Performance Management System at Greenergy

Introduction and Brief Description

Managing organisational performance so that a company could focus on compliance with its mission and achievement of its objectives while performing in the target market is essential. At Greenergy, a UK-based company that operates in the fuel industry, the approach toward performance management could be improved by introducing an approach toward talent management based on innovative thinking rather than on the basic idea of hard work.

The current levels of market performance are quite impressive at Greenergy, making the company the leading organisation in the UK economy (Greenergy 2019). While Greenergy’s petrol sales and dropped, the demand for diesel-powered vehicles has risen among the company’s target customers (see Appendix A). However, Greenergy’s current strategy for managing its strategic performance and creating a competent, far-reaching HRM approach could use improvements (Greenergy 2019). By embracing the idea of strategic planning, the company will be able to improve its performance since it will guarantee that the firm will translate its vision accurately into future projects and manage them according to the established standards of quality and performance criteria.

Defining Greenergy’s existing approach toward performance management as inefficient would be unfair; after all, the firm has climbed the top of the UK’s market, has become the leading organisation in both its target market and the state-wide one (Greenergy 2019). However, Greenergy may need to revisit some of the approaches toward performance management that it has been utilising so far. Specifically, the company has been using the principles of vertical integration as its organisational management approach Greenergy 2019 (Greenergy 2019).

The proposed selection of the performance management system is justified by the recent decision to expand and capture the attention of the global market (Chege & Bett 2019). The present fixation on the process rather than on people causes Greenergy to lose control over its employees’ motivation and engagement in the company’s performance. As a result, the extent to which the quality management is executed and the performance issues are controlled drops, which may lead Greenergy to a gradual demise in the future (Aguinis et al., 2018). Therefore, the performance management structure observed at Greenergy may require additional changes to keep it sustainable.

Due to the focus on quality management and the willingness to meet the demands set by customers within the target market, Greenergy has been connecting its organisation strategy to the HRM approach and the performance management function quite well (Waheed et al., 2018). Greenergy’s insistent focus on quality and performance efficacy carried out by encouraging hard work has brought the company to the top of its competitive environment (Greenergy 2019). However, caused by the overly emphasised need for excelling in the organisational goals, staff members tend to focus on working hard rather than seeking the most effective solutions to problems, which may hamper Greenergy’s progress and halt the professional growth of its staff.

Literature Review

A coherent leadership strategy with a clear, people-oriented mission and a well-designed system of values are the main constituents of proper performance management in any organisation. Performance appraisal represents a critically important aspect of performance management since it can empower employees to excel in their work if carried out correctly. However, according to Sabiu et al. (2018), the inherent controversy of a performance appraisal is that it is excruciatingly difficult to exert correctly in the workplace environment. Specifically, when performing the appraisal, a line manager has to walk a very thin line between being honest with an employee about their performance and ensuring that participants’ enthusiasm should not fade in case of negative feedback.

Therefore, performance appraisal guidelines have to be rooted in injustice in the workplace context. According to DeNisi and Murphy (2017), recent studies ‘reported that participation (in various forms) was highly correlated with employee reactions, and pointed to the importance of justice perceptions in this process’ (p. 425). When combined with appropriate corporate values and meeting an appropriate perception of their workplace responsibilities in staff members, the use of a performance appraisal is expected to produce outstanding effects on the levels of staff’s engagement and performance rates.

E-learning as the method of enhancing mentoring and coaching processes has recently been introduced into the organisational context and has been enjoying quite impressive success as a performance management tool. According to Agarwal and Lenka (2018), the application of e-learning to inform employees about the demands that the company sets for their performance and the strategies that they can use to improve it offers numerous benefits.

Apart from remote learning, which is crucial for outsourcing and interdisciplinary collaboration among employees, the use of e-learning sparks faster integration of non-incremental innovations in the corporate setting, namely, in the organisational context (Fındıklı & Bayarçelik 2015). Therefore, to shape the present rates of performance management at Greenergy and establish better control tools for performance management, the company will need e-learning techniques.

