Career Management and Performance in Companies Essay

Introduction

The task of exploring opportunities with each employee is mandated by the principle that performance management rests on the dual themes of evaluating performance to date and accommodating aspirations for future growth. Since formal performance appraisal is very often the only opportunity for a supervisor and employee to comprehensively review recent performance, it is important to point out key strengths, agree on critical weaknesses and discuss possibilities for remedying performance gaps.

Hence, optimal performance feedback covers these elements:

1. Focus on important performance measures.
2. That have been disclosed to the employee at the beginning of the period being assessed.
3. Emphasizes progress towards goals that are strategic for the company.
4. And, hardest of all, consists of a conscious effort by the supervisor to recognize success behaviors when they happen from day to day and afford the employee positive reinforcement when these are manifested.

Managing for Performance

Helping subordinates achieve ever-better performance requires a manager to, in order of precedence:

1. Participate actively in defining job requirements and in screening recruits referred by HR as at least minimally qualified.
2. Remove obstacles to performance. These may include outdated equipment, interpersonal conflict, discrimination, poor leadership, or lack of skills.
3. Ensure that necessary resources are in place and in timely fashion. Traditionally, resources have been defined as raw materials, adequate manpower, and investments by the company in machinery, productivity-enhancing equipment and an optimal working environment.
4. Encourage individuals and teams to aspire for ever-better performance.

Opportunities for Advancement

In both the InterClean and EnviroTech scenarios, the opportunities for advancement are revealed by the skills mix already in place, the extent of training the staff do avail of, and by existent disparities in skills.

Both companies are small, with a staff of 50 or less. Nonetheless, the distribution of educational attainment within each organization suggests that they have grown sufficiently to require more formal structures, lines of authority and division of labor. At InterClean, therefore, 7% of the staff already have postgraduate degrees, another 7% have some graduate studies to their credit, and one-third came to the job with Associate or Baccalaureate degrees. The EnviroTech talent mix is even better: while there has been no need to hire anyone with a Master’s or Doctoral degree so far, no less than 90% of the staff have at least a Baccalaureate degree.

On the other hand, InterClean provides more opportunities for advancement, if annual training time is anything to go by. The norm (modal value) may be at just 5 to 10 training hours a year but 13% of the staff have been afforded no less than 20 hours and a further 20% aggregated from 10 to 19 training hours. EnviroTech staff are less ready for advancement, given that over two-thirds (70%) attended four hours or less of training each year. The rest of the staff fared hardly better, benefitting from just five to 10 hours annual training time.

Despite affording staff more training hours than EnviroTech, the InterClean skills inventory results bespeak dismal prospects for promotion. Nearly three-fourths of the staff are rated “poor” on environmental and regulatory compliance, for example; this means middle managers/supervisors and the rank-and-file cannot presently backstop management on regulatory compliance. More than half are mediocre (“fair”) or worse on communications, leadership and knowledge of computer software.

At EnviroTech, in contrast, most of the staff rate at least “good”, if not “excellent”, across the board. Plainly, the quality of training is superb and so, in all likelihood, is the motivation to advance.

The Question of Dual-Career Parents

The scenarios provide no empirical data about opportunities for dual-career parents. In the abstract, however, career management for such employees must include policies that recognize the need of parents to spend time with children. Any company wishing to attract or retain young but experienced staff must therefore consider the need for day care; for flexible work schedules that do not detract from the productivity of the employee; and for more accommodating career paths that leave open the possibility of future promotion, lateral movement or geographic relocation if family circumstances did not permit the dual-career employee to accept the first time around.

Accommodating Diversity

Ethnicity and an increasingly older population that encourages middle-aged folks to continue working or pursue second careers are two factors that impinge on managing diversity in the workplace.

Anti-discrimination legislation and the simple demands of managing a harmonious workplace mean that thoughtful leaders must pay attention to race relations and integrating older workers well. The majority of the InterClean staff are “mainstream Whites” but every key minority is represented: African American, Asian American and Hispanic. At EnviroTech, African Americans, Hispanics and other minorities comprise one-third of the workforce.

In both organizations, moreover, the staff is preponderantly middle-aged and elderly (40 years and up). While it is certainly logical to expect that company-paid health insurance premiums may be higher than average and a graying workforce will average more time off due to chronic illness than a younger one would, other stereotypes about ageing do not hold. Hence, leaders can best fulfill their performance management mandate by looking at the contributions each middle-aged employee can make in terms of judgment, experience and mentoring.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Absent hard data about payroll, training costs and the dollar value of productivity gains, it is nonetheless possible to conclude that performance management focused on the individual employee need not require substantial new budgets because:

• Promotional opportunities and career paths are self-evident motivators.
• It is characteristic of an older workforce that younger understudies must be groomed to take over not only when the elder employee retires but also when the latter must repeatedly seek treatment for chronic illness.
• The great dissonance between the obvious need for highly experienced staff and the present skill profile of both organizations presents an argument for employees to more conscientiously upgrade their worth to their companies.
• Coaching and counseling require conscientious planning but little actual time off for face-to-face sessions. There are no out-of-pocket costs incurred to do this.

References

Cascio (2006). Managing human resources: Productivity, quality of work life, profits. 7^th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.