Strategic Human Resource Management Operations

Question: Discuss about the Strategic Human Resource Managementfor Operations. Answer: Introduction Accenture is a global management consulting and professional services company that provides consultancy services to its clients in the field of technology, strategy, operations, etc. The company is a part of the Fortune Global 500 company and has an approximate workforce of 394,000 employees as of 2016. In a recent tide of events, the company decided to put an end to its performance reviews and bring a massive change in its internal operations. The reason for dropping the performance reviews is that the system of reviews failed to fulfil its objective of promoting better staff performance. The firm plans to switch to a system in which all the employees will receive regular feedback from their superiors. Is Dropping the Performance Reviews a Good Idea for Accenture? As discussed above, Accenture is one of the worlds top companies with a lot of capabilities in the consultancy sector. The company has been developing technological solutions for its clients that have helped its clients in increasing their performance levels and becoming more competitive. The company is so efficient in its field that 82% of the employees at Accenture say that their workplace is great. Further, 89% of the employees working at Accenture feel that the management is competent at running the business while 88% of the employees feel that the management is honest and ethical in its business practice (Accenture, n.d.). Therefore, the decision taken by the management to switch to a new performance management system is definitely a calculated move and must have a reason behind it. The decision to drop the performance reviews at Accenture is a great idea for the company because: First of all, the company came to realize that the system, which the company was using to measure the performance of its employees, was not successful as it failed to fulfil its sole objective of promoting better staff performance. It has been found that sometimes, the system of measuring performance can be dysfunctional and can cause greater harm to the performance levels of a company than the benefits of an efficient performance management system (Spekla Verbeeten, 2014). Secondly, the firm itself had doubts related with the efficiency of the system and wanted to switch to a more fluid system of measuring performance that would include receiving regular feedback from the superiors. Thirdly, the company also discovered that the performance review system that it had been using in the past was resulting in a wastage of a lot of important resources. Conducting annual appraisals required a lot of time, money and the entire workforce had to put in a lot of efforts to make it happen. Thu s, this system of performance reviews was getting far beyond the reach of the management and it was becoming difficult for the management to manage such a complex system. Fourthly, the company realised itself the the system of performance reviews was dysfunctional in itself. A system that comprises of forcing rankings along some distribution curve could not be efficient because it might foster a negative feeling amongst those employees who had contributed a lot of their efforts towards the achievement of the organisational goals and objectives throughout the year (Klikauer, 2016). The company also believes that it should place its trust in the employees that it had recruited in the first place and should not undertake strategies where their efforts are reviewed again and again. Rather, the management at Accenture wants to provide freedom, authority and delegation to innovate to all the employees because the company itself has recruited the best possible fits for filling up its workp lace. On the overall, the decision of the company to drop its ongoing system of performance management is a good yet strong decision even though it might involve bringing about a major change in the entire organisation. It is very important for a global company like Accenture to discover redundancies in its operations and human resource management and remove them so that it can minimise its operational costs and can avoid wastage of important resources, which will ultimately help the company in becoming more competitive and efficient. Future Impacts of the Change on the Company Accenture has planned to take a very bold move that will make the entire organisation go through a major makeover that will definitely have some impacts on the company in the future. The company has valid reasons that are forcing it to undertake such a major step and undertaking such a step might also allow the company to bring down its operational costs and save a lot of resources that were earlier being directed towards the performance management system. Although, the results might be in favour of the company to a certain extent, the company might face a number of problems in the longer run that can cost the company more than it is intended to save through its bold move. The issues that might end up increasing the cost of the company because of the change being introduced are discussed below: First of all, a lack of performance ratings can result into decreased job engagement amongst the employees. For an organisation to perform better, it is a must that the employees of the company are engaged in their work and measuring their performance along with an appraisal system is one of the best ways to keep them engaged. The move of Accenture to drop its system of performance rating might reduce the level of employee engagement in the company and bring down the overall productivity and efficiency of the company in the longer run (Adler, et al., 2016). Secondly, another major benefit of having performance ratings and