PERFORMANCE
MANAGEMENT
Performance
management
• Is the process through which managers ensures that
employees’ activities and outputs are congruent with
organizations goal’s.
Performance
appraisal
• Is the process through which an organization gets an
information on how well an employee is doing his/her
job.
Performance
feedback
• Is the process of providing employees
information regarding their performance
effectiveness.
Major Myths About Rewarding
Employees
• Myth #1: “Money is the best reward.”
• No. Research shows that money does not constitute a strong, ongoing
reward in and of itself. It is like having a nice office; it can give a
temporary boost in morale and energy. The key roles for money and
nice offices are that they can stop people from feeling worse.
• Myth #2: “Employees are professionals. They should
just ‘suck it up’ and do their jobs.”
• That view is outdated. Times have changed dramatically. Workers can
no longer be treated like machines. They come at a high price and can
cost as much to replace. Workers expect to be valued as human
beings. Today, the rewarding of workers is done as a partnership
between the supervisors and their workers.
• Myth #3: “If I reward every time they do something
useful, I will have to reward all the time.”
• Employees are mature adults. They do not need to be, and do not
expect to be, rewarded for every useful thing they do in the
workplace. One of the most important outcomes from regularly
rewarding workers is that they believe that their supervisors fully
acknowledge their value to the workplace.
• Myth #4: “We’re working to address critical problems,
not to make our workers happy.”
• That is like saying, “This is a wood saw. It should be able to saw wood
all the time. It should not ever have to be sharpened!”
• For staff to be motivated and committed to results or even to
change, organizations must recognize and reward
achievement. Recognition and positive feedback can be very
motivating.
• Too many managers think they do a good job of rewarding
performance, but often they are not doing enough. And the
recognition and acknowledgement doesn’t always have to be
financial reward.
• Make a
• There are four important steps when considering rewards:
commitment.
• Negotiate
agreements.
• Choose rewards
• Maintain momentum.
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PERFORMANCE
MANAGEMENT
APPROACHES
Guiding Principles of Effective
Reward Systems
• There are a variety of ways to reward people for the quality of
the work they do in the workplace. For example, rewards can
be in the form of money, benefits, time off from work,
acknowledgement for work well done, affiliation with other
workers or a sense of accomplishment from finishing a major
task.
• Rewards should support behaviors directly aligned with
accomplishing strategic goals.
• This principle may seem so obvious as to sound trite. However, the goal of
carefully tying employees’ behaviors to strategic goals has only become
important over the past decade or so. Recently, the term “performance” is
being used to designate behaviors that really contribute to the “bottom line.”
An employee can be working as hard as anyone else, but if his/her behaviors
are not tied directly to achieving strategic goals, then the employee might be
engaged only in busy-work.
• Rewards should be tied to passion and purpose, not to
pressure and fear.
• Fear is a powerful motivator, but only for a short time and then it dissipates. For
example, if you have initially motivated employees by warning them of a major
shortage of funds unless they do a better job, then they will likely be very
motivated to work even harder. That approach might work once or twice, but
workers soon will realize that the cause of the organization’s problems is not
because they are not working hard enough. They might soon even resent
management’s resorting to the use of fear. If, instead, management motivates
by reminding workers of their passion for the mission, the motivation will be
much more sustainable.
• Workers should be able to clearly associate the reward
to their accomplishments.
• Imagine if someone told you “Thank you” and did not say what for.
One of the purposes of a reward is to reinforce the positive behaviors
that earned the reward in the first place. If employees understand
what behaviors they are being rewarded for, they are more likely to
repeat those behaviors.
• Rewards should occur shortly after the behaviors they
are intended to reinforce.
• The closer the occurrence of the reward to the occurrence of the
desired behavior in the workplace, the easier it is for the employee to
realize why he/she is being rewarded. The easier it is for him/her to
understand what behaviors are being appreciated.
The Performance Management
Process Model
• An Effective Performance Management Process (PMP):
• Maximizes staff engagement, development, and performance
• Is consistent across units to enhance full development and utilization
of talent
• Remains flexible, efficient, measurable, fair, transparent
• Provides better alignment of staff roles and goals with the university’s mission
• Is a key component to Cornell's inclusion efforts
• Promotes on-going and proactive succession management
• Cornell’s Performance Management Philosophy:
• Addresses the relationship of employees to the institution, from the time they
are recruited, through their growth and development, to the time they depart
• Engages and develops employees throughout the year
• Establishes goals and measures performance to those goals
• Depends on the supervisor giving clear, developmental feedback
• Includes a review of past performance and goals and focuses on future
development opportunities that are aligned to individual, unit, and university
goals