit on employee
performance and employee motivation, the initial stage of the identification process is not
satisfactory for the ground level employees (Schleifer, Sullivan & Murdough, 2014). The
performance measurement that is followed by the human resource management of CERA is
Management by Objective (MBO) approach.
The monitoring process is the primary and most important part of performance
measurement system. Every company has their own monitoring system that helps them to
observe the performance level of the employee irrespective of their departments and
designation. The proper identification from the analysis of the monitoring report is the most
significant duties of management of an organisation. Apart from that, there are two optional
monitoring system namely primary monitoring and secondary monitoring system. In primary
monitoring, the management observes the employees through performance score and

5OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
surveillance system. This approach is the more close monitoring system secondary
monitoring system. On the other hand secondary monitoring system based on the review
based approach where the management has to collect feedback about operational anomalies
from both leaders and subordinates (Davila, Epstein & Manzoni, 2014). The selection of
appropriate monitoring system depends on the situation of the business operation and the
collective performance of the workforce.
In current human resource practices and policies of CERA, the management
depends more on hierarchical feedback based performance identification. Although this
identification process consumes less time and very effective in the fast-paced organisational
environment, the demerits of this process can cause a severe collapse of operational
workforce productivity. In many cases, it has been found that leaders provide vague and
biased feedback about the subordinates or an individual. This problem not only makes the
employee irritated, it also makes the management to waste time, energy and money for
unnecessary training and development (Gamble & Beer, 2017). On the other hand the most
important dilemma of this situation it reduces the employee satisfaction level and employee
to employer relationship that can cause high employee turnover and low inbound manpower
from narrow labour market. Because of low employee satisfaction, the faulty performance
measurement system causes lower employer reputation in labour market.
Recently CERA has been failed in many cases because of their lack of employee
count and unsatisfactory workforce performance. The above discussed approach of Human
resource can be caused this type of discrepancy that has a strong impact on company's
profitability. The one sided feedback is the major limitation of this company which is causing
unexpected turnover rate as well as low performance level of existing employee.
Additionally, this condition also improvises the ethical aspect of the company which is under
the regulation of ethical work environment maintenance (Otheitis & Kunc, 2015). Similarly,

6OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
this anomaly in the primary section of recognition system has high negatively influenced the
second and third stapes of the performance measurement system in CERA. Therefore, the
traditional process of feedback collection from the immediate superior is not always
beneficial; however, it can cause faulty recognition system. It is one of the significant
disadvantages of management by objective approach for the performance measurement
system of CERA.
In the second stage of performance measurement system, the human resource
management of any company should focus on the planning for performance uplifting and
encouragement (Bourne et al., 2017). As per the previous discussion about recognition
process, there are other possibilities of wrong identification, where the management can have
a week performing employee recognised as a quality performer. In this situation, the
management of CERA usually treats the selected employee as other productive employee and
provides additional incentives and appraisal in term of promoting the designation of the
selected individual. As a result, inappropriate candidate for a designation can cause huge
disaster in work environment and productivity which has been suspected as a core cause of
the performance collapse of CERA. Similarly, the company can lose an appropriate leader
who could boost up the departmental performance for this corrupted recognition system.
Another limitation of the HRM practices of CERA is its tool selection for employee
appraisals, which has a significant influence on performance recognition system as well. The
company often use internal recruitment approach as part of performance measurement and
appraisal process. However, this process is not suitable for all situation, especially where a
particular employee has high performing ability and low leadership quality (Ferson & Mo,
2016). Therefore, transparent recognition is not the only solution for performance
development. On the other hand in a fast paced work environment, two parameters are used
to measure the performance level of an employee, namely quality measures and quantity

7OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
measure. In this current organisational structure, there is no different measurement process
used for performance measurement which can also cause some decrements of overall
productivity. However, the only solution of this faulty measurement system can be a proper
amendment to the conventional HRM practices of CERA.
Recommend two alternative measurement approaches and indicative methods:
From the previous discussion, it is clear that the human resource management of
CERA majorly follows the management by the objective approach where the monitoring is
conducted by collecting feedback from the immediate superior. However, some operational
alterations can change the whole scenario of performance declination. These alterations can
be implemented without changing the conventional model of the overall employee appraisal
through making some changes in measurement parameters and tools (Larimo, Nguyen & Ali,
2016). In spite of having their current performance measurement CERA can add two
additional performance management systems within their HRM practices, namely Quality
approach and Result recognition approach. These recommended performance measurement
approaches can help the basic performance measurement system of CARA along with their
recognition, appraisal and reward procedures.
Quality approach:
Quality approach process starts from 360 degree monitoring system where the
management does not judge the employee performance level only by the collected feedback
from the immediate superior. Rather, in this system management applies a close and direct
monitoring environment without involving any third party opinions (Järvinen & Karjaluoto,

8OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
2015). As a result, the management can have more clear and flawless idea about the
performance quality of an employee and his or her potentiality. In order to implement variety
of monitoring systems for 360 degree appraisal CERA can introduce some independent
surveillance system in their office premises and in other operational areas. 360 degree
monitoring is a multi-threaded observation technique where the management can
simultaneously execute multiple monitoring tools. Therefore, in this system, CERA can have
the variety of optional tools to choose the correct one for their organization.
Customizability is one of the major advantages of the Quality approach and 360
degree monitoring process. 360 degree monitoring based Quality approach can also allow
them to encourage the ground level employee (Sainaghi, Phillips & Zavarrone, 2017). Some
national and international companies often use a real time monitoring system by deploying a
monitoring group and collecting feedback from them. The duty of this monitoring group is to
monitor the employees when they are working and without any prior notice or alarming. This
practice is also helpful to analyse the faults in existing work structure by collecting feedback
from the ground level employees. In the Quality approach, the company not only collects the
feedbacks from supervisors, the feedbacks from ground level worker’s are also prioritised for
decision making process of individual performance measurement (Maruthappu et al., 2014).
The Quality Approach mainly focuses on the use of Kaizen process that can consistently
improve the work structure and productivity of the business organisation.
At the same time, 360 degree has some operational drawback regarding its recruitment of
special workforce for successful execution of monitoring. This performance measurement
system needs additional monitoring cost and workforce to get the most accurate information
about the existing work environment, work structure, employee performance and operational
dilemmas (Epstein, Verbeeten & Widener, 2016). All of this information is very helpful to
gauge the potentiality of any individual employee or a group of employees. To avoid the

9OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
additional expenditure for monitoring system CERA can depend more on online based
review. In this strategy, the organisation can allow the employees to convey about their
problems during the work in an online based employee forum. Then the organisation has to
put all the reviews, complains and opinions together to get the valuable information about a
particular employee and his or her current productivity and potentiality.
Result approach:
Result approach is another performance measurement approach which is
comparatively simple to implement than other performance measurement approaches. In
result approach, the management of the company uses a periodical scoring system by
including many performances measuring attributes in it (Dada, Stanoevska-Slabeva &
Gómez, 2013). The popular attributes are the financial benefit, customer relation, internal
operation, coordination, learning and growth. Just like a student's scorecard, the scoring of all
attributes is added in order to get the total efficiency of the employee of CERA and how
much they are beneficial for the future growth of the business. Sometimes, the management
of many organisation put another constraint with each attribute of this scorecard, which is
weight. In this strategy, the organisation sets individual weights to individual attributes as
per their influence on the overall performance of the employee (Bacon, 2012). In most of the
cases, financial benefit is weighted higher than coordination attribute.
The Result approach can be applied to various practices. One of the approaches is
known as Productivity Measurement and Evaluation System or ProMES. In this practice, all
the employees are motivated by their leader to perform with their best, which allow the
management to judge the potentiality of the employees and what could be the best technique
for training and develop their skills (Kasie & Belay, 2013). In this approach, the management

10OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
of any business organisation like CERA has to build a step by step workflow diagram. The
diagram contains four stages namely, objective analysis, planning scorecard format,
measuring employee performance and collecting feedback for the evaluation process.
Sometimes these attributes differ as per different departmental activities. Before planning the
scorecard format summarising the effectiveness of the selected attributes should be the major
concern of a performance measurement system.
The main strategy of this scorecard based approach is to convert the performance
measurement system into the performance stimulation. The employee motivation and
resultant productivity are highly depended on the tone of the score sheet and the judgement
process (Glykas, 2013). The selection process in this approach for CERA should be more
encouraging rather than discouraging the failed individual. As a secondary development
cycle, training is also a part of this approach, where any company can select the
comparatively weak employee who has more potentiality than others. These employees can
be highly beneficial for the company after receiving proper performance development and
training programs. Additionally, this performance measurement approach allows the
employer to adjust the pace of their performance measurement tools depending on their
current employee strength, employee, satisfaction, financial condition and potential changes
of CERA.
One of the essential disadvantages of this approach is this approach does not focus on
the broader Human Resource Management aspect. This approach is suitable for only
individual performance measurement and appraisal process (Torres, Gomes & Yasin, 2013).
However, this process is not very beneficial for gauging the performance and efficiency of a
group of employees or a department of CERA. Additionally, this performance management
practice only focused on the primary stakeholder that limits the long-term benefit. Despite
these disadvantages, this performance measurement approach also needs a strong evaluation

11OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
and feedback collection procedure in each complication of the measurement cycle. These
feedbacks are collected from the employees on whom the result measurement approach has
been implemented. CERA can use this approach as a secondary approach with their
conventional performance measurement approaches.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion, it can be said that performance measurement is a system
of measuring the capabilities of the workforce from both collective and individual perspective
that can enable the company to improve the overall productivity of by providing sufficient
development and motivation within the organisation named CERA. The possible way out
from their current declining condition can be identified by analysing two alternative ways of
performance measurement system that can be implemented in the HRM policies. The proper
identification from the analysis of the monitoring report is the most significant duties of
management of CERA. As per the above discussion, it is clear that the most important
dilemma of this situation it reduces the employee satisfaction level and employee to employer
relationship that can cause high employee turnover and low inbound manpower from narrow
labour market. Similarly, the traditional process of feedback collection from the immediate
superior is not always beneficial; however, it can cause faulty recognition system.
From the previous discussion, it is clear that the human resource management of
CERA majorly follows the management by the objective approach where the monitoring is
conducted. In spite of having their current performance measurement CERA can add two
additional performance management systems within their HRM practices, namely Quality
approach and Result recognition approach. Customizability is one of the major advantages of
the Quality approach with 360 degree monitoring process. On the other hand, the Result
approach can be applied to Productivity Measurement and Evaluation System or ProMES. In

12OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
Result approach, the management of the company uses a periodical scoring system by
including many performances measuring attributes in it. CERA can also use these approaches
as secondary approaches along with their conventional performance measurement
approaches.

13OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
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14OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
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15OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
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16OPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN CERA
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