Introduction
A performance management system to work properly and effectively its design has to be considered carefully and planned well. A good performance management system is purposely for the elevation of employees’ performance and in effect, improves on business productivity hence the management should endeavor to find a good system that delivers the object of the company. Basically, a performance management system should have four benefits (Dun and Bradstreet 1).
- It should clearly understand what the job expects.
- It should give regular feedback on performance.
- Advice on steps of improving performance
- Finally, it should reward performance.
Communication is important to any company, as research shows that managers with poor communication and poor interpersonal skills often than not lead to the downfall of the company, therefore, all managers should be trained on how to conduct fair, nonjudgmental and consistent appraisal.
A performance program should provide a guideline for improvement and Institute basic policies, deal with poor performance and employee weakness. In establishing the system you should decide whether you will provide training or mentoring for weak employees and also set guidelines on improvement of timelines. A system should incorporate employee input. The system should also input staff suggestions.
Finally, a well performing employee should be rewarded or compensated. Rewards improve employee morale and generate loyalty within the company and foster improvement. However, performance appraisal and pay hikes are a highly contested issue.critics have been of the opinion that tying the two would be punishing underachieving employees. Employees should be constantly rewarded for their hard work (United States Department of Commerce par. 5).
Discussion
The IRS performance management program is a good example of a working system that has improved the performance of IRS employees. The IRS performance management system has established critical job responsibility for frontline employees who align with the agencies three strategic goals. This system provides responsibilities and supporting behaviors on how the daily activities of the frontline employees and managers should reflect the organization’s core values, for example.
The responsibility of customer’s satisfaction aligns with the strategic goal of top quality service to each taxpayer in every interaction. The goal of leadership and equal opportunity supports the agencies’ goal of an open air and fair work environment (General Accounting office 1).
IRS evaluates its frontline employees on five critical responsibilities, customer satisfaction, knowledge, quality business results and employee contribution. All this aligned with IRS strategic goals. The IRS performance management system attempts to assist managers and employees to develop their commitment and hold them accountable for meeting their commitments they are required to be clear, achievable, specific, outcome or output oriented and easy to monitor.
A number of initiatives have been implemented by IRS to improve its performance management system. In this, it realized that it needed to redesign its performance management to better communicate the behaviors constituting customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and make sure employees adopt the newly desired behavior in their day to day activities. This has led to IRS undertaking several initiatives, which include;
- Conducting an interactive conference with all the employees on the new management system.
- Distribution of computer discs for easier access to information and posting of information on the IRS intranet.
- And providing interim guidance and templates of simple commitment, self-assessment and summary evaluation.
Conclusion
However, on the downside, the IRS monitoring mechanism to assertions of the implementation of the employee performance management system has not been effected properly. The monitoring mechanism could provide useful information properly. A monitoring methodology should be developed, and once it’s set up it can be used for several years. This methodology can help prevent potential problems and can help avoid cost associated with employee performance (General account office 6).
Works Cited
Dun & Bradstreet. Setting Up of a Performance Management System. Web.
United States Office the Secretary of Commerce, Performance Management System. Web.
United States General Accounting Office, Performance Management System IRS’s Systems for Frontline Employees and Managers Align with Strategic Goals but Improvements Can Be Made. Web.