In the previous post on Performance Management Realities, I mentioned the bottom of the pyramid and how it becomes nigh impossible to have a productive dialogue between the manager and the job holder.
Chances are this vast population is assigned routine tasks, either on the assembly line as production or quality officers, or as back office support staff and administration officers. Motivating this group can be a challenge and understandably so, their managers keep piling on work, mostly repetitive in nature. The smarter ones find a way to beat the system while the rest merely burn out or remain resigned to status-quo.
The underlying threat here is that when these employees become disengaged employees, they can cause a lot of damage that may not be apparent right away but can definitely hit the very fabric or culture of the organisation, in the long run.
This is where the importance of HR being aware of the business is deeply rooted. Without a fair understanding of operations of the business, HR can never make a case of how important it is for the operations managers to conduct a meaningful appraisal discussion with their reports. Alongside this, the senior management - heads of functions/departments need to play a big role in communicating with this group of employees, perhaps in the absence of their direct manager(s). This skip level appraisal meeting can throw up insights that would get overlooked if left to their immediate manager(s).
Middle management is usually better off with feedback but to ensure that the next level of employees appreciate their role in the larger scheme of things is quite a task.Here again, the intangibles play a huge role and HR would do well to incorporate aspects of HOW these employees go about their jobs and not just HOW MUCH they do. Being a sizable population, they need to be trained in understanding the values of the organisation and what actions demonstrate such values.
Another approach would be to include a section on 'internal customer' feedback. This way, the job holder is taken that extra step closer to understanding the importance of their role in the organisation.
The bottom line therefore points to having multiple formats of the appraisal mechanism. This also means HR needs to get trained on the 'business' and 'operations' and subsequently devise methods that truly provide scope for evaluating performance and its impact, regardless of the nature of the job. Emphasis needs to be laid on the development opportunites and subsequent growth within the organisation. Only by involving the senior management in periodic reviews of this band of employees can organisations live up to claims such as 'people are our greatest asset', 'we believe in meritocracy' and the like.
Now I feel like the previous post is complete. :-) I really liked the notion of internal customer feedback but perhaps a dialogue instead, after all they also need to let their tormentors know how they are being tormented. Sometimes, just having an opportunity to air opinions can be a relief.
ReplyDeleteThe need for HR folks to understand business processes is so important and equally overlooked. Until they reach the point of making arguments based on operational processes, HR will lack the credibility required to participate in organizational development in the true sense of the phrase.
Great post, Machcha.