Performance Appraisal and Management Systems

 Looking at one of the most important tools in an organization’s strategic plan it would be their performance management system. Having a good performance management system can make all the difference for a company. It gives them the ability to improve their employee performance and to influence the associate’s behaviors. Snell says, “The performance management views areas of revenue growth, productivity, profitability, and market value along with company performance (Snell, S.A., Morris, S.S., & Bohlander, G.W., (2016). By using a good performance management process you can get the best out of your employees and improve the organization. When aligning the performance management process and the organizations strategic plan they should be looking at what the long term goals are for the organization and its employees. It should help determine pay raises, promotions, layoffs, and transfers. By giving HR the information they need it can be a critical ally in making an organizations hiring and firing process smooth. As well as make some very productive and driven employees.

 There are many different types of performance appraisal systems such as; trait, behavioral, and results based. Trying to find the right one is a crucial part in making a successful workplace and organization.

The trait focused appraisal system entails mainly the employee’s characteristics such as helpfulness, dependability and creativity. The supervisors rate employees by indicating the traits exhibited by these employees. This is a simple method to implement; however, it has its demerits such as supervisor’s biasness. This approach would be most applicable in a customer care service or department of any organization.

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Behavioral focused appraisal approach. This basically entails measuring the specific actions exhibited by the employee on the Job. A rating scale is used to measure a specific and the two commonly used methods in this approach are behaviorally anchored scale (BAS) and the critical incident. This approach would be most applicable in service industry for instance the hotels and tour firms.

Result based performance appraisal system. This approach mainly focuses on the employee’s accomplishments. It makes use of quantitative data such as the quantity or number of commodity produced by an employees and the amount of sales. Examples of the method used here are Management by Objectives (MIX)) and productivity measures. This method is applicable in production firms where the number of commodities produced by an individual can be determined and used to rate his or her performance.

For any organization, the Human Resource Management plays a very crucial role in the performance management process. Performance management system may be defined as a system used by managers and supervisors to measure job performance and to sustain a productive workforce by ensuring that they are meeting the organization’s set performance standards. The role of HRM in performance management process include, choosing the rating scale of the performance to be measured, developing the performance management operating system, coming up with the philosophy of the performance management system, coming up with the assessment procedures or rather matrices and developing competencies, coming up with the correct and most favorable methodology of executing the performance management process. Lastly the HRM creates a Development Needs Identification System.

The HRM must ensure that the roles above are in line with the organization’s strategic plan. An organization’s strategic plan is the overall purpose, the desired plans and how this plans can be best achieved. The alignment to the strategic plan is achieved in the following ways, first and foremost by ensuring that the roles are in accordance with organization’s culture and core values and by integrating the core competencies of each role and linking it to the performance management process.

A performance appraisal may be defined as a systematic process that evaluates an individual employee job performance in relation to a pre-determined criteria or standards. There are several types of performance appraisal systems. The trait focused appraisal system entails mainly the employee’s characteristics such as helpfulness, dependability and creativity. The supervisors rate employees by indicating the traits exhibited by these employees. This is a simple method to implement, however, it has its demerits such as supervisor’s biasness. This approach would be most applicable in a customer care service or department of any organization.

The second performance appraisal is the behavioral focused appraisal approach. This basically entails measuring the specific actions exhibited by the employee on the job. A rating scale is used to measure a specific and the two commonly used methods in this approach are behaviorally anchored scale (BAS) and the critical incident. This approach would be most applicable in service industry for instance the hotels and tour firms.

The last of the performance appraisals is result based performance appraisal system. This approach mainly focuses on the employee’s accomplishments. It makes use of quantitative data such as the quantity or number of commodity produced by an employees and the amount of sales. Examples of the method used here are Management by Objectives (MBO) and productivity measures. This method is applicable in production firms where the number of commodities produced by an individual can be determined and used to rate his or her performance.

The best suited appraisal for the Maersk Customer Service business would be the trait based performance appraisal. This is because of the nature of the business, customer service involves talking to and responding to customers queries. It is a one on one thing that mainly depends on the personal attributes of an individual. For instance customers would prefer to talk to a person who is understanding, patient and tolerant and as such using the trait performance appraisal is the best.

Rating scales are used in performance management systems to show the level of performance of each employee. There are several performance rating scale that an organization can use and this include the graphical scales, letter scales and numeric scales. Graphic rating scale performance appraisal is one of the most commonly used methods of appraisal. This method requires that the evaluator indicate on a scale the degree or extent to which an employee exhibits a certain trait, behavior or performance results. Scales have basically five to seven points although they may be increased or decreased. The graphic method has a form that composes a number of scales that relate to a given job or rather a certain aspect of the performance related dimension for example quality of work.

The second method is the letter scales method of performance appraisal. This method is similar to the graphic method but however it entails the use of alphabetical letters such a, b, c, d, to denote a certain dimension of job performance.

Numeric scale appraisal method is used to rate the employee performance based on a numerical rating system. In this system one uses numbers for instance 1,2,3,4 do denote a specific dimension of job performance. But the logic to its application is similar to that of the graphic performance appraisal.

The other methods of performance appraisal include forced distribution, behavioral anchored rating scales, management by objectives and essay method. All these methods are applied based on the HRM decision in the organization. Different firms will use different methods depending on their desired outcomes.

References

• Armstrong, M., & Baron, A. (2000). Performance management. Human resource management, 69-84.
• Boice, D. F., & Kleiner, B. H. (1997). Designing effective performance appraisal systems. Work Study, 46(6), 197-201.
• Bowman, J. S. (1999). Performance appraisal: Verisimilitude trumps veracity. Public Personnel Management, 28(4), 557-576.
• Murphy, K. R., & Cleveland, J. (1995). Understanding performance appraisal: Social, organizational, and goal-based perspectives. Sage.
• Youndt, M. A., Snell, S. A., Dean, J. W., & Lepak, D. P. (1996). Human resource management, manufacturing strategy, and firm performance. Academy of management Journal, 39(4), 836-866.