Admittedly, by using e-learning to increase the employees’ professional potential and improve the current talent management techniques, organisations require a substantial number of financial resources. Consequently, the entire budgeting strategy for allocating the company’s resources and assets will have to be revisited for a firm to introduce e-learning techniques into its corporate setting. The described improvement will also have to be supported by a series of small changes to the workflow and the organisational processes to keep the production of the key goods and services uninterrupted (Chege & Bett 2019). Thus, e-learning entails changes to the organisational processes, which may hamper employees’ performance before they adjust to the new framework.

However, the introduction of e-learning also needs to be distinguished for its positive aspects, such as the opportunity to produce change gradually and avoid strong resistance among staff members. E-learning also enables employees to engage in the educational process remotely, which implies that the training process will become more flexible and allow all employees to participate. As a result, every staff member will gain the needed skills fast.

In this regard, micro-learning deserves to a mentioning as a tool for boosting performance management. The application of micro-learning allows introducing crucial information and essential knowledge to staff members without disrupting the production process, which is critical for a company that operates in a highly competitive setting (Emerson & Berge 2018). The integration of micro-learning ‘integrates nicely into knowledge management practices through situational mentoring,’ as Emerson and Berge (2018) explain, which means that companies will increase their flexibility in performance management (p. 126).

Micro-learning offers the benefits of encouraging innovation since it enables staff members to acquire new skills. In addition, micro-learning is quite an effective tool against reluctance to change, which can often be observed in corporate environments known for their long-established system of functioning (Wei et al., 2015). By teaching new skills bit by bit, it helps employees to accept the inevitability of change and, thus, adjust to the new rules nearly seamlessly (Emerson & Berge 2018). Therefore, the importance of micro-learning is huge in improving performance management and implementing a new strategy of PM in the workplace along with redesigned values and criteria for proper performance.

However, micro-learning does not provide an immediate solution to every single dilemma regarding talent management in the workplace. Although it helps in spurring change and helping employees to adjust to a new workplace climate, it also causes employees to dismiss the importance of consistency in acquiring new skills (Wei et al., 2015). In other words, the approach in question may ultimately fail to prompt the idea of continuous and unceasing learning as an essential quality that an employee needs to advance in their professional area.

Finally, the platform based on which transitioning to a new form of performance management is executed deserves to be addressed. Unless a company implements its performance management strategies based on the concepts of transparency and honesty, staff members are highly likely to perceive appraisals negatively, as Chen et al. (2018) explain. Instead, Chen et al. (2018) suggest creating a system based on trust, openness, and collaboration: ‘the possibility of building information transparency and the longitudinal comparison of perceived performance appraisal results were the best’ (p. 1).

The increase in the extent of openness and reciprocity in communication will encourage company members to view the organisational philosophy and the foundational principles of its ethics as legitimate principles of decision-making in the organisational environment.

Transparency in communication is another issue that is linked inherently to performance management. Unless workplace issues are made fully public and completely transparent, trust between the company leaders and its staff members will be unattainable, as multiple studies explain (Nusari et al., 2018). Therefore, increasing transparency in organisations is the next important step in coordinating the implementation of change and the management of projects within a firm (Gollner & Baumane-Vitolina 2016). By prioritising transparency in project management, one creates premises for an increase in accountability as a crucial aspect of working in the organisational context.

Apart from the opportunity to prove that a company has their best intentions at its heart, the incorporation of transparency into the organisational setting will also help to keep a project on focus and avoid the instances of project derailment, which are quite common in the PM environment (Nusari et al. 2018). Thus, with the incorporation of PM techniques such as transparency and accountability, one will ensure more effective project management and create new opportunities for achieving set goals. The principles of transparency are also believed to help in modelling the required behaviours in employees and shaping their value system so that they could accept corporate ethics and apply it to their decision-making. Thus, project management can be implemented adequately in any organisational context.

Performance Management Critique

The HR function, which Greenergy has been creating over the years of its existence, seems to revolve mostly around the idea of consistently hard work and does not involve the active promotion of human resource development in the form of active training and acquisition of innovative knowledge and skills. As the Balanced Scorecard analysis shows, the processes of learning and growth are presently the weakest link in Greenergy’s performance (see Appendix B).

