WHY EXISTING PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT TOOLS DON’T SUCCEED?
Published: 2021-06-22 12:26:17

Most of the HRIS available in the market has got the performance management module since many years. However, most of these PMS modules are fairly similar to each other. I would say, they are close to identical because the work flow and the features are all copied from one another. I wouldn’t blame the HRIS designers or HR professionals who have helped them design and code it into the system because they have been following the traditional flow/ process of a typical PMS.
The traditional age-old process of PMS comprises of the following :
1. Employees and managers set KRA and KPA at the beginning of the year
2.The setting of targets/ goals for each KPA/ KPI whether measurable or not.
3. Employees and managers review the performance/ achievement against targets.
4. HR converts the achievement into %ge achieved and give rating post normalisation
I have worked at leadership levels in HR across many organisations, Indian and multinational and have interacted and closely felt the pain of the stakeholders namely employees, managers and CEO/ MD. The issues faced by them with regard to PMS are as follows:
Data authenticity-
HODs and CEO/ MD are not sure about the authenticity of targets and achievements entered as the data is entered by individuals.
Goals/ targets are not measurable-
Many goals set especially for support functions are not measurable and hence giving a performance score/ rating is left to manager’s discretion.
Lost in data-
There are so many goal sheets of individuals for each period which is impossible to go through and evaluate the right performance rating. Hence these goal sheets are never referred and only the summary of all ratings in an excel sheet is prepared basis which performance ratings are given. This renders the entire performance management system useless.
Data analytics real-time-
This is next to impossible as there is no way to find out the performance trends, top and bottom performers, pin point performance issues, bell curving, performance scores for the month, and YTD scores.
Bias-
Since targets and achievements are inputted by managers and individuals, there is a huge chance of bias.
Dovetailed and relevant goals-
this is only in theory where individual goals are dovetailed to department goals and department goals are dovetailed to company goals. Generally, those goals which are easy and convenient to achieve are what is put inside the PMS system and hence companies land up in a situation where individuals achieve their targets but companies fall short of the target. Goals that are not relevant to organisation also form part of many goal sheets.
Countless hours spent in making presentations-
HODs spend days preparing for monthly MIS presentations wrt their performance. Had the PMS given digital dashboards, so much of time could have been saved.
In-putting goals and achievements a waste of time-
Employees and managers feel that a lot of time is wasted in putting goal and achievement-related data in the system. Further, HR has to do the job of continuously following up with each employee to upload their goal sheets and do the reviews in the system. This makes all the stakeholders hate the system.
Feedback lost-
The feedback given by line managers during a performance review is typically written in the PMS form or given face to face or sometimes even on email. This important multiple feedbacks get lost as it is never captured digitally for all reviews and worse it is never collated.
No performance culture- Many organisations even though they have a PMS system, lack the performance culture and don’t spend adequate time in setting goals. They don’t set targets at a company level and don’t ensure that the company targets flow to the department and individual levels. To build this culture of performance, companies should conduct detailed interventions in this regard to tune people to this culture or else the entire PMS will collapse and will never see the light of the day.
Hence I feel there is an urgent need to have a digitalised and real-time performance management system that will eliminate all the above issues of inaccuracy, bias, not quantifiable, instant measurement of performance, alignment to company goals.
A new age performance management system has been developed by Phi Edge named CATALYST which addresses all the pain points of an organisation.
Ask for a free demo of CATALYST by visiting our website: www.phiedge.in or simply call 9923043450/ 9823260573/ 9833485365.