Where is the PMS?

Where is the PMS?

  1. It’s a performance management system. Not a compensation management system. Managing your compensation smartly was never the objective. Helping teams to improve their performance was the objective.
  2. Assessment of performance was supposed to be 10% of the job. The remaining 90% was aligning  teams, making sure that we chase the right stuff, coaching for high performance and simply being in touch to listen help and support.
  3. The fixed rating system is the devil in the pack. This is the reason why managers hate the system & avoid conversation. This is the red herring which diverts the attention of teams and people managers from the task at hand and pushes the whole process into an unpleasant year end exercise.
  4. There is no reliable method of arriving at a rating, which can substitute the intuitive wisdom of the people manager. Force fitting this intuitive judgment into a discrete rating scale  creates the ill of gaming and charges of “subjectivity”. The longer the rating scale, the bigger this problem. 
  5. There is nothing wrong with "subjectivity" which represents the wisdom  of the people manager based on knowledge and observation. The organisation is strengthened by this wisdom and weakened by artificial methods of substituting this wisdom. 
  6. The way of scaling up the organisation is to scale up leadership. Technology and process are a poor substitute.
Sheena Gujral

~Top 100 most influential HR Leaders in India ~Topmost HR Leaders, North India ~ For Profit (HR COE and BHR) | Social Impact | Think Tank

8y

Ah i was missing the quintessential response starting with Hmm-:) Yes its been really long Deepak.Thank you for your thought leadership which dates back to EXL days and continues via mediums like this.

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Aman Zaidi

Leadership & Talent Development | Organisational Development | Diversity & Inclusion | Experiential Education and Training | Business Storytelling | Executive & Career Transition Coaching | Wellbeing | TEDx speaker

8y

Point 1 (and 3) are so important to understand yet so poorly understood. In all my PMS workshops, point 1 hits participating managers like a ton of bricks. It is on everyone's takeaway list by the end of the workshop. Would you elaborate a little more on points 4 and 5 please, Deepak? The "subjectivity" bit is one that often goes wrong.

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Sheena Gujral

~Top 100 most influential HR Leaders in India ~Topmost HR Leaders, North India ~ For Profit (HR COE and BHR) | Social Impact | Think Tank

8y

Absolutely, technlogy and processes are just enablers...the real horse power lies in developmental converations and people interactions. It is only when we delink "perfromance management" and forced ranking/ comp increases that people will really open up to developmental feedback (rather than thinking that this feedback would translate to a Y ratig and a X % hike and hence i will not agree or absorb what is being said)...

Dhiwakharan Naidu

HR Leader | Workplace-Performance-Executive COACH | Independent Director | Start-Up HR Expert 🐟

8y

Largely........the front line managers are NOT allowed to "think & act", they are asked to only ACT on both 'Performance & Reward ' actions annually (reactive controlling from TOP management). An enterprise that allows the front line manager (proactive monitoring) to 'think & act'.....will have NO conflict on these "concurrent topics"....!!

Dhiwakharan Naidu

HR Leader | Workplace-Performance-Executive COACH | Independent Director | Start-Up HR Expert 🐟

8y

As long as "performance rating" is marked/driven for other employee actions......the TRUE "people performance" will continue to be a missed TARGET....!! Disorderly ORDER is what industry has today......"Performance is an Expenditure >> Compensation is an Investment" ....it should be the other way around (Performance as Investment)....!!

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