Monday, March 19, 2012

Employee Performance Appraisal Management System: An Overview

Career progression of a professional owes much to the outcomes of his or her performance appraisal by the human resource officials of his or her organization. Performance appraisal provides them with feedback that deals with their performance category, quality, and several other contributions to their organizations. Managers, peers, subordinates, and customers analyze the performances and the core values of the employees and also their behavioral practices against a number of attributes or objectives. They use scalar or numerical rating system for evaluating performance. Performance ratings are given to an employee in terms of quality, quantity, time and cost.

In fact, employee performance measurement is a critical task based on review and calculation. Their recent contributions to their companies, their successes and failures, and personal strengths and weaknesses are reviewed by the human resource management officials and as per the outcomes of the review, they decide if the employees should be promoted or they require further training to better suit them with their positions. The most interesting thing is that the review task is definitely monitored by the HR officials, but the task of performance appraisal is done by human resource management software.

Human Resource Software

However, seniors officials, colleagues as well as company associates are tasked to supervise and measure performances of employees of an organization. Even, the concerned employees are also encouraged to self-assess their performances. This process is popularly known as 360-degree appraisal management system. A quality and scrupulous performance appraisal benefits both the company and its employees equally. Should both of them cooperate with each other in this regard; they will be able to promote mutual understanding of their individual needs, business goals and parameters of acceptable performance.

In contrast to these days, employee performance evaluation was performed manually till a few years ago. It has now become web-based with allowing the HR management of a company to perform the assessment task faster and conveniently. Also, the results the online system generates are seamless. With using this valuable system, human resource department of a company can make their decisions and produce flawless the feedback about their employees. There are several purposes and benefits that a user of a performance appraisal system can gain.

Common Purposes of Using an Appraisal System: An appraisal system generates feedback about employees of a user company. On the basis of feedback, HR department of that company can make right decision about the concerned employees also whether they deserve promotion, or require further training. So, while different career factors of an employee depend upon the system-generated feedback, the user company should inform their employees why and how the system is going to be used well in advance, so that employees should also be aware of the pros and cons of the system and its evaluating procedures. Here is a lit of purposes why such system is important for a company.

1. To provide suggestions or feedback about employee performance
2. To point out factors that recommend further training
3. To keep the employees informed about required parameters to win organizational rewards
4. To help make decisions about salary progression, bonuses, promotions, etc. about employees
5. To help the user company to diagnose faults and to amend them accordingly
6. To bridge the gap, if any, between employers and employees
7. To help employees improve themselves through counseling, coaching and orientation sessions
8. To measure if the core values are being followed by the employees
9. To identify if the employees are focused on the set behavioral parameters

The ultimate goal of using performance appraisal system is to move the business forward. So, if a user company can ensure that evaluation of its customer service can help it to reach to its target, then it should consider using the system for the evaluation of performances of all those employees associated with the customer service of the company. Upon considering the results as generated by the system, the company can make decisions about the salary increment, promotions, or giving other benefits to the employees.

So, it is very crucial to decide who is to be evaluated, how they will be evaluated, and what strategic objectives are to be given importance. And, as per the decision, a company should consider which kind of performance appraisal system will be used for. They should go for the one which suits them better. Here are examples of some methods used for evaluating performances of the professionals of a company.

Question & Answer Based Method: Senior officials are asked to answer to some typical questions about their junior colleagues. The answers are, however, purely subjective and evaluated by the system and the system generates feedback accordingly.

Graphic Based Method: As per the increase and decrease of performances of employees, the graphic chart of the system goes up and down with definite and varying marks and standards. This is a popular method for assessing performances of employees.

Peer Vote Based Method: The peers are asked to vote for their colleagues and give views about them as to whether their colleagues are following performance benchmarks of their company.

Objective Based Method: With using an assessment system, a user company can closely monitor the performances of its employees. The system oversees the performances of the employees and generates unbiased or objective results. On retrieving the results from the system, the management of the user company can make appropriate decisions about their employees.

If a company uses such system, it can either customize the application as per its requirements, or else can combine elements of all these methods to optimize the utilities of the system. However, whatever the kind of assessment tools is being used by a company, its employees should be made known about its way of monitoring, so that they can perform or at least try to perform to meet the set-benchmarks of their organizations.

Employee Performance Appraisal Management System: An Overview

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