Performance Management and HR Practices - London School of Business

This report focuses on performance management within a business organization, examining the performance of employees and the role of HR practices in enhancing organizational outcomes. It explores the relationship between employee performance, HR practices, and overall organizational performance, highlighting how HR strategies can contribute to achieving company goals. The report also identifies barriers to achieving performance targets, such as poor planning, leadership, training, and employee attitudes, and suggests strategies to overcome these challenges. The analysis includes discussions on performance management cycles, the importance of employee motivation and engagement, and the impact of effective leadership. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of a well-defined performance management system for any organization.

Running head: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Performance Management
Name of the student: Anwar Ali
London School of International Business

1PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Executive Summary
The main objective of the project is to focus on the performance management in a business
organization. The assignment deals with the performance of an employee, organizational
performance and the practices done by an HR. Moreover, the path that leads to an
organisational performance via the practices carried out by an HR to enhance the employee
performance is also explained. This part also evaluates the barriers in the field of
performance targets. The strategies to overcome these barriers in the field are also critically
assessed in this assignment. Lastly, it can be concluded that this assignment will make a clear
vision about the performance management that should be carried out in any organisation.
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Table of Contents
Task 1: Performance Management.................................................................................4
1.1. Introduction.........................................................................................................4
1.2. Employee performance, HR practices and organisational performance.............5
1.3. Barriers in performance targets and solutions.....................................................7
1.4. Discussions of performance management.........................................................11
1.5. Conclusion.........................................................................................................14
References....................................................................................................................16
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PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Name Anwar Ali
Task 1 Performance Management
Employee performance, HR practices and organisational performance
Barriers in performance targets and solutions
Discussions of performance management
Word Count 3201
Date 05/04/2019
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Task 1: Performance Management
1.1. Introduction
According to Cardy and Leonard (2014) performance may be defined as an
achievement of an organization related to the goals that had been set by itself. This includes
the outcomes accomplished via every individual’s contribution towards the strategic goals of
the organization. The term “performance” can be summarized as the behavioural and
economic outcomes. Performance can be linked as an individual’s potential and to what
extent the individual can realize it (Schechner 2017). An individual’s potential can be best
determined when the performance standards are met with the completion of the tasks
assigned to the individual. The performance management focuses on the organization’s
performance, a specific department’s performance as well as an individual employee’s
performance regarding any service or product.
This management technique is mostly used in the workplaces such as governmental
agencies as well as private organizations (Abualoush et al. 2018). Every organisation’s
manager uses the performance management system to set the goals and objectives of the
company. Thus, the employees set their individual goals that ensures the productivity of the
organisation. This system goes through a cycle, which consists of Planning of the
performance, Performance coaching and lastly Appraisal of the performance (Mone and
London 2018). Any orifice between the actual result and desired result is stated as a
performance problem whereas the improvement in performance can be summarized as
minimizing the aperture between the desired and actual results of the work invested.
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1.2. Employee performance, HR practices and organisational performance
HR practices in relation with employee performance may be defined as the short step
that encourages high skills, high abilities, high motivation, and an appropriate structure for
the role. The HR practice resembles with the employment security, which may be defined as
an important contract between the employees and the organisation (Erturk 2014). The
employee performance sometimes gets enhanced with talent management. If the HR does
selective hiring then the performance of the employees is filtered and they can add up to the
company’s value that will enhance the company’s growth. The HR manages and makes
selected effective teams that works towards the same goals which in turn enhances the
organisations performance to achieve the target quite easily (Conway et al. 2016).
The learning and development practices that are conducted often by HR department
enlarges the base of skill and develops the competence levels that are required to achieve
growth in the work place (Buckingham and Goodall 2015). The development of the climate
of learning empowers self-managed learning techniques that includes mentoring, training and
coaching to get flourished.
Another HR practice area is engagement, motivation and commitment of the
employees (Latorre et al. 2016). The HR encourages effort and ensures that people gets
positive interest in their work as well as for the organisation they are working in. They also
ensure that the employees gets motivated towards the individual goals which will further lead
to the organisation’s performance.
