Performance Management At Emaar

The report features altogether are in six major sections. Section one is about Performance management and performance appraisal at Emaar. Section two is about Reward Management that Emaar uses. Section three is about Addressing Underperformnce. Section four is about measures of staff satisfaction. Section five is about methods to improvements. Section six which the last one is the conclusion.

More over, there are some appendixes I have attached in my report, Appendix 1 is the Aprriasal form and appendix 2 the exit interview.

Finally, Most of the information in the report was from my own experience at Emaar and some particulars from Emaar website and interviewing employees as well.

Performance Management at Emaar

At Emaar, Performance Management is considered as a cyclical process encompassing many aspects. Their model begins with the process of hiring, continues with daily performance management, and extends to yearly performance appraisals specially when making hiring decisions, managers, individuals and committees are involved in the process should consider the seven core competencies established by Emaar which are:

• Adaptability
• Motivation
• Professional and Self Development
• Work Quality and Job knowledge
• Teamwork
• Service Orientation
• Communication

From there, Emaar supervisors should manage employees’ daily performance through an efficient and effective performance management system. As a result of a efficient and effective and useful performance management system, supervisors should be able to provide accurate and relevant performance assessments that helps further growth and improvement among employees at Emaar. By institute a successful performance management based upon the seven core competencies, Emaar is able to hire, lead and evaluate individuals based on the same set of the competencies which offers consistency and continued growth.

Appraisal Performance

Appraisal performance is considered one of the powerful tools and an important process at all levels of the organization starting from the top management and ending with employees. It helps supervisors to meet the objectives and goals of the department and the firm as well. In addition, companies must keep pace with process to accommodate the changes of the business level contents and performance methods, and the change of the staff skills and knowledge. Appraisal helps to create confidence between employees and raise their loyalty to the firm.(See Appendix 1)

Appraisal performance from some authors view

performance appraisal as any procedure that involves setting work standards, assessing the employee’s actual performance relative to these standards, and providing feedback to the employees with the aim of motivating that person to eliminate performance deficiencies or to continue to perform above par “Dessler”

Another definition for performance appraisal is the evaluation, often in writing an employee’s work and job performance according to specific criteria. Performance appraisal can also be defined as a system of periodic review and evaluation of an individual’s or team’s job performance “Schuller”

Appraisal performance at Emaar

Emaar conduct appraisal quarterly and annually to evaluate employees’ performance, promote communication and their personality to examine their strengths and weakness. Besides, Emaar ensures all the employees who conducted the evaluation that their information are confidential and secured for making right decisions for them. Appraisal performance is important for such a company because it provides them with employees’ feedback of employees’ performance and progress. Performance appraisal aims at facilitate employees’ development and it has the major purposes. These major purposes is to provide feedback and guidance, to set performance goals, to identify training needs, and to provide inputs for management of pay administration, rewards, and promotion.

Also there are some steps which are involved in effective performance appraisal are:

• Identification of key performance areas and setting yearly objectives.
• Identification of critical attributes for effective performance
• Periodic review of performance
• Discussion of performance with employees,
• Identification of training and developmental needs.
• Emaar uses many methods for performance evaluation of their employees, some of them are traditional and some are modern methods.

Incident Indicator Method

It is done by collecting the largest possible number of incidents that causes the success or the failure of the work. Supervisors monitor their group and decide if any of those collected incidents happened to them in their work. Their performance will be evaluated based on the incidents that happened in their workplace and how they behaved during those incidents and how serious they are in terms of success or failure of the job.

360 degree Performance

The 360 process almost always includes a survey that has questions related to leadership and organizational success, along with a corresponding scale rate each item for example, Agree, Slightly Agree, Neutral, Slightly Disagree, and Disagree. Self-ratings and ratings from employee’s manager, direct reports, peers and customers are typically compiled into a report. The results are combined and presented by rater category, which allows for insightful comparisons while ensuring that individual direct report, peer and customer raters remain anonymous. Ratings by the employee’s manager are also presented for comparison but not anonymous.

