The Trouble with Enhancing Performance Management

One of the most salient features of working with a company that wants to improve their performance appraisal and management system is simple repetition. The majority of companies redesign only a portion of their performance management strategy, although it's more common these days to do a total redesign. Yet, strangely enough, the most common result of these efforts that most companies receive is something that-while bearing a different appearance-ends up working exactly like the old system.

It seems like such a small issue at first, but thousands of company dollars are poured down the drain every year in a futile attempt at this quasi-"redesign". How does this happen time and time again? Typically a company tries to "improve" the present performance management system by starting in the middle and working outwards, without giving serious thought about how to begin.

Great effort also usually goes into modifying the forms, or choosing a completely different way to manage it. What is never taken into account is the basic yet necessary question: "Exactly what do we want to achieve?" In other words, what is the main purpose of this restructuring, and how will it add to the interests of company, management and staff? Many current performance management systems fall into this confusion, or even worse, end up pursuing numerous purposes that can't possibly be obtained, any "new" system to grow from this will function exactly like the previous system.

You would think that the phrase "performance management" has a specific, universally known meaning. Well, in a sense it does, and if you research the term thoroughly, you will quickly discover it involves the exact same basic principles and is used for the same reasons. But for some reason, too many companies get wrapped up in the "idea" of performance management, without ever taking the time to truly understand what the concept means.

Yet when you go outside and interact with people in the workplace, you'll soon find out there are various ideas regarding how performance management is put into practice. One might see the phrase "performance management" and automatically think "appraisal", while another considers two-way feedback between the workers and management staff to be far more important.

In the end, performance management is a procedure that requires careful thought from the very beginning, not something to be handled by haphazardly choosing a spot in the middle and working outwards. No matter what upper management says, it will always come down to personal experience, and by understanding where the problem begins you will save your company a lot of money and effort in the future.