HC2101 Performance Management for HR Essay - Holmes Institute

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of performance management within the context of Human Resource Management (HRM). It begins by defining performance management and highlighting its significance in aligning strategic goals, driving employee development, fostering employee engagement, encouraging feedback, and improving an organization's bottom line. The essay then delves into the key components of an effective performance management system, including motivation, organizational culture, and feedback mechanisms. It also outlines the performance management process, which encompasses planning, execution, assessment, review, and renewal. Furthermore, the essay explores the factors that can be discussed in performance talks and emphasizes the importance of timing in the performance appraisal process. The conclusion reflects on the evolution of performance management practices and the adoption of talent identification, organizational objectives, and consistent monitoring as means of improvement.

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Performance Management for Human Resource
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Performance management is the method or technique through which organizations employ to
determine and ameliorate the performance of its staff. Most organizations use performance
management to keep track of its performance through different levels which include;
organizational level, a functional or departmental level, and a personal level (Bhattacharya,
2011).
There are 5 reasons as to why performance management is important in business and ways
through which it can improve the entire business performance and they include the following;
1. aligns strategic goals
An effective performance management system clarifies to the employees what the organization
aims to get that is its strategic objectives and goals. This helps them to understand and
concentrate on more significant activities that are of benefit to the business.
2. Drives employee development
A continuous performance management system ensures that the staff is competent and
continuously improves its skills by reviewing factors that may hinder effective organizational
performance and provide resources such as training.
3. engages your employees
Involving employees in various business activities makes them feel in charge of their careers,
and responsible for their own development. This makes them feel satisfied with their jobs, hence
the organization is able to maintain a competent and productive workforce that contribute to the
overall success of the business.

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4. Encourages performance conversations, feedback, and recognition
When workers are confident to converse with their employers on the challenges they are facing,
they suggest effective and most probable measure that can be taken to ease the situation. This
helps to save time and ensures a friendly working environment. It also helps the employees to get
the feedback of what they have been doing get recognized for it, and identify the areas that need
to be rectified or improved.
5. Improves your bottom line
Bottom line improvement is achieved through reduction of costs which is incurred in the
business due to ignorance and incompetence of the workforce. These costs can be reduced
through proper training, employee engagement and participation to increase job satisfaction.

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Some of the components of an effective management system include:
Motivation
A performance management system is purposed to not only make the job description clear to its
workers but also to assist in sharpening their skills, often via on-the-job training. It is through
training procedures that the organization can easily press the motivation button of their staff.
Before when in the process hiring, it is ideal to identify the workforce that will enfold challenges,
be determined towards attaining both personal and organizational objectives and are comfortable
hardworking team players. Workers with such aspects will be motivated in taking up
organizational success challenges (Armstrong, 2016).
Culture
Organizational culture is how things are usually done in a company. When an organization sets
transparent grounds of what employees should do or achieve in their line of work, it should also
set procedures or steps of how and when they are supposed to do those activities in their jobs. In
most organizations these ways include being honest and communicating on time, being active on
projects, being easy to work with and friendly, giving out new ideas, or other ways of acting that
will take the organization a step further (Armstrong & Chapman, 2011).
Feedback
Feedback is another key element of enhancing effectiveness on performance management. An
updated concept of ‘feed forward’ rather than that of feedback has been recommended. Whereby
Feed forward concentrates on the future (the past cannot be changed) and gives employees a
chance to learn how to do things in a better or the correct manner rather than spending too much
time on what they did not do right in the past. It is also an efficient and anxiety relieving method
as workers do have to justify what and why they did not do something correctly (Durai, 2010).

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Holding a Performance Conversation
Some of the factors that can be discussed in performance talks with all the workers involve the
following topics; career development and dimension, contributions made to the organization,
team engagements, creative ideas and developments, and any other observation made in the line
of duty for some time. Topics may also be developed from the strategic objectives of the
organization or from organizations' cultural statements and values. Firsthand information is
gathered through holding performance conversations because the organization can keep record of
what the workers are doing in case there are changes, what they have succeeded on, the
challenges they have been facing and also to identify the resources required such as training by
questioning directly (Sanghi, 2014).
Timing
Conceivably, since performance reassessments have been and are very dreaded, they are
perfectly conducted once in a year. Supervisors are frequently anticipated to assess activities
took place in the previous year, which perhaps is no longer in the mind of the employee nor the
employer or supervisor. A more easy and significant performance assessment technique should
involve employee training, modeling, transparency, concentrating on the future through the feed-
forward method and encouraging conversations to discuss performance (Mondy, 2013).
The performance management process involves planning, organizing, coordinating and
monitoring the staff’s performance in relation to key performance values or objectives. It is
referred to as a procedure implemented in order to develop personal and organizational
performance. Initially, the process was composed of six steps which should take place one after
the other. In short, it is a continuous process in an organization (Mathis & Jackson, 2013).