The 360 process may also include a gaol setting or development planning component, which requires that managers translate there results into a meaningful plan for future development. Some 360s are linked to administrative processes such as performance appraisal, promotion, compensation and succession planning

360 Feedback offers many potential benefits to both staff and the organization. Because the technique is capitalizes on multiple perspectives. The results are considered highly credible and useful performance feedback.

For employees, the 360 experience can help to confirm hunches about strengths and identify areas that need improvement. Being able to compare feedback from multiple sources helps participants contrast their self-perceptions with other’s perceptions of them. But the benefit from this kind of reality check comes with a challenge: As from Fortune article “360 Feedback Can Change Your Life”. Receiving the results of the feedback can be surprising, powerful and uncomfortable. To help managers appreciate their strengths and not just concentrate on negative results, Emaar provides in one-on-one or group settings with trained coaches, facilitator or psychologists. Such sessions can also help managers link 360 results to previous performance feedback discover performance themes and issues and understand how to use results to be more successful.

For Emaar, a successful 360 implementation can improve communication among employees and help disseminate the organization’s expectations with regard to managers. The benefits can begin even before the 360 is implemented. A decision to implement the process signals that the organization desires and is committed on some level to improve its feedback mechanisms. Even the wording of the survey itself is instructive. 360 surveys are typically group behaviours into bread success factors such as strategic direction, analytical skills, interpersonal effectiveness and developing others. The very act of identifying these categories and then defining them by their associated behaviours, for instance, consider future implications when making decisions gives Emaar a common language with which to discuss performance.

Forced Distribution

In this method, employees are evaluates on the basis of their overall performance of the work.

Paired comparison approach

That this method is derived from the ranking method, the fundamental difference between them is that the ingredient rather than an individual compares with the rest of the individuals at once, as under the method of comparison by comparing the individual double with every one of them This method is characterized by the following:

• Easily explained to others.
• Facilitate the task of who conduct the appraisal, as it is easy for him to compare between two employees and choose only the best of them.
• Can be used this way by the heads of divisions and departments in the organizations when asked to nominate some of the subordinates for the purpose of promotion or bonuses and so on.

The criticism of this method are as follows:

• That individuals are being compared with each other as if they were one unit, so it lacks behavioural specialization and taking focuses on personal aspects rather than behaviour.
• The evaluation might be susceptible to bias and favouritism.
• Individuals are evaluated by descending order (I, II, III, IV, ….) does not indicate the relative degree of difference among them.
• Does not show the weaknesses in the performance of individuals to act and find solutions them.
• As Emaar got a large number of employees its hard for them to conduct this evaluation but this method is often used at small organizations where there are small number of employees such as small properties companies like Al Shams.

Reward Management

Reward Management is concerned with the formulation and implementation of strategies and policies that aim to reward employees fairly, equitably and consistently in accordance with their value to the organisation (Armstrong, 2003).

Emaar has set a reward strategy to support their business goals, to recruit and retrain employees with his performance and to reward high performance employees. They have fincial rewards and non-financial rewards.

Financial rewards Definition

Employees get a fixed rate in monthly basis which is called base pay. Emaar determine the base pay according to the experience, degree and interview. Another, kind of financial rewards is the contingent pay, which is related the employees performance, competence or service. Moreover, employees benefits such as pension holidays and sick pay.

Non-financial rewards

It is not direct payments and usually occur from the work it self like achievements, recognition, training, opportunities to develop career and high quality leadership.

Al-Noor Islamic bank has an attractive reward system which is for the part time employees who have worked at least twenty hours a week for two years, receive AED 3,500 scholarship to college of their choice. Four year scholarships for AED 35,000 are also given. The company has awarded more than AED 8 million since the program begins. Unlike Emaar that doesn’t have flexible time for students who are welling to complete their higher education besides they are not encouraging students to join them.

Addressing underperformance

It is one of the elements of the performance management framework of Emaar’s Performance Management policy. It illustrates the need to take action to identify and resolve situations where the performance level is not achieving the identified outcome of performance of a specified position.

Emaar follows some procedures to address underperformance

Intensive Performance Support

Solving a problem and supporting the process, generally developed between employees and the executive manager, to elucidate performance concerns and take early steps towards their resolution the process is begin when a patterns of performance concerns has been identified and considerable efforts should be made to resolve the concerns during this phase. Where employees are able to demonstrate that they are able to achieve Emaar’s identified performance outcomes during Intensive Performance Support, ongoing performance management can be resumed.

