Its been a while since the last time that I have posted a blog. I have been extremely busy over the past couple of months. I have participated in an MMA event in Columbus, OH. I have also play in the All-American Bowl football game in Charleston, W.VA. The team that I was on (stripes) beat the stars in a hell of a football game 20-17. Looking back on that experience I have to say I met some great people that I am friends with still. It is amazing how you can accomplish that kind of team chemistry in only 3 practices over 2 days with the game being on the third. That leads me into performance management.
On the football field performance is managed play by play and series by series. If you are not performing on any certain day, play, etc. than you will be pulled out of the game for somebody that can get the job done. It is not different in today's organizational climate. If you can't get the job done organizations will find somebody that can get the job done, and probably cheaper. You have to be driven in your careers and not accept complacency. I just read a study the other day that said something to the tune of 18 full days of work are lost each year per employee that smokes. That is 18 days of production wasted on a habit of the employee. It makes sense in situations like this for organizations to enforce tobacco free work zones, and employees who don't smoke.
In any account here is my research from my thesis on employee performance management:
Employee
Performance Management
Performance
management is a key element to any organizations success. Organizations are increasingly under pressure
to improve performance and reduce costs.
(McIvor, 2009). Performance management allows senior leadership to
determine who are the key contributors in the organization. This is very important in the field of Human
Resource Management. There is a fine
line when developing performance management standards. You don’t want to create a tool that is a
control device. You want to enable your
workers to have higher performance standards through empowerment. If a company creates a performance management
device simply for the fact of controlling employee behavior, the company will
actually hurt the output of employees. (Wouters, 2008).
Organizational
leaders have to be able to fairly and accurately measure employee performance
at all levels of the organization.
Paauwe (2009), “performance outcomes of Human Resource Management
(HRM):”
Financial
Outcomes |
Profits,
sales, market share |
Organizational
Outcomes |
Output
measures such as productivity, quality, efficiency |
HR-related
outcomes |
Attitudinal
and behavioral impacts among employees, such as satisfaction, commitment,
intention to quit. |
(Dyer and Reeves 1995 as
cited in Paauwe, 2009 p. 135)
Leadership at a company needs to be able
to be able to give feedback to employees based on task related issues, not
personal biases. Hempel states, “When
recipients have poor relationships with the supervisor, feedback is perceived
as a message about the relationship rather than about poor performance. It is
concluded that the social (non-task) elements of performance feedback are as
important as the task-performance-related elements” (2008, p. 206).
“Organizations are generally very noisy
places, and the noise level rapidly rises---between hallway gossip, emails,
meetings, formal proclamations, data overload, political haggling, training
programs, performance reviews, feedback sessions, newsletters, and web boards,
organizational information can turn into a ‘communications roar’” (Longenecker, Papp and Stansfield 2009 p. 19). Keeping positive communication lines open between
management and employees is essential to the overall performance of the company. “Supportive oral communication relates
positively to individuals’ perceptions of management's supportiveness and friendliness.
Perceived support creates trust that the organization will fulfill its exchange
obligations by rewarding employee efforts” (Jo and Shim 2005 p. 278).
Mangers need to, “Communicate the performance
expectations of employees in relation to work (the what), behaviors (the how) and
to what result” (Hudson, 2009 p. 1).
This theory is tested in the article “Self and supervisor ratings of performance: Evidence from an
individualistic culture” in which
1,285 participants were assessed, including employees and management. The participants were surveyed using
self-administered questionnaire. The
survey results revealed “a clear gap between employees’ perceptions of their
performance and their managers” (Mohyeldin, Abubakr, Suliman
and Tahir, 2003 sp. ). The challenge is
now to minimize the gap in perception between the two groups to increase the
bottom line of the organization.