Performance Management Best PracticesIn today's highly competitive corporate world achieving excellence is the prime goal of any organization. Achieving success is the result of high performance across the organization. Every process performed in the organization has an external or internal customer. If even one process fails to deliver high performance customers will be affected. As a result organizations follow very high levels of quality processes such as TQM and Six Sigma. More and more organizations both in the public and private sector are committing to quality practices and focusing on competing against or collaborating with the very best in their field. This search for excellence in performance is driven by several challenges such as winning more market share, dwindling staff and resources, increasing demands from customers who want higher standards of service at a fair price and a desire to be number one. To achieve performance excellence many performance management best practices have been adopted to improve performance of every employee. In order to develop the best practices for performance management, the organization should review systems which make clear and concise recommendations for measuring and managing performance effectively. It is important to answer quite a few questions before deciding on and implementing a performance management system. It is important to check out if the performance system is linked to the corporate strategy. It is also important to figure out whether the employees are familiar with the strategic direction and understand their roles and if key performance indicators have been mapped to the employee skill and ability. The employees should have measurable objectives that mirror the organizational strategy. The performance management methodology should accurately measure and report on performance. Best practices in performance management will help employees know how they need to work to support their objectives and help managers to give effective feedback and coach the team towards organizational goal achievement. The appraisals in the organization should always be linked to the results of the performance management system. This will help the staff to have a strong commitment and encourage participation towards achieving organizational and personal career goals. As most organizations globally are oriented towards result driven appraisals and bonuses, there has been a great deal of interest in performance management and appraisal systems. New techniques of performance measurement are being developed by human resources specialists to improve human resource practices and thus productivity. Adopting best practices for performance management is again a difficult task. Faced with different pulls and pressures, business leaders look for a solution to make their staff more motivated whilst tightening the organization for embracing global performance management best practices. Before introduction of various practices, employees should be educated about performance planning, coaching and appraisal methods and future trends of the business and industry. A suggestion poll across the organization is also a great idea. This will help the strategic decision makers understand how ready the employees are in adopting the new performance management processes. Academics and HR practitioners have long been absorbed with constructing the perfect performance measurement system and developing performance management best practices. Agreeing on an effective method, however, has been like searching for the lost City of Atlantis i.e. hard to find. So the search still continues for the best performance management system. |