Managing Performance Module For Training And Performance

The degree Deming’s observations about performance management are still true today

Discuss about the Managing Performance Module for Training and Performance.

Most of the organizations have a traditional system of defined goals and objectives for its employees that are measured by their supervisors based on their contribution and achievements through annual reviews and assessments. This system can be termed as performance management or career development performance review program. Performance generally has no theory to define itself but has numerous approaches and models built on specific disciplinary perspectives (Guest, 1997). Performance management is a process considered as an important component in employee’s career development that incorporates regular face to face performance review meetings leading to performance appraisals and underperformance management that are aligned with organization’s objectives(AHRI).It is strategic and operational process that should be managed holistically through HR strategic process with an aim to ensure employees contribute to business objectives (Scannell, and Gifford, 2017). According to Deming, ‘performance review nourishes the short-term performance, annihilates long-term planning, builds fear, demolishes team-work and nourishes rivalry and politics’. This research based essay will discuss Deming’s observations about performance management in current dateand how contemporary organizations have addressed its adverse outcomes. There will also be a discussion on HRM skills required to avoid these adverse actions,followed by the conclusion based on research and obeservations.

Strategically, performance management process improves organizational performance through the performance development of its employees and teams by managing and understanding the performance within a framework ofestablishedshort and long term goals, organization’standards and competency requirements.Under operational process, it is a system used by organizations for settingwork goals, regulate performance standards, assign and evaluate work, provide feedback

Deming observed several organization performances and outlined need for change to a group performance plan from individual performance plan. He suggested that focusing a group performance plan enabled an organization to improve productivity and quality (Deming, 1982). Deming outlined that a performance management systems should be based on; continuous improvement, employee empowerment, teamwork, prevention, customer focus and process management. He emphasized that these bases should be used in setting right goals, establishing performance measures, focus on issues and concentrating on right kind of criteria. Deming argues that organizations should change from quantitative analysis of an individual employee and short term organizational goals and instead focus on long term planning of goal to enhance productivity and quality. Organizations should not focus on short term profits because they reduce organization progress through minimizing investing, deferring maintenance, and cutting down research. Deming’s acknowledges long term profits for their ability to improve productivity and quality in an organization. Deming outlined 14 points that can be used for long term profits in an organization. They include the following; purposing on improvement of the product, adopting a new philosophy, stopping dependence on inspections with an aim to achieve quality, avoiding rewarding in business based on price, constantly improving the system, instituting training on job, instituting leadership, driving out fear, breaking down barriers, eliminating target goals and slogans, eliminating work standards, eliminating barriers of workmanship pride, instituting programs of education and self improvement programs and enabling everybody in an organization to work toward transformation. Deming therefore emphasized on transformational leadership to managing performance in a workplace rather than individual quantitative monitoring and evaluation of an employee.

Adverse outcomes and how they have been addressed in contemporary organisations

Deming’s observations on performance management are still true today in many organizations. First, organizations still widely use quantitative performance measures. Organizations use annual or quarterly reviews to attribute individual employee performance. An employee is rated against the amount of returns to the organization that can be attributed to their performance. The quantitative performance measure is also used as a base of rewards of an employee. Deming noted that using quantitative performance measure in certain duration of time was a post mortem function of an employee performance plan. Secondly, organizations still have emphasis on individual performance. Organizations still focus on individual employee performance in the organization. Focusing on individuals in the organization discourages formation of effective groups in the workplace. Establishing of groups in the organization enables teamwork in the workplace. Today’s organization emphasis on an individual mployee performance plan leads to unethical behaviors among employees. Employees engage in organizations politics and rivalry to in the process of maintaining their personal performance. Employees also rework in the organization that increase cost of production. Therefore, organizations emphasis on individual performance plan as observed by Deming is the cause of ineffective teamwork toward common organizational goals in today’s organizations. Thirdly, today’s organizations still have employees   focusing on pleasing the management. There is an emphasis of employees showing their bosses what they have done to attain certain results. This phenomenon in the organization leads to less focus on customers’ needs which are core in continuous improvement of an organization (Kaplan et al., 2010). This observation shows that individuals in the organization work to meet manager’s requirements and get their approval. This leads to individual employee in the organization getting increased rewards. This results to organizations inability to meet customers’ needs through teamwork of all employees working on the same organizational mission (Langley et al., 2009). Fourth, there is emphasis on short term goals in today’s organizations. Organizations focus on getting high returns in a short duration of time. This involves focus on short term financial gains of the organization. Organizations lack long term planning that is important to continuous improvement. The organizations therefore operate on wrong goals that are based on behavioral statements and in other cases opinionated questions. For instance the following phases are used; “accepting responsibility,” “meeting deadlines”, “aptitude to learn,” “effective teams participation” etc. This leads to organizations operating on goals that they do not understand their root causes. This setting of goals neither solves organizational problems nor improves performance in the organization. Lastly, today’s organizations still mount fear to their employees. Employees are subjected to tight compulsory targets that they are required meet within a given period of time. Employees are also required to compensate to damages they cause in the workplace. Though, there has been increasing labor laws, employees still feel insecure in their tenure due to subjective performance measurement. This encourages excessive internal competition, unnecessary reworking, and unethical behaviors such as cheating in the workplace.

