Practice of Strategic Human Resources Management in Contemporary Organisations

Changing Trends: Performance Management in the global Context

Performance Management is a Strategic Human Resource Management process

Importance of performance management (PM) cannot be underscore, HRM professional and industry leaders consider as a vital part of SHRM. It contributes to enhance of high performance, motivation, job satisfaction and retention of people. Nevertheless, it comes with many challenges and problems to the practicing manager and the organization.

Traditional PMS should be Ejected

Today many HRM professional even consider ejection of traditional PM to new flexible schemes as the old rigid performance management systems don’t achieve the expected results. Companies such as Google, Accenture and Microsoft have change their performance management schemes to more flexible regular appraisal systems to achieve organizational objectives and motivate employees. () Among the improvements suggested are for a system of continuous appraisals not just one a year or a few times a year. Blue chip organization’s such as Mas Holdings in Sri Lanka have made the appraisal system, weekly and monthly activity and its agile.  Hence world class organizations such as Nestles and Netflix jettison their old stretch goals based appraisal systems to agile PMS in the last decade or so (Jaldeen, 2016). HRM’s of successful companies are making appraisal systems continuous or suggest that it has to be abolished as managers and employees are not satisfied with traditional performance appraisal systems.

Even the famous Bell Curve Performance Measurement process is criticized, new systems performance measure are the popular terms in the lips of HR manager and industry leaders suggest McKinsey, (2016). One of the largest Plantation companies in Sri Lanka Watawala plantations has implemented performance measurement system based on the balance score card. However, scholar are of the view that performance measurement should be implemented before the concept of balance business scorecard. They are of the view the benefits of clustering strategic measurement into different categories both internal and external are vital (Gautreau. and Kleiner, 2001)

A Need to Rethink PMS.

Undoubtedly, a rethinking in performance management is at the top of priority list of many corporate executive’s agenda. A Deloitte manager refers to the process as item that didn’t fit their business needs anymore. Another Washington Post business writer said it’s a “rite of corporate kabuki” that stifles creativity and generates mountains of paperwork with serving a real purpose (Cappelli and Travis, 2016). 

Reference

Cappelli, P., and Travis, A., (2016) The Performance Management Revolution, Harvard Business Review, HBR publishers, October, 2016 Issue.

Gautreau. A., and Kleiner B.H., (2001) Recent trends in performance measurement systems – the balanced scorecard approach Management Research News MCB Up Ltd. 2001 24:3/4, 153-156.

Jaldeen, R.M, (2016) Megatrends; Human Resources Management 2020, Published by The

Training Partnership. Series 1, Volume 1, 2016. Available as download on

http://seniormanagersforum.blogspot.com.

Mckinsey (2016) Ahead of the curve: The future of performance management. Mckinsey

Quarterly, May 2016. McKinsey & Company. All rights reserved.