Performance management, performance review or performance evaluation used by different establishments talk about the same thing, it has to do with aligning human resources with the company’s corporate objectives, evaluating their performance and recommending proportional rewards. It involves skill planning, skill development, and maintaining a good pay-for-performance culture in an organization.

Over the years, effective performance management has been shown to improve employee loyalty, morale, and overall productivity. Mainly due to today’s highly competitive business environment, there is a need for companies to increase the morale and loyalty of their employees in order to withstand the heat of competition. Due to the high cost of selecting, recruiting, training and developing new employees, it is imperative that companies motivate and retain their high performers. What I’m saying, in essence, as an HR expert, you need to have a good performance management system in place in your company to help motivate and retain the best, align individual performance with corporate objectives, thus creating a workforce more involved, which will lead to higher productivity. A very good performance management system must include the participation of employees and management so that it is impartial and fair.

There are different steps involved in managing or evaluating performance depending on the type of business or size. These steps may not be strictly followed, but they will help to get a good review result. The following steps will act as a guide to good performance management:

Define different jobs. Every job or duty should have a name. The department to which each duty reports must be established and known.

Define job duties. There should be clearly defined duties and responsibilities for each defined job. It must be done clearly to avoid clashes and interference between different jobs.

Define performance goals: Performance goals should be defined with measurable results.

Define the priority for each job objective and responsibility. The top priority for each work objective should be clearly stated for easy evaluation and measurement of the outcome/result.

Define the performance standard: For each key component of the job, a performance standard must be defined to know when a staff has performed below or above the given standard.

Keep a record of all staff performance before, during, and after each appraisal exercise. It is always good to have records kept for each staff member in your file. Discussions with staff supervisors and with staff should be noted even when the assessment exercise is not in progress. It will surely be helpful during any evaluation exercise.

The Evaluation form must be elaborated: The form must have columns for the evaluator and separately for the agreement or disagreement of the evaluated with the comments of the evaluator on it, as well as the comments of the evaluated (Self-assessment).

You can provide a feedback column – this column will be used to get feedback from the employee’s peers, customers, or subordinates, if necessary.

It is very important to have a training need column on the form: A very important aspect of an evaluation is to find out how an employee is performing in their current role and, if not, why they are not performing, as well as training needs. training that can be used to improve performance.

Reasons for performance evaluation in a company:

Aside from the general reason of increasing staff morale, motivation, engagement and productivity, there are other simplified reasons why companies conduct performance appraisal exercises. These reasons include:

To provide feedback on individual performance in a given period: Companies hire because of the need they want to satisfy. During appraisals, companies find out whether employees are adding value to the company or not.

To plan for the future Promotion: As a reward for performance, employees are promoted and given greater responsibilities and authority. A performance appraisal or review is needed to know which staff should be promoted.

As a succession planning tool: Dynamic and future-oriented companies plan today for tomorrow’s leaders by planning how to hand over power, authority and the operation of the company in advance. The performance appraisal exercise shows employees that they are future leaders.

To assess the Training and Development needs of employees: A good performance appraisal exercise reveals the training needs of employees.

Provides input for salary planning: After evaluation, some staff members are promoted to the next level, attracting salary and allowance increases. In addition, some staff members who are not promoted are also rewarded with gifts or salary increases. This helps in planning the salaries of the staff.

Career Planning: Career planning is a corporate organizational issue. After evaluations, it is always found that most of the employees are working in departments for which they have little or no skills. This generally affects both their individual and overall corporate performance. The results of the performance evaluation help to plan and reposition the career of the employees.

It should be noted that performance evaluation is a very important aspect for the growth and future positioning of the organization, as such it must be carried out with all seriousness and sincerity. The HR person must be able to advise all supervisors and managers before each appraisal exercise to avoid getting a biased result, which will ultimately affect the overall productivity of the company. Supervisors/managers should avoid elements of favoritism or emotions during evaluations. Most managers use the appraisal exercise as a time to get back at subordinates. This is a wrong approach to evaluation. Assessment exercises must be fair and non-judgmental. Before a manager can evaluate her subordinate, she must be able to know the employee very well, the objectives of the company, the products/services she handles, her clients, other colleagues, the objective given to the staff, etc. before a fair and impartial trial. you can give.

Finally, for any Performance evaluation exercise to be successful and without prejudice, the established Goals must be “SMART”. This means that the goals must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and with a Time Frame. Individual goals must be aligned with corporate organizational goals. The employee’s self-assessment/assessment must be included in the evaluation form. Both the supervisor and the subordinate must be allowed to participate in the review. The ratings must be clearly indicated with the reasons for each rating. There should be a final column for Human Resources staff to evaluate the review and make a final recommendation for Management approval.