Performance management process

To evaluate a person we need an yard stick.  Naturally we look for the past performance to calculate the personality, strengths and weaknesses of a person.  At the same time we cant rely on the past performance of a person to calculate his/her in the future.  Let me remind the main objectives of the PA 


     Providing developmental feedback
     Rewarding good performance
     Making salary decisions
     Determining potential for promotion
     Providing career planning foundation
     Making probationary  period decisions.

The past performance of the person will come handy to take the above decisions. 

However, to include futuristic appraisal, the manager has to appraise the performance of his team member/staff member at least once in a quarter.  This performance appraisal need not be put on record.  He will have to maintain a record sheet of each member. The manager required to invest some time to sit with his staff member(s) and appraise him/her of his/her weakest points where he/she needs improvement and guide him/her accordingly.  After discussing the weakest points of the member, the manager also have to point out the strong areas of his member and pat him/her for his/her contributions. This final touch will boost the morale of the person and gives a message about the unbiased assessment.   At the end of the year, the manager will complete 4 such appraisals of his member and look for the improvements in the performance and finally rate him accordingly.  It is a little bit cumbersome activity for the manager.

"....Organizations need to be more futuristic in allowing for appraisees along with their appraiser to identify how and what areas the individual would be need to focus on to drive future success..."

This sentence points at something which is difficult to achieve especially if you are dealing with a person at the top management/leadership level. How can we hire a CEO and tell him/her what to do?. Of course the board of directors can give some directions but not an exact blue print. Also, the financial health of your company will add trouble to your performance appraisal. For example: if your organization is not doing well financially and even if you are doing a kind of a great job, it will still affect your performance appraisal. The case of Yahoo and Carol Bartz is a good example. In case of Ms.Bartz, the performance appraisal sounded like this...
"... investors were convinced that Carol Bartz couldn't steer the Internet company to a long-promised turnaround....". Should the investors have advised Ms.Bartz on how to steer the company?

The word 'performance appraisal' itself means evaluating what was performed in the past. So, how can performance appraisal focus on future? Yes, a five-star manager can help his employee by giving guidance on how to perform in future to get a good appraisal. For that, the manager has be a "star player" - one who himself has good ratings, works hard, is unbiased, willing to help his subordinates, ready to mentor and finally, this guy has to be free from "jealousy". If a manager has the following qualities,"....picky on past incidents, fixation on giving a rating, a bell curve fitment and calculating incentive hikes...." then it means the manager is an average manager plus he is lazy, biased and jealous.

Performance should be a major part of the appraisal process, period! Promotions should be more holistic because apart from performance comes the qualities that the performer possesses like Intra personnel skills, inter personal skills, loyalty, adherence to the regulations of the company that person works for, respect and of course leadership skills in the work force. Also reactive and proactive skill sets.

In most of the organization appraisals are performance based which is good up to some extent, but not always, they should include more criteria while appraising someone in the organization like his/her behavior with colleagues and seniors within the department,his/her communication level etc which also made employee think towards the colleagues and seniors which untimely creates synergy in department and will resulted in overall growth  of the company.

Human talent is like a "spark"!  The so-called "redundant" person can turn around the organisation in no time, if he is provided with the right platform, people around him with upright attitude! You require a proper condition to excel.  Ruminating over past, and assessment based on past performance is like burying your bright future!  I fully endorse your view Ms. Vidyarthi.  We have to get out of this syndrome!