Reinventing Performance Management

HR Digest Newsletter
Reinventing Performance Management: Trends & Is there a need for change ?

Neha Singh and Prasad Prabhakar
Performance Management is a way of getting
people to do what you want them to do and to like
doing it."
Dr. Aubrey Daniels, father of performance
management coined the above phrase; the term
describes the technology behind managing both
behavior
and
results.
Performance
Management has, over the years, developed into
a colloquial term, as such, it can have different
meaning to different people based on their
association and history with the term and how it
has been used within their environment.
Once thought an organizational necessity, off-late,
the formalized performance rating and review has
come under fire by many companies who believe
its time to breathe new life into an old process.
Current performance management systems are
receiving a failing grade.
According to a recent World at Work study, 58
percent of HR leaders gave their performance
management process a C grade or worse. The
challenge is that while the way work gets done
has changed dramatically over the last few
decades, performance management processes as
many organizations have remained essentially the
same. Plus, as individual and organizational goals
are increasingly tied to project cycles that last a
few months or weeks, the fiscal year can become
less relevant. Add in the matrix organization
with individuals migrating from one cross
functional team to another, each with a different
leader and performance management can truly
turn into chaos.
During the annual performance evaluation,
employee performance is often judged against a
competency model, which results in a
performance rating, perhaps on a five point scale.
The manager discusses the reasoning behind the
performance rating, and makes plans to develop
the employee in areas identified for improvement.
At work, however, at least when it comes to
quantifying performance, we try to express the
infinite variety and nuance of a human being in a
single number.
The real objective should be to improve the

performance of the organization, and the
typical performance management system
fails to achieve this goal (Coens & Jenkins,
2002).
To offset top-down annual performance
evaluationswhich can often be based on
aged feedback or vulnerable to the recency
effect, the behavioral principle that the
most recent is the most likely to be
recalledmany organization are thinking to
reinvent their performance management
processes.
Opening a Floodgate of Change
While many business leaders have
acknowledged that change was needed,
nothing substantive happened until 2012,
when Adobe Systems Inc. jettisoned its
traditional
performance
management
system for a drastically streamlined,
simplified process.
Microsoft Inc. followed Adobes lead several
months later when officials at the software
giant announced they were getting rid of the
companys traditional stack-ranking system
for a more simplified process.
Deloitte and Accenture have also soon
followed suit and have initiated new real
time mechanisms to measure and manage
individual
and
teams
performance
standards.
Based on the observations made by these 4
organizations, heres is our summary of
what is driving this trend?
People
have
changed.
Employee
expectations have changed. Its not just Gen
Y employees everywhere and of every
generation
expects
more.
More
involvement, more accountability, and more
transparency. When it comes to managing
their performance, employees have shifted
from being passive recipients to active
agents.
HR Digest Newsletter
Organization structures. With a shift in

organization structure from command type to
matrix type, managers have changed too.
Command and control is no longer cutting it
managers are expected to guide and coach,
provide balanced constructive feedback and
inspire, rather than enforce, performance.
Technology has changed. Baffled by the
complexity we created, focus in recent years has
been on process simplification, user-friendliness
and redirecting attention to what actually
matters. The big data & analytics movement
has now really raised the bar not just in terms of
what data can be gathered, aggregated and
analyzed but also how it is filtered and presented
to audiences to provide immediate management
insights. Activity lists are being replaced by
composite dashboards, lengthy reports by simple
performance heat maps i.e., pictures, literally
replacing thousands of words.
While the above section/s is a summary of our
observations and general literature; lets take a
look at what is IGATEs Performance
Management philosophy, which stands the test
of time and has all that a good and effective
Performance Management System needs.
The Performance Management framework @
IGATE is created to address all the needs of an
agile Performance Management mechanism (for
example) which addresses..
1.
2.
3.
4.
High Performance focused goals (through

SMART Framework)
Providing
real-time
Performance
feedback to employees (through OPCF)
aims to aid managers to focus on
development of the employee (through
OPCF and Competency Assessments)
Enhance performance levels at individual,
team and organization level (through
Appraisals and Normalization)
Creates talent
pipeline & builds
the employees
emotional
connect with the
organization
SMART
Goal Setting
Drives business
outcomes.
Standardized
role wise KRAs
to enable
High
Performance
Meritocracy
Promotions &
Career
Development
Performance
Cornerstones
Ongoing
Performance
Coaching &
Feedback
Enables us to
raise the
performance bar
individually as
well as
relatively
(for identified
period/s)
Appraisals &
Competency
Assessments
Continuous
Performance
monitoring &
handholding to
drive Agility
Reiterating on the approach from rating

employees to developing them not only
creates a better employee experience but also
has the potential to remove administrative
hassle, increase the engagement levels of
employees and ultimately improve the
performance
of
the
organization.
And that, once again, is the goal of any
performance management system.
The HR profession has to reinvent itself
through simplicity.
Simplifying and making performance
management systems more responsive and
reflective of how we work today is a really big
trend, and we strongly believe its going to
drive the way management operates in the
future.
------ddd-------

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HR Digest Newsletter

Reinventing Performance Management: Trends & Is there a need for change ?

The real objective should be to improve the

Organization structures. With a shift in

High Performance focused goals (through

Reiterating on the approach from rating

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