performance appraisals is that it provides an exceptional framework for the company that helps it in analysing the lacking skills in the employees. Using performance measurement systems, companies are able to diagnose the areas where its employees lack competencies and are required to be trained or developed in those areas in order to improve their efficiency. If th e company drops its performance measurement system altogether, it might not be able to assess the training and development needs of its employees in the near future and will lose the ability to continuously increase the competencies of its workforce. Thirdly, many employees are themselves in favour of performance management systems as performance ratings by the management allows them to assess their competencies and compare their performances with benchmarks fixed by themselves. In absence of a performance measurement system, the employees might not be able to identify the areas where they need to improve and might lose interest in their jobs (Chatterji, Durand, Levine, Touboul, 2016). Fourthly, another major benefit of analysing the performance of the employees is that it helps the management in succession planning. It becomes easier for the management to identify employees that have the potential to take up higher positions in the organisation in the future using a system that me asures their performances. In absence of a performance rating system, it might become difficult for the management to identify the employees having the right potential to move up in the organisational hierarchy and the company might also face difficulties in fulfilling its human resource demands internally. Lastly, a major issue that the management might face is related to the motivation level amongst the employees. One of the reasons why organisations use performance management systems is to keep the employees motivated by associating the system with some kind of rewards, such as increase in pay, promotion, etc. but in absence of a performance management system, the employees might feel demotivated and show a decline in the performance level (Gomes Romo, 2014). The above mentioned issues can definitely result in a decline in the overall productivity and efficiency of the company and the organisation might end up paying more than the costs that it intended to save by dropping its performance measurement system. Recommendations for Future Performance measurement Performance management system is a necessary evil that every company has to execute to manage its human resources appropriately. Though performance management systems are time consuming and require a lot of resources but they are also very important from the perspective of human resource management. Therefore, the company should not give up on performance ratings or management altogether as it might cause some serious issues in the near future. some recommendations that the company can use to monitor, assess and improve the performance of its employees effectively is discussed below: 360-Degree Performance Review: As evident from the case itself, the company wants to drop its performance management system and switch to a system where it can evaluate the performance of its employees on the basis of their individual role and performance. Thus, a 360-degree performance review will be one of the best options for the company. In a 360-degree performance feedback system is a process in which employees receive anonymous and confidential feedback about their performance from people who are around them. In such a system, all people i.e. managers, peers, juniors, etc. provide a performance feedback (Karkouliana, Assakera, Hallakb, 2016). In a system where an employees superiors, colleagues, subordinates and even customers provide feedback about the performance of an employee, the results obtained are better and have a higher accuracy. Some advantages of a 360-degree feedback system are discussed below: It will allow the company to have a performance feedback of an employee that is more accurate and reliable (Aggarwal, Sundar, Thakur, 2013) It provides an excellent framework for the employees that can help them in increasing self-awareness as it provides a detailed account of their strengths and weaknesses (Buckingham Goodall, 2015) Using a 360 degree feedback system will also allow the company to continue to assess the training and development needs of the employees even if it drops its system of performance ratings A 360 degree feedback system will provide multiply rated feedback about the employees that would allow the employees to uncover blind spots in their behaviour. A 360 degree feedback system is a relatively new concept that a lot of business organisations have started to implement in their workplace because of its potential to improve their system of performance measurement. This system has a greater efficiency than the traditional performance management systems and also require less resources for executing it. Thus, Accenture can also assess the potential of this system in accordance with its workplace conditions and replace its previous performance management system with a 360 degree feedback system in order to achieve better end results. Conclusion Accenture is one of the top global companies in the world and has been able to achieve this success because of its efficient management techniques and a high performing workforce. The decision of the company to put an end to its time and resource consuming performance management system that was not helping the company in achieving its primary objective of boosting employee performance is definitely a calculated move but the lack of a performance management system might have some serious implications for the company in the longer run. 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