Human resource management practice I also available by michael armstrong

Part 

6

  Performance and Reward

342

FIgure 

25.2

 

Visual performance assessment matrix

Possible actions:

Business performance 

B

eh

av

io

u

ra

l s

ty

le

 

Low

Low 

High

High

• medium reward

• provide feedback

• coach/train to improve delivery

• set milestones

Employees placed here

have an effective behavioural style

but are not delivering well

Possible actions:

• full recognition and high reward

• challenge/stretch

• fast-track career (talent

  management programme)

• coaching 

Employees placed here are top

performers

Possible actions:

• provide feedback

• coach/train

• set milestones

• monitor

• decision whether to continue or

  end employment

Employees placed here have both

behavioural and performance

problems

Possible actions:

• medium reward

• recognize contribution

• provide feedback

• coach to improve style

Employees placed here have

good business results but need

to focus on style

emotional process. Above all, it is an inexact, human 

process.’

As a human process, performance management 

can promise more than it achieves. Some years ago 

Keith  Grint  (1993:  62),  referring  to  performance 

appraisal,  asserted,  famously,  that:  ‘Rarely  in  the 

history of business can such a system have promised 

so much and delivered so little.’ More recently, Shields 

(2007:  6)  argued  that: ‘Ill-chosen,  badly  designed 

or  poorly  implemented  performance  management 

schemes can communicate entirely the wrong mes-

sages as to what the organization expects from its 

employees.’ Coens and Jenkins (2002: 1) delivered 

the following judgement:

Throughout our work lives, most of us have 

struggled with performance appraisal. No matter 

how many times we redesign it, retrain the 

supervisors, or give it a new name, it never comes 

out right. Again and again, we see supervisors 

procrastinate or just go through the motions, with 

little taken to heart. And the supervisors who do 

take it to heart and give it their best mostly meet 

disappointment.

Performance  management  can  be  modelled  con-

vincingly  as  a  system  (see  above)  but  the  acts  or 

failures  to  act  of  fallible  human  beings  prejudice 

the effectiveness of the system in practice. Duncan 

Brown (2010) commented that:

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