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i. Pre- Requisites
There are three levels considered in this stage where the organization identifies both short and
long term goals. Organization level being the first one, the organization's management depicts
the entire view and determines overall goals and aims formulation for the organization including
its mission statement vision in the long run. The second level perquisites are the department
level, this includes setting objectives for every department that contributes to the achievement of
the entire organization's goals. It is at this stage, that the management formulates and develop the
procedures and assign objectives to every department so as to achieve them within a specific
time interval. Lastly, the individual level, where employees are assigned and receive targets from
the department level (Jackson & Valentine, 2015).
ii. Performance Planning
There are three significant aspects of performance planning which includes: Results, Behavior
and Development Plan where;
Results: the standard of performance management is employed to measure workers’ and
departmental performance. It gives information concerning the performance differences and
accomplishments. It, therefore, measures to what extent has the individual employee achieved
his or her assigned targets.
Behavior: evaluating the employees’ personal conduct is one of the most difficult activities
based on performance standards. This is because Human behavior is determined through very
close observation and monitoring by the human resources department.
Development plan: being the third and the last stage of performance planning, employees'
knowledge, attitude, and skills are improved through plan development. It encourages employees
to improve their professional standards to a higher level (Phillips & Gully, 2015).

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iii. Performance Execution
Performance execution is termed as one of the most significant phases because the entire process
of developing performance management techniques and setting up of standards would depend on
it. The basic liability and possession of performance implementation lies at the staff individual
level, then secondly at the departmental level and then at the organizational level. It is therefore
regarded as a systematic process, whereby the performance of the department depends on
individual employees’ performance (Goel, 2012).
iv. Performance Assessment
Performance appraisal is the next stage following performance execution. At this stage, both the
employees and managers are accountable for measuring and assessing the performance of the
staff in relation to organizational against targets. The process should include the level of personal
targets, conduct or attitude and any other accomplishments made over the performance
assessment cycle.
v. Performance Review
The performance review stage is a dais where the inferior and insubordinate transfer of
performance feedbacks and appraisals of performances in relation to the targets assigned to an
individual. In order to ensure a successful performance appraisal process engagement and
performance conversations between the employees and the managers are of great relevance.
Other than performance survey, discussions on planning developments, training for skills and
knowledge improvements, subsequent goals and objectives should also be involved. This phase

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is therefore regarded as the foundation of the next year's performance review cycle (Tziner &
Rabenu, 2018).
vi. Performance Renewal and Reconstructing
Since the performance management process is a currently happening and continuous process, the
moment performance is evaluated and finalized, then the cycle begins for the subsequent
performance evaluation. It should be in line with the following year’s organizational mission and
objectives renewed with departmental goals. This is necessary because the organization's
external environment such as market, consumers, suppliers, and competitors also revolve and all
the following transformations has to pre-requisite the performance management and setting with
strategic organizational goals.
In conclusion, the rift between a reason for pay and the building of skills and competence has
been a great challenge in the implementation of Performance Management. In the past few years,
however, the process of handling workforce has evolved to a better structure and configuration.
Most of the old performance assessment techniques have been incorporated into the notion of
Performance Management, whose objectives are more widespread and the process its self is
comprehensive. Some of the transformations adopted in the name of improving Performance
Management currently are the diversification of workers through talent identification,

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observation of organizational objectives and consistent monitoring and evaluation (Parker &
Bindl, 2016).
References
Armstrong, M., 2016. Armstrong's Handbook of Strategic Human Resource Management. 6 ed.
s.l.:Kogan Page.
Armstrong, M. & Chapman, A., 2011. The Reward Management Toolkit: A Step-By-Step Guide
to Designing and Delivering Pay and Benefits. illustrated ed. s.l.:Kogan Page Publishers.
Bhattacharya, D. k., 2011. Performance Management Systems and Strategies. s.l.:Pearson
Education India.
Durai, P., 2010. Human Resource Management. s.l.:Pearson Education India.
Goel, D., 2012. Performance Appraisal And Compensation Management: A Modern Approach. 2
ed. s.l.:PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.
Jackson, J. H. & Valentine, . S. R., 2015. Human Resource Management: Essential Perspectives.
s.l.:Cengage Learning,.
Mathis, R. L. & Jackson, J. H., 2013. Human Resource Management. 14 ed. s.l.:Cengage
Learning.
Mondy, R. W. D., 2013. Human Resource Management. 13 ed. s.l.:Pearson Education.
Parker, S. K. & Bindl, . U. . K., 2016. Proactivity at Work: Making Things Happen in
Organizations. london: Taylor & Francis.
Phillips, J. & Gully, S., 2015. Human Resource Management. s.l.:Cengage Learning.

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Sanghi, S., 2014. Human Resource Management. s.l.:Vikas Publishing House.
Tziner, A. & Rabenu, E., 2018. Improving Performance Appraisal at Work: Evolution and
Change. s.l.:Edward Elgar Publishing.