Leadership and Transparent Communication

Discuss about the Leadership and Transparent Communication.

Introduction

Human resource management in any organization plays a vital role for the success of the business by ensuring employee satisfaction. This employee satisfaction is achieved through various strategies including fair compensation, rewards & recognition, open communication and effective addressing of employee grievances.

Performance management is a crucial function of the HR department of any business. Effective performance management leads to employee motivation as well as assists the top management in keeping a fair track of employee performances (Cardio & Leonard, 2014). This report throws light on a unique situation encountered by B R Investments. The current performance plan considers responsibility, initiative, and interest in work, leadership potential, co-operative attitude and community activity while evaluating employee performances. Now that a few employees have been ranked poorly owing to their lack of contribution in community activity, they have expressed dissatisfaction about the entire appraisal system. The employees have also threatened to organize a union. The fear of which has led the chief executive to discontinue to system all together. This report refers to the issue at hand and recommends strategies that can be adopted to address the same in an effective manner.

It is imperative that the performance appraisal criteria of employees relates directly with the organizational attributes and values. If the organization as a whole has taken up community service initiatives as a part of their CSR activity, then it is the responsibility of all the employees to abide by the same (Carroll, 2015). The growth of our community and the betterment of our planet is a key responsibility that belongs to every individual. As an organization, it is a positive initiative to encourage employees to participate in community service. In order to ensure implementation of the same, B R Investments has added this factor in the employee’s performance evaluation.

There are five other attributes that are a part of employee’s performance evaluation plan and hence the impact of a single factor impacting employee’s overall performance would be relatively less. It is essential for the long term growth of the organization that the employees hired by the firm believe in the same value set as the organization. This will enable them to grow together towards a successful future.

Therefore, assigning weightage to all the six criteria based on their relative importance in the organization as well as in the job role of every individual is a more practical and effective solution than eliminating the performance evaluation plan. The weightage given to the community service conducted by the employees can be reduced to an extent but it must not be eliminated.

If I were the HR manager, I would take the following steps in order to tackle the situation.

1. If this were happening for the first time in the organization, exceptions can be made by providing these employees with a relatively less increment. At the same time, the employees would be strictly informed about the importance of community service for future appraisals.
2. Communication within the business also plays a vital role in the success of the organization. Transparent communication helps in addressing employee grievances (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014). Personal counseling sessions could be organized for grieving employees and matters could be clarified through ha face to face communication.
3. Organizational culture must now allow threats of forming a union by the employees to the top management. If the top management succumbs to their needs, then it would be difficult to control employees in the future as well.
4. As an HR manager, I would also ensure that future recruits of the firm are aware of this policy at the time of recruitment. Clarifying things with employees at an early stage leads to smooth functioning of the business and increased employee satisfaction.

The performance appraisal system of the company must continue to include the six qualities as before. These qualities or attributes by which the employee performance would be judged are responsibility, initiative, and interest in work, leadership potential, co-operative attitude and community activity. However, in order to reach a grey ground with the employees and establishing a more practical employee performance evaluation plan, these attributes must be given different weights.

The percentage of these weights would be different for different employees serving different roles in the organization. For example, for an employee working at the top management, it is recommended that he reflects responsibility and leadership ability far more than his interest in community service. Similarly for a new joined recruit, his interest in the work as well as his ability to take initiation would play a more significant role than other qualities.

The performance evaluation must also include a 360 degree feedback system wherein every employee is reviewed fairly by their peers, seniors as well as juniors (Karkoulian, Assaker & Hallak, 2016). Such a feedback helps in providing a true picture of the employees’ engagement in the business. Along with this, the performance of employees must be reviewed weekly or monthly. The output of this evaluation must be available on an online portal for employee’s to check at any given point of time. This would help employees in keeping a tab on their performance throughout the year and work upon improving the areas where they are lacking (Cravens & Stewart, 2015).

Conclusion

Performance management of employees plays a significant role in the success of an organization because it helps in keeping a track of employee performance as well as rewarding competent employees for their hard work. This report has laid emphasis on the performance management issue at B R Investments.
It is recommended that the organization must continue with the performance management system that is currently adopted by them along with a few minor amendments. The six qualities must be given a different weightage owing the role played by these attributes in different employees’ jobs. A 360 degree feedback system must be implemented. The frequency of evaluation must be increased. And lastly, the evaluation must be made more transparent by allowing employees to view it throughout the year from an online portal. Such transparency helps in increasing trust (Men, 2014). These steps would lead to increased transparency and efficiency without compromising with organizational values.

References

 Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S., 2014. Armstrong's handbook of human resource management practice. Kogan Page Publishers.

Cardy, R. and Leonard, B., 2014. Performance Management: Concepts, Skills and Exercises: Concepts, Skills and Exercises. Routledge.

Carroll, A.B., 2015. Corporate social responsibility. Organizational dynamics, 44(2), pp.87-96.

Cravens and Stewart, J.S., 2015. Workplace culture mediates performance appraisal effectiveness and employee outcomes: A study in a retail setting. Journal of Management Accounting Research, 27(2), pp.1-34.

Karkoulian, S., Assaker, G. and Hallak, R., 2016. An empirical study of 360-degree feedback, organizational justice, and firm sustainability. Journal of Business Research, 69(5), pp.1862-1867.

Men, L.R., 2014. Internal reputation management: The impact of authentic leadership and transparent communication. Corporate Reputation Review, 17(4), pp.254-272.