Performance Management Issue

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Employee Performance Evaluation can be viewed as a process that has a series of definite activities leading to the accomplishment of the goal of successful operation of Employee Performance Evaluation. According the model of process of Performance Evaluation there are 10 steps to follow.

Step 1 – Establishing Objectives of Performance Evaluation

Establishing objectives of Performance evaluation is the most important step and it should be align to achieve the organizational vision, mission and as well as corporate goals and objectives.

As above mentioned, the bank has Employee Performance Evaluation Objectives and these objectives are good and well accepted. The critical issue on this is, the bank has developed the evaluation criteria thinking only about the employees who are related to financial departments only. The employees at Engineering, Marketing ,Legal and Administration were not considered as there are no criteria or process to evaluate these departments .They all were evaluated under the column “ special category” where no provisions made available to show their performances .

Step 02 – Formulating Policies of Employee Performance Evaluation

Under second stage of Performance Evaluation Process, Any organization should formulate the polices such as:

- Whose performance should be evaluated?

- When should EPE be done?

- How often should EPE be done?

- Who should do EPE?

When we analysis the bank criteria, It revealed that, both Executive and Non Executive employees are evaluated. Bank has a policy to have two performance evaluation in every year such as midyear evaluation and end of the year evaluation. The Mid year evaluation will not give any grade for employees, but the results are informed to employees by their respective supervisor. Mid year evaluation should be completed before end of July in every year and End of the year evaluation should be completed with the month of December. Each and every employee should do self evaluation first and then it should be done by immediate supervisor. Then it should be reevaluated by the supervisor’s supervisor. And final approval should come from the Assistant Vice President - Human Resource. However, when we analysis the practical situation on performance evaluation, there are lot of issues were noted. Supervisors are giving bias evaluation for their favorable employees and supervisor’s supervisor is not much concern about the seriousness about his duty and responsibility. He just give his approval without going in to the detail. This is happening in the most superior level as well. Therefore, even though, objectives are align with corporate objectives and goals and their policies are well formulated, implementation is not in the standard to achieve set objectives.

Most critical thing is, the above evaluations are not happening as they have been scheduled to be. The mid-year evaluation is been totally neglected as the results are not affect in the final year evaluation s ,so the supervisors fill the documents for the sake of sending them to the HR department. The expectation of the evaluating is not fulfilled and the out come, the bank expect is not materialized.

Step 3 - Establishing EPE criteria and standards

According to the Performance Evaluation model developed by Prof. Opatha, Without specific criteria and standards to judge the employee performance is not a systematic approach and it will not be a fair and reasonable evaluation for all the employees in any organization.

When it comes to the Premier bank, it revealed that, they have set criteria and standards for employee performance, 70% weight is given to achieving the given target. Other 30% is focus on below criteria;

- Planning and Organizing

- Customer Relations

- Facilitator Role

- Communication and Negotiation Skills

- Judging Skills

- Analytical Skills

- Creativity and Innovation

- Decision Making

- Leadership skills

- Value and Profit Consideration

- Honesty and Integrity

- Team Work skills

- Value Addition to the bank ( Extra Contribution & special job achievement)

Standards are set up with the level of achievement of each criterion as follows;

- Exceeds the job objectives beyond the expectations - (E)

- High performance in all areas- (V)

- Accomplish all job objectives, need to improve- (G)

- Performance below expected level - (N))

Setting up criteria and standards in the bank is at a good level. However problem is occurring in the implementation part. Employees are always complaining that all above criteria is not the base for achieving above standards and supervisor favoration is highly matter for getting a “E” grade. Majority of the employees are in “V” Grade and differentiation is very low among them. It is not possible to increase the percentage of “E” Grade and Need to introduce a new grade between “E” and “V”.

Step 4 – Selecting method of evaluation

Every organization should select the evaluation method or methods. There are three general accepted methods available such as MBO ( Management By Objectives), BOS (Behavioral Observation Sales) and BARS(Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales).

Bank is practicing all three methods. But high weight is given to MBO. Traits and behaviors are getting only 20% of total evaluation. When evaluation done for BOS and BARS to measure the Traits and behavior get bias evaluation by supervisors. Employees are complaining that it is not limiting to BOS and BARS, it is bias for MBO as well. This can be controlled by supervisor’s supervisor, but it is not happening in the bank.

Step 5 – Design of Employee Performance Evaluation form and Procedure

When setting up the Employee Performance evaluation method, this is also very important.

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