The HR cooperates with the employees which results in the development of the
involvement practices by the employee. Moreover, the HR develops motivation in midst of
the employees and keeps on engaging the employees towards their job with the help of
reward management.
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One of the major HR practice is the selective hiring of candidates that could be of
strategic and could meet up the operational needs set by the organisation (Hammer 2015).
The HR provides the development, acquisition as well as the retention of the employees that
are talented and can deliver high-class performance, high productivity as well as can take the
innovative level of the company to the next level. The HR also takes initiative in retaining the
employees who provides high level of satisfaction to the customers of the organisation
resulting amplification in the performance of the organisation.
The HR practice also includes operational performance. This type of performance can
be measured by productivity, quality of production, the sales, the quality of service and
innovation (Sikora and Ferris 2014). These are obtained via both estimates that are subjective
as well as objective measures. Most of these performances includes the production of the
quantity of products or the number of the newly developed products.
However, employee performance evaluation is done by the HR, which should be
followed by the grooming sessions and mentoring sessions (Dooren, Bouckaert and Halligan
2015). Most organisations conduct sessions as well as workshops for the employees, which
emphasizes the growth of the employees leading to the growth in organisational performance.
The organisational performance of an organization is calculated by the average score
of the indicators of performance as given below.
Profitability: The manager’s reports that states the changes of the profitability over the last
three years. This can be summarized as
1  went down
2  went down moderately
3  stayed at a static level
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4  went up moderately
5  went up
Sales growth: The manager’s report for the sales rate changes over the last three years. This
can be summarized as
1  declining rapidly
2  declining at a static rate
3  stable
4  growing at a static rate
5  growing rapidly
Reputation: The reputation of every firm is measured by carrying out a survey among the
industry experts in which they state their views about the market status of the firm. This can
be summarized as follows:
1  too low
2  moderate low
3  static
4  moderate high
5  too high
1.3. Barriers in performance targets and solutions
The performance targets are stated as the targets set by the organization, which are set
by the organization, and there are certain barriers in the way to achieve these performance
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targets (Spekle and Verbeeten 2014). There are mainly 5 barriers which restrict the
performance targets:
Poor Planning: This is a mistake, which happens in project management. Many projects
have a successful ending whereas many of them turn out to be disastrous. The planning is one
of the important pillar towards the success of a project. If a planning turns out to be
inadequate then the project’s work is not completed as per expectation which further leads to
project failure (Adekola and Sergi 2016). The result of poor planning leads to lack of
business support from the client, as it causes not meeting up the expectations of them. Poor
planning also leads the competing ideas to end up the project in a surface position causing the
project to have rework and full of confusion. Poor planning also includes poor estimates that
is if the planning and definition are not done before time then the team of the project starts
the project without the resources as well as an uncertainty remains in the completion time of
the project. The poor scope of a project is also an outcome of poor project planning.
One should avoid making the above stated mistakes. Moreover, one should engage
more of his time in properly scheduling the plan of the project, and should have a thorough
assessment of the steps that would be carried out through the project. As one focuses in these
steps the project flow will be very easy and it will be of great success.
Poor leadership: Another barrier in achieving performance targets is poor leadership. If a
leader is not effective then the profit of an organization is hampered. When a leader lacks of
the leadership quality i.e. the lack of coaching or motivation for the staff can lead to diminish
the organizational culture as well as the morale of the organization to suffer. Poor leadership
have many negative effects on the organisation and its staffs (Nguyen et al. 2017). A poor
leadership puts poor financial outcomes for the company and also implies a negative
approach towards the achievement of the company’s goal. Poor leaders does not emphasize
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on the staffs performance and could not lead them for further training and development
through the motivational sessions, which is carried out by a good leader. Moreover, a poor
leader diminishes the work culture in an organization at every level. For a poor leader the
staffs also goes down on the morale which can misdirect the company as well as its jobs. A
poor leader has also poor communication skills that results in the lack of communication
between the employees and the leader, which further leads to the employees not meeting up
the expectations of the organisations. A poor leader is also a poor performer for the
organisation (Tschohl 2014).
