E-Performance, E-Learning & Employee Development

Performance and rewards management is built around the basic exchange at the heart of the employment relationship: employees provide performance in return for organizational rewards. This exchange is formalized through a performance management system whose primary goal is to direct and influence employee behavior so that it strongly aligns with organizational goals. It also allows the organization to identify the employee competencies and characteristics that either lead to, or detract from, higher levels of performance.

Performance management encompasses two related but distinct activities:

• Performance appraisal — the evaluation of an employee's contribution to the organization over a specified time period, providing performance feedback about their standing relative to organizational standards and peers.
• Performance assessment — a mechanism that reinforces organizational values, norms, and culture, ensuring that employees pursue the goals the organization requires. A strategy centered on service excellence will shape employee behavior very differently from one focused on cost control.

Performance management serves two broad categories of purpose:

A well-functioning system requires four design components: a clear definition of performance aligned with strategy; a consistently applied appraisal process across the organization; a unified performance measurement framework that enables tracking over time; and regular performance feedback so that employees know whether their behavior is leading toward or away from organizational goals.