Overall, the influence that the HR function exerts over Greenergy’s staff needs to be reinforced by challenging the company’s perception of HRM and focusing on talent management and the possibilities that investing in employees’ performance excellence will open in front of Greenergy.

The problems linked to the control of service quality is another problem that needs to be handled through revisiting the present tools and strategies for building a system of corporate values geared toward transparency as the foundational principle of relationships between the organisation and its staff. As Ingrams (2017) established, creating informational transparency within a company leads to a decline in the range and number of errors made in the course of information management and decision-making (Ingrams 2017).

However, it can also serve the function of facilitating the acceptance of performance appraisal by staff members due to the principles of honesty and objectivity that it helps to promote (Ingrams 2017). With the inclusion of transparency as a part of the corporate policies and philosophy, one can expect an improvement in the outcomes of performance management at Greenergy.

In addition, the current performance management will require a better communication approach. Consequently, the role of a line manager will have to be revisited and emphasised. Due to the lack of an effective communication channel between Greenery and the people employed in it, the current performance management philosophy oriented at ‘hard work’ without any incentive for innovativeness and initiative reduces the extent of employee engagement (Lintukangas et al. 2019). By using the services of line managers to create a communication channel between the organisation and its staff, Greenergy’s HR managers and leaders will be able to observe the problems with employee engagement and employee satisfaction rates. Thus, the levels of staff’s retention will rise at Greenergy.

Finally, the role of performance appraisals in maintaining the required levels of employee performance and establishing control over it to construct a valid performance management framework needs a mentioning. DeNisi and Murphy (2017) mention the difficulty of promoting justice in the workplace, yet the specified obstacle can be addressed by shaping the ethical climate within the organisation and defining the role of a performance appraisal as mediating as Saibu et al. (2018) suggest. Once the act of a performance appraisal is seen as the tool for informing employees about their progress and the improvements that they can make, the probability of a conflict and the subsequent engagement problems will be minimised.

Recommendations for System Improvement

To switch from the current focus on hard work to a more productive notion of critical thinking in decision-making and flexibility in managing the workflow, Greenergy will need to reintegrate the principles of talent management into its design by creating additional coaching and mentoring opportunities. By using the services of professional coaches, which can be outsourced from Greenergy’s partners in business, the organisation will establish a coaching system within which mentoring initiatives among staff members will be encouraged.

In addition, the use of e-learning tools as the basis for creating effective mentoring and coaching programs within the firm will also support the creation of a more sustainable performance management technique. As the review of the recent studies has shown, e-learning is expected to incite organisational development and help employees to share their knowledge in a more effective way (Lintukangas et al., 2019).

Moreover, the integration of micro-learning techniques as a part of the coaching and mentoring practices within the organisation should be accepted as the principal strategy for improving the performance system. Specifically, Greenergy will need micro-learning to help staff members to transfer to the use of innovative techniques seamlessly as soon as they emerge in the organisational context. Thus, the process of change will be institutionalised in the Greenergy corporate environment using the SMART techniques as listed below (see Appendix C).

The training, learning, and development (TLD) function, in turn, will enable the firm to understand how its employees see organisational and production-related processes (Saibu et al., 2018). Furthermore, with clear learning goals, Greenergy will launch a development program that will help to build teams of staff members that will prompt the professional growth of others, boosting their enthusiasm.

Conclusion

Although Greenergy has been performing outstandingly in the UK market and has reached the top of its industry, it can lose its influence unless it develops a more people-oriented approach toward performance management, at the same time retaining its high-quality standards. Changes have to be made to Greenergy’s performance management strategy by incorporating microlearning tools and promoting both vertical and horizontal integration of the processes within its organisational setting so that employees could receive relevant information freely and communicate effectively. In addition, the existing talent management will have to be reinforced by offering mentoring and coaching options for staff members.

The coaching task will require outsourcing and the use of professional coaches’ services, whereas mentoring will be performed by creating workplace teams of enthusiast who will prompt professional growth among the members of Greenergy.

Appendix A: Greenergy’s Sales: Diesel vs Petrol

Appendix B: Greenergy’s Balanced Scorecard

Appendix C: Greenery’ SMART Objectives

Reference List

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