cover feature
Managing
Performance
Management
BUSINESS IS CHANGING; SHOULD YOUR PM
SYSTEM BE EVOLVING, TOO?
By Melissa Campeau
Imagine a workplace that hums with cooperation
and collaboration. Workers
are fully engaged in what they’re doing,
knocking projects out of the park and
happily going the extra mile for colleagues.
Now imagine it’s performance review
time. Is the hum still happening? Does
it come to a screeching halt? If so, do the
end results justify the time, effort and disruption
of that hard-won flow? And is the
process as agile, innovative and productive
as the organization wants to be?
According to a recent survey by
Corporate Executive Board, a whopping
95 per cent of managers say they’re dissatisfied
with their performance management
(PM) systems and 90 per cent of HR
executives don’t believe their existing systems
yield accurate information.
Those “existing systems” are likely to
follow similar tracks: employees – working
with their supervisors – establish
yearly goals, then managers appraise and
rank employees’ performance in relation
to those goals at the end of the year on a
numerical scale, tied to salary, bonus and
promotion opportunities. There may or
may not be a set number of check-in periods
during the year to ensure employees
are on track to meet their goals.
“Most PM systems are imperfect, but
they’re also such an integral part of an
organization’s culture that resistance to
change, combined with the lack of a new
recognized standard for performance
management, has tended to keep organizations
using the old tools,” said Jose
Tolovi Neto, managing partner with Great
Place to Work Institute, Canada.
But new ideas and new tools are in the
works, now. And a growing number of
high-profile companies have tried their
hands at shaking up their PM system.
GE, for example, abolished its bell-curve
ranking system, which involved assigning
employees a score relative to their colleagues.
Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme
says his company will replace the yearly
HRPATODAY.CA ❚ MAY/JUNE 2016 ❚ 19