Nevertheless, if employees underperforming consistently and the performance outcomes achieved through the IPS period are not improved sufficiently the Formal Underperformance procedure should be originated. This can be done only after IPS completion which is a pre-requisite to undertake the Formal Underperformance procedure.

Formal Underperformance procedure

Managers’ start this procedure for employees whose performance did not meet the identified performance outcome for Emaar and whose performance has not improved satisfactorily through IPS. Emaar makes sure that the used procedure is appropriate to employees’ employment conditions.

Formal Underperformance is undertaken in consultation with departmental performance management consultant and involves supporting and assessing the performance of the employees.

When outcomes of performance are achieved during the Formal Underperformance procedure are still unsatisfactory, another procedure is conducted which is called Evaluation Procedure to appraise and verify the procedure and how it is been implemented. The Evolution Procedure considers whether all reasonable options for support have been exhausted and ensures that principles of natural justice and procedural fairness have been observed.

Based on the Evaluation Procedure report, recommendations are made for further action for approval of the departmental executive with the appropriate delegated authority. This may include

• Ongoing performance management return.
• Continuing with an identified stage of Managing Underperformance procedures.
• Sanctions imposition, including dismissal possibility when evident shows that an employee is not able to demonstrate the identified competence level and efficiency.

ANOC is one of the biggest companies for producing oils so it is important for them to hire and retain the best employees to keep the company reputation safe so they use the same procedures as Emaar if they addressed any underperformance among employees specially the best employees.

http://www.decs.sa.gov.au/docs/documents/1/ManagingUnderperformanc-4.pdf

Measures of staff satisfaction

Turnover Rates

Emaar calculates the annual staff turnover rate by using a mathematical formula

(Total number of leavers over period / Average total number employed over period) x 100

Exit interviews

Emaar conduct an internal interview which is the exit interview to establish the reasons why an employee wishes to leave the organization. Exit interviews are not intended to dissuade the employee from leaving. Rather, they are intended to establish resignation causes, and whether there is an underlying problem need to be addressed or is there a particular manager or a colleague who contributed towards this resignation and so on.

When Emaar decides to conduct exit interviews they follow some points:

• The interview should be conducted by a personnel or a human resources expert.
• The interview should not be conducted by the employee’s line manager under any circumstances.
• The interview is often productive if they are held away from employee’s workplace.
• The best time to held exit interview is as soon after the employee resigns as possible.

Emaar always treat their employees with good grace and wished them luck and thank them for the work they have done for the organization. (See Appendix 2)

Absenteeism

It is very vital to measure absenteeism, to identify and trace the patterns of employees’ attendance. High rate of absenteeism can be a symptom of stress in the work place which can contribute to higher rates of turnover.

There are two methods to calculate absenteeism: lost time rate and individual frequency

Lost Time Rate = (Number of Working Days Lost/Total Number of Working Days)*100 

Individual Frequency = (Number of Absent Employees/Average Number of Employees)*100

Emaar has designed a comprehensive leave policy that is in alignment with the organization’s values and objectives. Besides. there is a communication in the workplace, while dealing with sensitive issues such as absenteeism should be transparent and clear. Employees must be aware of the unpleasant effects of unauthorized time off. Moreover, Emaar introduces employee engagement programs to make employees involve and participate actively in the organization welfare. Also, they introduces counseling sessions that could prove beneficial in limiting absenteeism due to stress. Likewise, Emaar always keep their staff motivated by creating a favorable environment for them.

There are also another methods to measure the staff satisfaction such as competitor comparison and benchmarking.

Methods of improvements

Emaar always try to make working more challenging and rewarding for their employees which will make it easier to keep them.

In other words they use job enrichment which means they add additions to job tasks that increases the amount of employees and make them more motivated and increases their responsibility.

Job enrichment helps employees to have more planning control their jobs and decide the way that they should achieve it.

http://www.citehr.com/28657-job-enrichment.html

http://www.enotes.com/business-finance-encyclopedia/job-enrichment