Performance Management
Performance management refers to the process of ensuring that goals are met in a consistent, efficient and effective manner. It involves ensuring that the performance of a firm, a department, employees or the processes within the organization is running as efficient as would be expected. The world is increasingly getting competitive.
There are various competitive advantages that firms are trying to come up with to ensure that they are able to sustain the market competition. The only way that a firm can manage to be competitive in the market is to come up with performance management system. In managing employees, organizations have embraced performance contract.
The performance contract allows the management to ensure that the performance of employees is well managed. It allows the employer and the employee to agree on what should be achieved within a specific period, and how success will be measured.
The department can also sign a performance contract where they commit to complete a given task within a specific period. When an individual employee performs optimally, the entire department will be successful, and this success will be transferred to the entire firm.
Performance management has gained popularity in the current competitive market. Consumers are demanding for a consistent quality delivery for every item they purchase. This makes the firm feel the pressure to deliver this quality in a manner that will be satisfactory to these customers. For this reason, the management must have a system that would closely manage this performance in a manner that will give the desired result.
It is only through this that a firm can be sure to retain its customers. It is through this customer retention that a firm can be sure to maintain a competitive advantage in the market. This will help in assuring the firm of sustainability in the market.
The Science of Behavior in Business
The science of behavior can be defined as a process of understanding the impact of behavior on the performance of a business, and how this behavior can be manipulated by a leader to help in achieving specific objectives. In the current dynamic world, leaders are under great pressure to achieve specific results through themselves and other employees.
A leader will only be effective when he or she has the capacity to make others act in a manner that would help achieve specific results. A leader must be in a position to make employees feel that there is a strong urge to deliver in a manner that will not only be satisfactory to the management, but also other relevant stakeholders of the organization.
Actions of an individual will always be shaped by the behavior. An individual will approach an assigned task based on the behavioral pattern. For this reason, the only way through which a leader can ensure that employees work as expected is to influence their behavior. In a more practical term, such behavior can be influenced through developing a positive organizational culture within the organization.
By developing an organizational culture, a leader would be defining a universal behavioral approach that every individual within the organization must follow while working within the organization.
This will be a culture where everyone would feel obliged to follow despite some uniqueness the individual may have in his or her personality. This will help a leader manipulate the behavior of the followers in a way that would help achieve the desired result. This would be a recipe for success for the organization.
ABC Model
ABC model is a behavioral strategy or technique used in understanding and managing of the behavior of followers. Emotions play an important part in defining the behavioral pattern of an individual. However, it is important to note that emotions may not be very helpful within an organization, especially when approaching some of the key activities within an organization.
It is a fact that emotion is not universal. What one feels emotionally, may not be the same as what the other may feel because of the difference in factors that motivate such emotions.
If left unchecked, emotion may make the behavioral pattern of employees within an organization as varied as their number. This may not yield the expected outcome because this behavior should always be predictable and focused on achieving specific result within a specified timeframe.
This model proposes a three-staged process of managing behavior of employees in a manner that will help yield the expected returns. It is always based on the premise that for every action there will be a process, and this will have some consequences. This tries to explain the cognitive process that takes place in the mind and ends up defining the behavior of a person.
The process starts in the mind when one starts by thinking that an individual, an organization or process is good or bad. The mind will then take a positive or negative approach. If a negative approach is taken, the mind will develop withdrawal mechanism. This will make the person hate the individual, the organization or process.
When a positive approach is taken, the person will develop corrective measures if the mind considered the process or organization is bad. If the mind consideration was good, there will be an encouragement.
The ultimate result of this positive approach is that there will be a closer and better relationship than before. In an organization, a leader should always strive to ensure that every individual takes a positive approach in managing the emotions within an organization.
Antecedents
Antecedents refer to events which takes place prior to the behavior. These are the triggers that will influence the behavioral pattern of an individual. It is a common fact that behavior is always shaped by the events which takes place within the immediate environment. Human being by nature is reactive. Whenever something happens, it is natural that one would react.
The trigger will always make an individual react in a positive manner or otherwise. These trigger factors may include things that others say or do, the emotional state of mind, or the environmental factors.
These trigger factors should always be managed in order to ensure that they do not derail the focus of an individual. Many scholars have noted that the behavior of an individual can massively be affected by these triggers to the level where the behavior goes beyond control.
As a way of ensuring that employees work without the emotional stress, it is important to ensure that triggers are well managed before they can negatively affect the individual. One way of achieving this is to eliminate or minimize the triggers.
Another way may be to divert the attention of the individual from the triggers. If the person is already exposed to the trigger, then one should consider managing the impact of the trigger by ensuring that its impact are not massively felt by the individual.
