Performance Management

Employee Performance Management and Organizational Success

It is important for an organization attempting to evaluate its own performance to consider a wide range of factors. Though financial indicators are often used to evaluate performance, there is evidence that these indicators result in what is called a lagging outcome, where companies rely incorrectly on economic factors from the past to make decisions about the present and the future. (Rodrigue, 1) Instead, a more effective evaluation strategy should include performance indicators for organizational qualities that produce these financial indicators. Most specifically, by better understanding the implications of such factors as personnel performance and the managerial oversight of such operational performance, it is distinctly possible to create a more relevant way to motivate and measure performance than the typically outdated ways of financial measurement and singular financial incentive. Indeed, this is reinforced by current and predominant research, which contends that “the conceptual and empirical work relevant to this question has progressed far enough to suggest that the role of human resources can be crucial.” (Becker et al, 779)

Much of our discussion regarded employee performance management centered on the changing nature of business today, within which companies “must continually improve their performance by reducing costs, innovating products and processes, and improving quality, productivity, and speed to market.” (Becker, 770) By considering each of these a function of employee performance, organizational management can direct its attention to evolving its operational capacity through personnel.

Certainly, today, businesses are often too complex or segmented, their industries too competitive and diversified, to be understood simply in terms of financial balance or the achievement of strictly external market benchmarks. Traditional markers of company success, or of the success of...