Definition of Modern Management Techniques in Performance Management

Dear learners, are you ready for a new topic? It’s quite interesting to see the reaction in us when we utter the word ‘new’. It gives us a feel of freedom, freshness and hope. So, we are going to see some of the ‘New’ techniques, Modern Methods being initiated and implemented successfully in today’s industries.

Talking about the changes, the term of HRM is itself used with different tones like –Human Capital Management. The organisations are realizing the crucial role of their human resource day-by-day. Let us see a few important concepts that have evolved in the recent past, particularly in relevance with the Indian Business World.

The themes and concepts in this lesson are

Competency Mapping

Team performance Appraisals

Social Media and HRM

Successfully implemented innovative methods in Corporates and MNCs .

Competency Mapping

Called in different names like “Competence Architecture”, “Competence management”, “Competence Development” etc, the basic concept of competency mapping is a way of assessing the strengths and weakness of an employee. It helps to

Identify the ability of a person, knowledge and skills, initiatives, team spirit etc

Understanding the ability in terms of management (For example – Skill of influencing and communication as negotiator and sales man)

Developing the ability to perform better and achieve the optimum

Let us see some definitions to understand the terminologies better.

Competency

United Nations Industrial Development Organisation defines Competency as, “A competency is a set of skills, related knowledge and attributes that allow an individual to successfully perform a task or an activity within a specific function or job.”

Competency Mapping

Competency Mapping is a process of identification and developing of the competencies required to perform successfully a given job or a set of tasks.

Competency Map

A competency map is a chart or diagram that represents the important skill sets needed to accomplish the given job.

Competency based HR Management helps the organisation in various ways like recruiting competent employees, managing the performance well and converting the organisation into learning and knowledge based. It further helps in discovering the gaps in organisational competence structure as well as in personal career path. Organisations accept this technique as a better way to combine the capabilities of an employee into one job, and combine the capabilities of group of employees into one team. Career advancement and higher elevations are made possible with this method.

Basically the

Functional skills,

Behaviour and

Past performances are the three domains analyzed.

In short, the competency method helps in

Gap Analysis

Role Clarity

Succession Planning

Growth Plans

Restructuring

Inventory of competencies for future planning

Functional Skills

The requirements to perform a job.

Behaviour Assessment

Personal abilities and skills such as analytical, logical, reasoning and decision making abilities, leadership and listening skills, team spirit, innovationandmorale.Identifyingthebehaviouralstrengthandweaknesses is not an easy task, because the intricacies of a person’s behaviour are well disguised by them. Proper testing methods and questions are important in this method of identifying the complete picture of a person’s behavioural assessment.

Past Performance

The history sheet of the employees past performance helps in mapping the competency. It gives a better understanding on the learning and growth rates, adaptability, leadership and decision making skills, error rates, etc.

Team performance Appraisals

Appraising the performance of a team is slightly different from that of the individual. The first problem arises as the process of appraisals is built for individual employees. Measuring the individual performance and assessing it for team will not be that effective

Moreover, the teams are often cross functional and heterogeneous. If team performance is assessed in whole, the individual contribution to the accomplishment of task goes unnoticed and unapprised which is not a fair appraisal. The solution for appraising employees as team is to appraise the team players as individuals and also as a team. Hence, the concept of appraising the team performance is highly welcome in the new age organisations where teams are the core strength of the organisation. As a part of appraisal programme, actually the team members themselves are asked to assess and evaluate the performance of their co-team members and find the ways to improve the difficult gray areas as a team. In this method, there will be two phases of appraisal – Review and Feedback. Review is each member submits a report of the individual performance of all other members, with a common rating scale. In the Feedback session, each member goes through the rates given by others for him and responds to the reports.

Pros and Cons

A way to enhance this appraisal system is, to ensure the accuracy of the rating, the competent rating method is to be well defined. For example, ‘Quality of work’ may be defined as less than 2% error per month on the productivity of the individual member. In case, a team member was less aware of his team mate’s performance in one particular area, then he has to give a average rating then adjust it according to the bench marked rating, based on the rates given by other team members.

Even though this seems to be a logical approach, the criticism is, while adjusting the rate of the lesser known member’s performance, there is a possibility of getting biased and carried away by other people’s ratings. Employees may not want a member to evaluate his performance on an area, which the evaluating member does not know much. To overcome this problem, a facilitator may be introduced to come to a consensus on issues on how to adjust the rates based on others evaluations.

However, when conducting a team appraisal, it is better to ensure the following for an unbiased and just evaluation report.

Unambiguous goal, well framed and well defined for the team

Performance monitoring system maintained and documented

Regular assessment on fixed intervals conducted among the team members themselves

Social Media & Recruitments and Organisational Culture Recruitments

The other important new HR management practice that had gained prominence in the recent days is recruitments through social media. The social media we mean here includes face book, twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and thousands of other social platforms, forums, blogs – all the technological softwares available in the internet and allows the user to freely express his opinions, questions etc. As we are talking of the webs, let us see a definition that a website gives for social media:

“Social media includes the various online technology tools that enable people to communicate easily via the internet to share information and resources. Social media can include text, audio, video, images, podcasts, and other multimedia communications.”

