Job & Edu

Performance Management: A New Approach for Driving Business Results (TMEZ - Talent Management Essentials)

From Wiley-Blackwell

Author : Elaine D. Pulakos
Binding : Paperback
DeweyDecimalNumber : 658.4013
EAN : 9781405177610
Edition : 1
ISBN : 1405177616
Label : Wiley-Blackwell
Manufacturer : Wiley-Blackwell
NumberOfPages : 216
ProductTypeName : ABIS_BOOK
PublicationDate : 2009-04-27
Publisher : Wiley-Blackwell
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Customer Reviews

Rating:
Summary: Insightful and Pratical
Comment: Well written, engaging, insightful, and practical. Gave me the tools I needed to successfully implement a new, large scale performance management initiative at my organization.
Rating:
Summary: Good For the Basics But...
Comment: I am giving the book two out of five stars based on the author's own five-point scale. In her scale a "2" is "sometimes meets and sometimes falls below standards".

The author uses text boxes inset into the body of her chapters. The information is helpful and sometimes summarizes the points she is making. Unfortunately the overall effect, at least for this reader, was distracting. People sometimes develop Powerpoint presentations from books. This seemed almost like a book developed from a Powerpoint presentation.

Overall the author does a good job of summarizing trends in performance management and separates performance management into two basic categories, systems used for employee development and systems used to determine pay and promotions.

Even though the book was published in 2009 it already needs at least slight revision. One federal government pay for performance system she alludes to failed and was in the process of being dismantled by the end of 2009. Another similar system is at least temporarily in limbo and its future is uncertain. Whether other revisions are required is unclear.

The use of either a five-point or seven point scale to describe employee performance advocated by the author leaves the reader with a question. The author agrees that if employees are generally capable and want to do a good job some clustering of scores will take place in the upper end of either the five or seven point scale. This clustering would appear to suggest that practical determinations of pay and promotion will be determined by fractional points of difference between employees. The method of determining these fractional differences is admittedly imprecise. The combination of imprecision and small measurable difference between employees would appear to make legal defenses of pay and promotion decisions taken under such systems at least somewhat problematic.

The author appears to suggest that inflationary trends in a fixed five or seven point evaluation system can be resolved by moving the goal posts on the field farther and farther apart every year. I do not find movable goal posts to be an effective motivational technique. Other managers are entitled to disagree.