Deming outlined several adverse outcomes that happen in organization when managing performance. The contemporary organization address adverse outcomes in the following ways; first, the issue of unethical behaviors in the workplace is addressed in four different ways. The organization enforces codes of conduct, establishes a protocol, empower employees, and continuously review codes of conducts. The codes of conduct enable employees to figure appropriate behavior when in an organization or confronted with a situation. The code of conduct elaborates the protocol that has to be followed to report unethical behavior. Organizations also empower employees to easily identify unethical behaviors or ethics violations in the workplace. Contemporary organizations have to consciously review the code of conducts to ensure values of the organizations are maintained to enable management shape the organizational culture. Second is excessive internal competition. This adverse outcome is as a result of individual employee strives to independently please the management for promotions, incentives, or bonus. These adverse outcome leads to compromising of the organization product’s quality. This adverse outcome is addressed by establishing groups in the organization. Employees are allocated different groups. These groups work as a team towards a common defined goal. Employees are therefore required to work in collaboration to achieve a predetermined outcome. This reduces cases of unhealthy competition between employees and shifts the competition to teams. Competition as a team in an organization is commendable and enhances productivity of an organization. Collaboration also enhances sharing of organizational goals for the long term success of the organization. The third adverse outcome is fear in the organization. This adverse outcome is as a result of job insecurity due to inability to meet targets. Fear cause anxiety and leads to ineffectiveness of an employee (Gruman, and Saks, 2011). The contemporary organizations empower employees to improve their performance and meet target. This involves continuous training to employees to enhance their ability to produce and meet set objectives by the management. This reduces anxiety from employees making them comfortable to work in the organization. The organizations also undertake assessment of the employees’ jobs to ensure that their skills and knowledge meet the tasks requirements. The fourth adverse outcome is organization system not getting to the root cause of the problems. This adverse outcome in organizations is as a result of not setting the right goals in the organization (Liao et al., 2009). The managers are immobile in the organization leading to a situation where they set goals in the process of developing performance plan with understanding what is happening in the workplace where employees are working in. These problems can be lack of skills, low morale, poor working conditions, or limited knowledge. These problems can lead to ineffectiveness of an organization performance plan goals. The contemporary organizations are addressing this outcome by assessing employees’ skills and knowledge, setting of goals and getting ongoing feedback from employees (Dormann et al., 2013). This enables managers to move around the workplace and understand what is happen and problems that employees are having before setting a certain goal. Managers are therefore able to set goals that require teamwork to accomplish. This ensures that the set goals are attainable and enhance productivity and quality in the organization. Fifth, is nourishing of short term organizational performance. This advance outcome is as a result of organizations focusing on short term profits. Short term profits reduce the ability of the organization to perform in the future. Concentration on the short term performance for short term profits leads to organizations deferring maintenance and not investing on research for innovations and invention in the organization (Clark, 2008). Short term performance therefore, inhibits the organization’s ability by focusing on short term dividends and other returns. The contemporary organizations are addressing this by focusing on improving product quality and productivity. This ensures that the organization is not emphasizing on short term performance to have short term profit but rather investing in organization’s productivity and quality of the products produced. The other adverse outcomes in the organization are rivalry and politics. Negative politics and continued rivalry lead to decreased employees morale and reduces job satisfaction. Bad rivalry in the organization causes emotional backlashes, backstabbing, rumors fictions by employees to defend their wounded self image. This leads to general bitterness, unhappiness, and frustrations in the workplace. These outcomes are addressed by contemporary organizations instituting good leadership that is able to monitor and direct employees’ actions towards a certain objectives. Leadership in this case involves closely monitoring to understand what is happening in the workplace and influencing actions to achieve the organization goals. Last it the demolishment of teamwork in the organization. This adverse outcome in performance management is as a result of individual performance plan. Organizations prepare individual performance plan where an employee is evaluated on specific goals. This demolishes teamwork in the organization since the action of one employee does not affect other colleagues. This situation reduces the ability of the organization to collaborate and deliver on common goals. This adversely affects the productivity and quality of the organization’s products. The contemporary organizations are addressing demolishment of teamwork in the organization by putting everybody to work towards accomplishing transformation. The organizations work to break barriers that break down in different departments and groups. The organizations also prepare group performance plan rather than individual performance plan. This enables employees to work as a team and be evaluated as a group that enhance collaboration and teamwork in the organization (Chen, and Huang, 2009).

Conclusion

From the research in this essay, Deming approach to performance management is still relevant to today’s organizations. Deming’s finding can be applied to today’s performance management by change of philosophy, leadership, and means of measuring success. Deming’s view that performance review leads organizations to nourish short term performance, demolish teamwork, build fear, destroys long term planning of the organization is true. Subjecting employees to individual performance review leads to unethical behaviors, excessive internal competition, rivalry, and politics. Performance review to an individual employee causes adverse outcomes on employee performance in the organization. Contemporary organizations should set the right goals, use the right measures, and concentrate on the right criteria when planning and implementing organizational performance review in the organization. Therefore, it can be concluded that performance review to an individual has adverse outcome while it commendable to groups because it enhances teamwork and enables the o0rganization to focus on improving productivity and quality.

References

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Langley, G.J., Moen, R.D., Nolan, K.M., Nolan, T.W., Norman, C.L. and Provost, L.P., (2009). The improvement guide: a practical approach to enhancing organizational performance. John Wiley & Sons.

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