An effective leader should be there in every organization to choose its successive
leaders which could emphasize the organizations performance by adding up potential to its
employees and enhance their morale towards the encouragement of work and achievement of
goals by the employees in the organisation. The leader should be so effective that they can
provide a leap to the employee’s motivation and add up to the organizations performance
towards the goals set by the company.
Poor Training: Poor training provided in the workplace has a number of negative effects and
can easily loose success of the organization. The poorly trained staffs could not project an
executive’s image professionally and also could not deliver expected or great results. The
poor trained employees can also increase the chances of faults as well as the accidents that
occurs in the workplace (Long, Ajagbe and Kowang 2014). The properly trained employees
can deliver the work for what they are aligned but a poor trained employee does not have the
capability to deliver the given work which results in the lack of the organisational
performance standards.
As it seems that the training is one of the vital requirements of any organisation’s
employees to maintain the deliverability of the products of the organisation, there should be
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frequent effective training modules that should be carried out by the organisation’s leaders
that will be beneficial for the employees. Some of the training module includes training the
employees for better customer relations, training in sales management, training for the
retentions of the business facilities, training for effective construction of teams as well as the
training of the company’s awareness programs. This trainings should be provided in each
company so that the performance targets of the organization, does not gets lowered down.
Poor attitude: An employee could be a very great leader as well as highly trained
professional and is also capable of meeting the targets but in addition to all this
characteristics an individual should maintain a right attitude in the workplace. If an employee
has a bad attitude then it can cause serious workplace issues. This issues may result in
creation of a crisis in the workplace which will downgrade the Performance targets of the
organisation. The poor attitude includes being rude at work, harsh replies in the meetings held
in the organisation, keeping a frequent records of late comings and many more (Katzenbach
and Smith 2015). This type of behaviours needs immediate action by the leaders as it can
hamper the proper orientation of the company. The employee behaviour has impacts on the
organisation’s performance targets so it is recommended to take proper actions as soon as
possible whenever an employee is found to possess a poor attitude in the workplace.
The most important step that is to be carried out by the leaders in the workplace to put
a stop in the poor attitude by the professionals is that the leader should take the initiative to
have a personal talk with the employee or employees with the poor attitude. This could be
helpful as private talks sometimes helps to reduce down the problems. The leader should
explain the poor attitude employee that the attitude maintained by him can hamper the
working environment around him. The propagation of a culture in the workplace should be
maintained and this effective communication should be spread to every professional in the
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workplace. The employee should be motivated to take up with some extracurricular activities
that can divert him from the poor attitude behaviour.
Poor rewards programmes: One of the major reason which affects the performance of an
organisation can be pointed as the poor reward programmes as designed by the company
(Terera and Ngirande2014). If a company needs to get the goals achieved then it is necessary
for the organisation to create a good recognition as well as reward programs.
The major steps that can be adapted by the organizations includes team based reward
system, performance related pay system and total performance related reward systems.
Firstly, team based reward system can be implemented which will result in the enhancement
of a team’s performance (Gao 2015). In today’s organizations the team work has become
very essential in the progress of an organisation. Thus, if a reward system is organised for the
teams based on the accumulated performance of the team then there will be a competitive
environment amongst the teams which will empower the growth of the company resulting in
the high performance of the teams. Secondly, if a performance related pay system is
implemented then the employees will work hardly to achieve their respective targets which
will lead the company to achieve their performance targets quite easily. Lastly, a total
performance reward system should be implemented, which will track the overall performance
of an employee in every aspect and will provide rewards for the same.
1.4. Discussions of performance management
The performance management practices in organisations like RM Group and Micro
Focus International are taken in consideration as well as assessment of possible
improvements to enhance performance management. The performance management practices
differs in different organisations.
