REAL ASSESSMENT OF PERFORMANCE Not Just Another End-Term Exam Attrition takes place once the performance management cycle is over, says Puneet Jetli (Senior VP and Global Head of People Function, MindTree Ltd.) |
 The performance management system (PMS) is one of the most important tools for creating the right performance-oriented culture in an organisation. It is not just restricted to defining roles, setting expectations and reviewing performance. It typically has linkages to various other organisational systems like compensation and benefits, learning and development, progressions and promotions, leadership pipeline reviews, and succession planning systems. Therefore, it is a very important system lying at the core of the organisational development process. However, in the last 25 years, it seems that the core of performance management has remained static and it is no longer being perceived as effective. Normally, appraisals are followed by annual salary increases and promotions. Hence, ideally, it should be the most eagerly awaited and used engagement facilitating tool. However, in most organisations, attrition peaks once the performance management cycle is over. Therefore, there is surely something fundamentally wrong for this to be happening. One of the key reasons for this is the philosophy and approach of organisations towards PMS. Most of them are looking at it as a review system for assessing performance and giving a rating, while the concept was originally designed to facilitate and manage the right kind of performance. PMS now seems more like a school end-term exam for people to undergo in order to get a score or a rank. It has become an annual ritual, not occupying the minds of either the people involved or their managers. If the company does not focus on feedback throughout the year and make it an ongoing practice, then it will continue to be ineffective. In a services-oriented organisation like MindTree, people move from one assignment to another, and therefore, it is extremely important that the appraisal exercise gives weightage to one’s work throughout the year rather than what the last manager felt about the employee. Appraisal systems today have bucketed ratings, and at the end of the day, performance has to be categorised into one of these buckets. This is where the problem begins because most organisations by default follow a bell curve. Whether one is a good performer or an average one, all employees are clubbed together. The moment employees feel that their performance levels are not being respected, they will lose motivation. Therefore, this should be an area of focus for all organisations today, and the same is the case with MindTree where the aim is to develop a completely different approach to performance appraisals, by moving towards a system that is more workable and objective. Given the sort of industry we are in, feedback should be linked to performance on particular projects rather than employees having to wait till the end of the year. Hence, a combination of all the assignments becomes the computed score for the employee at the end of the year. This enables the ability to garner feedback from all stakeholders and, at the same time, brings in objectivity since the score is computed based on multiple parameters. Secondly, a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to performance appraisal templates does not work, as the maturity levels, expectations and needs of stakeholders in various groups differ. If required, there should be multiple flavours of the appraisal system available to people to make the process richer and more effective. At MindTree, we have three variants of the system to incorporate different groups of people and the roles they play. |
We have also moved away from the bucketed rating system to a five-point continuum scale. This allows us to gain the real assessment of performance, while also differentiating between the various levels of performance. Everybody is not classified with the same broad brush and we just need to monitor biases than trying to achieve a forced bell curve distribution. In a services industry like ours, it is not only important to assess performance based on the results, but also on how they were achieved. Therefore, 70 per cent weightage is given to achievement of goals and the remaining 30 per cent on ‘how’ one achieved them. The latter is based primarily on two factors: first includes behaviour, mindset and attitude, and second is skill. 360-degree-feedback has a vital role to play. The requirement in this Web 2.0 world is of instantaneous feedback. An appraisal system will be effective only if it is married with the concept of people being able to initiate feedback from any source that has the ability to give input. It is about time we move to a more effective, customised and flexible system of feedback rather than the same, old assessment system that all of us have got used to. |
|
|