The area of search for candidates for a right job has become wide, really wide, with the help of social media. For example, a young vibrant candidate searching for a job is not buying employment news paper anymore. The news of vacancies are sent through emails, the email message passed onto face book or twitter, all the people who are in the group gets the message. They pass on through blogs and forums. One who is interested in the job, Googles’ about the company, its product, its status and thinks on the suitability of him and the organisation. He shares his idea of applying to the job on social media and he gets thousands of suggestions, likes and dislikes of his idea, good and bad things about the company etc. The process is called as ‘threads’, a discussion forum where all are free to visit and reply.

The process continues with the candidate applying for the job, long distance interviewed through ‘Skype’ or web chat options, selected and placed at a country, convenient for both organisation and the candidate. In between, he posts his interview experience again in the internet through some social media and others get the benefit of knowing the interview trends.

What we have seen here is a small bit of a big ocean. Social media’s impact is rocking the generation next, and it has shrunk the world further small, from global village to global lane. A lane, where everyone is supposed to know every other one, and reach easily.

The benefits of social media recruitments are yet to be seen in a long run. But, for now, the following advantages can be seen obviously

The employer-candidate relationship is becoming highly transparent and conversational.

Employers can reach the whole world with one click and clear-cut description of what kind of employees they are looking for. This cuts cost and time for advertisement and sourcing of application in the recruitment process.

Candidates comb through the wide choice of employers through on-line, and can reach HR people of an organisation through online again. They often conduct a research on the ex-employees and existing employee’s views and criticisms on the organisation through various social groups and know about the employer beforehand. Hence, the decision to apply to the organization is strong. This cuts down the time for visiting the organization analyzing and then dropping out, sometimes after interview, sometimes even after selection. So now, the candidates apply; will join the organisation if selected, without doubt.

The process of traditional recruitment process starts with employee sending the Resume to the employer. May be in social media recruitments, this would be one of the last. Employer and the candidate, both are actively communicating in the social media, rather than sending the detailed resume for consideration. But beware; Self-boosted image of a candidate may not be true when it comes to real performing the job.

Organisational Culture

The status uploads, photos on the face book wall, the followers quality in the twitter, YouTube uploads, blog likings, blogging initiatives –are all that matters to weigh a candidate, his attitude and suitability to the job. ( dear learners, I know, all these may be sounding like Greek and Latin for all except the new generation young people, for those of older generations - no other go, go and Google to find out!)

The globalization has ignited the competitiveness from inside countries to around the world; hence, organisations are in need of performers badly. Performers in many cases have to be communicators and go-getters. Rise in social media users prove that it is breaking the ice on youngsters to communicate freely, leaving behind their inhibitions and shyness to come forward open and loud with their thoughts. The major advantage being, you need not disclose your identity. In disguise, with a name you like and an image you wish to have, it is like an open ground with unlimited opportunities to voice out thoughts.

Criticisms

The criticisms are all over the social media that the real identity of individuals may get lost and they start living in the illusionary world created by them, as they can create a new identity of name and image and hide the real self behind it. But, sometimes the forums are helpful to create awareness and interesting change in behaviour of people. Let us see an example in activity.

Modern Practices Implemented in Corporates

Before concluding this lesson, let us see some real time implementation of the above said practices which has been instrumental in improving the employee’s performance, in reputed corporations around the world.

TCS – Prestigious Award for best HR Practices

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been rated the Netherlands’ top information and communications technology employer of the year 2012. It has received the highest score (5 stars) in training and development, career possibilities, organization culture and innovation. The award cane after a rigorous evaluation of HR practices among other leading firms in the Netherlands. The award underlines the high quality of TCS’ human resource practices, focusing on personal growth and development of its employees worldwide, the company said in a release today. According to The Hindu, “Strong employee involvement in social initiatives such as the TCS Amsterdam Marathon, which raised funds to fight cancer, reinforces the sense of belonging to a socially responsible organisation.” Further, TCS’s emphasis on investing in a work culture built on social values, continuous learning, trust, empowerment and team work to bring out the best in employees, allowing them the opportunity to realize their potential, is the success of this secret, it seems.

ACCENTURE and its Employee Engagement Practice

Accenture have implemented the Employee Engagement through hiring talent, grooming them to Accenture Work culture and then on to help build careers offering them leadership role. As the demand in human resources and their specialized services increased, they devised a model of employee engagement by describing metrics driven model, to assess how an employee work is engaged and managers to strive over and above their capability. They proudly claim that this goes beyond the conventional mode of job satisfaction. The Accenture’s holistic HR management approach is based on three unique traits of creating growth opportunities, offering them learning and development prospect and lastly compensate and reward them.

HCL and its Special Wall

‘Employees First Customers Second’ – a philosophy introduced in HCL in the year 2005 made them achieve the mission of creating the most respected organisation in terms of innovation, character, credibility and values. Now, HCL has a host of employee-centric programmes, like

‘Job Rotation Policy’ after 18 months in a project (employees are allowed to take their own decision of migrating into projects),

‘Career Power’, a platform that allows the employees to migrate into the role and project of their choice to become technological experts.

EPIC (Employee Passion Indicative Count) is an employeeengagement and retention programme that identifies a person’s passion. The EPIC report enables managers to understand the pulse of their respective teams and every individual employee.

Passion Wall and Passion Club is online platforms of HCL, wherethe employees can share their passion stories and blogs with fellow HCL mates.

GODREJ’S Voice of Employee

Godrej believes that the basic role of HR is to become the voice of an employee. So, they have adopted a unique programme called ‘Voice of Employee’, wherein every employee gets a chance to interact fact-to-face with HR personnel at least once in a year.

Budget for Innovation in employee time – Google