Introduction to Performance Feedback
Performance feedback refers to the process of communicating to the employees or junior officers on their performance. Performance feedback is the process of ultimately ensuring that the performance of employees is improved.
For every leader, there is a benchmark used to determine whether an employee is performing within the expectation. Employees will always perform above or below the benchmark. The leader must have a clear and conscious way of communicating with these employees. There must be a way of informing them that they are either underperforming or that their performance is within the expectations.
The leader should ensure that in both cases, the ultimate aim is to improve the performance of the employees, and not to discourage them. For the performers, the message should be congratulation as a way of motivating them. For the underperformers, the message should be clear that their performance is below the expectation, and must be improved if they wish to remain relevant to the organization.
Attaining Goals
Attaining goals can be defined as the process of achieving specific objectives within a specified period of time. In every organization, there are specific goals that are always expected of every individual, department and the entire firm. These goals are set in a manner that will ensure that the organization’s overall success is achieved.
Attainment of the set goals is a complex process that requires leader’s commitment. An employee may not appreciate the need to achieve specific objectives within a specific time. However, the management knows how much these objectives means for the sustainability of the organization.
Attaining of goals will require the direct commitment of all the stakeholders within the organization to ensuring that success is achieved. Success is a process that involves consistent achievement of the set goals within an organization.
The management must be able to motivate employees towards achieving specific goals within a specified time, and in a manner that is within the expectation of the market served, and all the stakeholders of the organization. Goals will only be attained if the firm will be assured of sustainability in all its operations.
Dealing with Unwanted Behavior
Unwanted behavior refers to some of the acts or attitudes of an individual that may be considered undesirable before the public. Dealing with unwanted behavior involves eliminating any negative attitude or behavioral pattern that may derail the expected success of a firm. Several researchers have reported that behavior may be acquired once one is exposed to it.
This means that when an individual has a behavior considered as unwanted, if the behavior is not dealt with appropriately, then it would be spread to other employees of the firm. A bad behavior is easy to spread, especially if it involves issues to do with corruption at work, laziness or total noncommittal to work. It takes a single corrupt deal to make other employees become corrupt within the firm.
It is therefore, very important to eliminate all the unwanted behavior within an organization as soon as it is identified. When the management realizes that an employee or a group of employees are engaged in unwanted behavior, action should be taken immediately to arrest the situation. The relevant authorities should approach the individuals with such behavior and inform them that their behavior is undesirable.
The management should define corrective measures that should be followed by everyone involved without any compromise. It should be clear to everyone that organizational culture should be adhered to strictly. It is through this that the management can eliminate the possible negative consequences that may arise from unwanted behavior.
Training and Development in the Workplace
According to Biswas (2011), employees are the most important asset that any organization can always have. Employees will always determine success or failure of an organization. Working with well trained employees will always result into success for the firm. The world has become very dynamic. The emerging technologies are redefining various approaches of undertaking activities within the workplace.
As a result of this, the workplace has been experiencing a shift in the manner in which various activities are undertaken. For this reason, it has become very important for the employees to be trained while in the workplace. Training and development of the employees in the workplace is the ultimate way for a firm to achieve the desired success in the current competitive market.
Training employees at the workplace may be undertaken using various approaches. One of the most common approaches of training employees is through organized workshops. In these workshops are always organized by the management as a way of allowing employees to present to the management and to other employees the skills they have acquired for a specific period.
This can be done on a single employee basis, or on the basis of the departments involved. Other departments or employees will be expected to learn new better ways of approaching different activities that should be carried out within the firm. Another common way of training employees at the workplace is through the on-job training.
On-job training takes place when the management hires experts to undertake training on employees, especially when there is a new approach that should be learnt by the employees or when a new tool is delivered to a firm. The training would involve the trainers working alongside the trainees (Kezar & Lester, 2009).
The trainees will be expected to master how to undertake certain activities within the firm by looking at the way the trainers are doing it. This would take a specific period before the trainers can be left to undertake the duties on their own.
Organizing seminars is another common way of on-job training. In this case, the management would organize seminars for the employees, most preferable on a yearly basis or after every two years. The trainers would be hired and they will undertake an induction process geared towards ensuring that employees are well-versed with the emerging trends. The seminar may take one week.
After this period, the employees will be expected to be aware of the new trends in their fields. Another way of achieving this is by sending part of the employees to other firms considered to have mastered the art of working on the basis of the new environmental factors. The employees would be expected to stay in such organizations for a specified time and come back with the needed knowledge.
References
Biswas, S. (2011). Commitment, involvement, and satisfaction as predictors of employee performance. South Asian Journal of Management, 18(2), 92-107.
Kezar, A. & Lester, J. (2009). Supporting Faculty Grassroots Leadership. Research in Higher Education, 50(7), 715-740.