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The first organisation which is taken into consideration is the RM Group, a company
based in United Kingdom and deals with the control systems used in various fields
(RMGroup 2019). The service team of the RM Group is so effective that the customers have
a positive feedback for the organisation. The organisation follows strategic plans that leads to
the improvement in the organisations performance. Unlike the other organisations, RM
Group does strategic planning in every aspect of their work carried out in the organization.
This helps the organization to focus on their mission and vision set by the company itself.
The company also provides its employees a time to time training sessions which improves the
quality of the employees to enhance their growth in the company. The RM Group, also
focuses on the employee’s growth. They maintain a track of the employees who are
performing well and regularly provide them with performance reward programmes. The best
employees are identified on the basis of the performance they put on the whole year and then
they are presented with rewards. The employees thus, gets motivated and gets encouraged in
performing the tasks better.
The second organisation that is taken into account is the Micro Focus International.
This is a software based company having its headquarters in Newbury, England, United
Kingdom (Micro Focus 2019). This company is best known for its employee friendly
behaviour that is maintained by the managers of the company. The managers has come up
with the schemes like conducting fun games within the organisations which is very much
liked by the employees as it refreshes the employees that are continuously working. The
employees are also awarded with certain awards that are provided to them on their
performance. The companies also focuses on the trainings of the employees that enhances the
path towards the company’s achievements. The company puts effort to increase the
performance of the employees who are weak as well as identifies the employees with good
performance report and rewards them to perform better.
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There are many performance management techniques that can be used in the business
organisation to enhance the performance management of an organization (Arnaboldi, Lapsley
and Steccolini 2015). The possible improvements that could be made to enhance performance
management are discussed in the following paragraphs.
The goals and expectations should be made clear to the employees by the organisation
which will help the employees to understand clearly the vision and mission of their goals
(Jeston 2014). If targets are set to be effective and meaningful then the employees will be
enthusiastic to achieve them.
The employees should be encouraged to have open communication within the
organisation (Muller 2017). This will help them to communicate freely inside the
organisation’s premises which will help them to express their perspectives as well as ideas
freely without criticism.
The employees should feel good about the work they are doing and also the
organization should keep a track to actively stimulate the ethics and values of the
organization.
The company’s culture should have a comfort fit for all the employees. The
employees should find a personal fit in the organizations culture environment.
The organization should maintain a level of trust among its employees. Employees
should feel that their leaders are maintaining trust on them so that the employees could work
freely in the organization’s premises.
The organization should implement innovation in every level. The innovation is
necessary as the employees will get motivated by the newly innovated products that will help
them to keep going towards their achievements.
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The leaders in an organization constantly should take sessions with the employees that
will enhance the encouragement of the employees towards their job.
The leaders should share the feedback in a day to day basis with the employees which
can help the growth of the employees to get powered up.
There should be constant support provided to the employees from its organisation so
that the employees could empower their personal development as well as the development of
the organization.
The organisation should focus on the team work of the employees as team work could
add up to the company’s goals with proper responsibilities.
The incentive structure of the organization should be made attractive and it will lead
to the recognition of the employees.
Celebration of both non-financial as well as financial achievements in an organisation
is a valued step. This will express the care of the organisation towards its employees which
will motivate the employees to work hard and grow in the company resulting in the growth of
the organization.
1.5. Conclusion
Thus, from the stated discussion it may be deduced that performance management
system in an organisation is a very necessary step in any organisation that is needed to
improve and manage the employee’s performance. This is needed for validating staff
decisions and also to enhance the comprehensive effectiveness of the organisation’s products
and services. The company’s internal structure, design as well as development is dependent
on the performance management of an organisation. This management technique is a well-
structured system that follows certain steps and methodologies to intensify the production of
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the company. The above mentioned barriers are the negative approaches that diminishes the
performance of the company. These barriers should be identified by the organization and
certain measures to remove these barriers should be taken by the organisation so that the
performance of the employees as well as of the organisation does not gets hampered.
Therefore, to maintain the performance of the employees, they should also be provided with
certain rewards or promotions in their workplace which will keep them motivated. Lastly, it
can be concluded that the Performance Management System plays an important part in the
growth of an organisation and also of its employees.
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References
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