NadTalk

According to Dana Wilkie (2015), performance appraisal (PA) is not an event to strive to change in personality of employees, rather it should be objective and realistic. Striving for change in personality traits is sheer a waste of time and won’t be beneficial to the organization or mutual relationship.  It is an established fact that people join organizations with their personality traits and the established patterns of behavior. The PA is an event to discuss and find the root cause(s) that impede to achieve the required performance.  It is possible that the problem is not in individuals but in the organization itself.

While discussing performance, it is also important to evaluate the goals and objectives of the organization. It is possible that the goals and objectives have ‘built-in’ problems, therefore, they cannot be attained. The pronouncement of goals and objectives is meaningless if they do not match with the mission and vision of the organization. The actual mission and vision is not what organizations espoused officially in the documents or/and websites; nor is  it what superiors’ think ethnocentrically. Perception matters a lot. The actual mission and vision is how it is perceived by employees and customers/clients.

Organizations reveal their actual mission and vision through integrating different organizational elements that match with the niche market of the organization. Market niche will be determined by organization’s financial resources, human capital, physical environment and technology, operations process, practices and the targeted customers. Organizations will only get back depending upon how these elements are integrated.  For example, asking a selling team to sell a product and services to customers who do not belong to your niche market is an unrealistic goal. Similarly, demanding to produce high quality product when raw material is not up to the standard is a futile exercise.  Unrealistic demands and wishes only lead to promote unethical behaviors in employees and stress, but hardly improves overall long term performance.

It is also important reminder for superiors that employees will not sincerely and honestly put efforts to achieve the goal(s) if they are not convinced that achieving goals and objectives will be beneficial for the organizations. They will not waste their energies to achieve superfluous objectives and goals. Remember, adding the adjective ‘strategic’ does not make a goal or objective more significant.

The event of PA will become futile exercise, if an organization does not know what they can achieve and what they cannot; or what they should strive to achieve and what they should not. Before adding activities, superiors must check whether or not these activities will eventually help to achieve the goals and objectives of the organizations.

Reference

Wilkie, D (2015): Is the Annual Performance Review Dead, HR Magazine, October, Society of Human Resource, USA

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