Performance Management at Vitality Health Enterprises Inc Case Solution

1. Who should evaluate employees’ performance?

Conventionally, superiors and human resources are supposed to evaluate employee performance. They do so in the light of job descriptions, tasks assigned, company objectives and any other criteria that the company, the managers, and the industry deem appropriate and value-adding. Such sorts of appraisals are called top-down appraisals. The immediate supervisors are considered the best people for this because they know the job and the team. However, a pit fall to this is the conscious and unconscious bias of the supervisor towards or against some employees or tasks. Therefore, to mitigate this, usually, human resource managers are also involved in the evaluation process. The pit fall to that is the human resource manager may or may not be very much aware of the task technicalities. Hence in contemporary practice, top down evaluations, especially if the manual, are discouraged. It is proven that including a variety of people from various levels of organizations benefits the evaluation process, the employee and the organization all of these together. Involving peers, customers, subordinates and other employees from various connecting departments of an organization are expected to provide a clearer, and fairer picture of an employee’s performance and hence all these stakeholders are encouraged to be involved in the process. Moreover, it is an added benefit if IT is also involved throughout the job and the performance evaluation process.

2. What should leaders do when (individual, team, organization) performance is lacking?

Teams are the engines that run a business; if they don’t perform to the optimum, the business cannot function at its optimum. There are a number of ways and procedures that may be adopted to detect and curb low performance in individuals and teams at workplaces. All the strategies begin with communication. Communication means that it is two-sided and not just a monologue from the manager’s side. Clarifying the roles and responsibilities, the values and objectives and the expectations from both sides will set a tone and pace for the team or the individual. Both the parties that is the manager and the employee, will get a chance to discuss what is possible and how much flexibility they could be in a meeting of those expectations. In this manner, both the parties will be aware of what they are getting into and where they need to ask for help or facilitate the other. Once the expectations are set, develop Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in consultation with the team or the individual so that they can own the KPIs and are very much aware of them. Next, evaluate the performance as per the KPIs and provide feedback often. Later on, on the basis of the KPIs, evaluate the performance and weed out the social loafers, the non-performing or the toxic team members from the team. Letting the negative or non productive team members stay on the team makes the high-performing team members uncomfortable and feel less valued. These are some of the ways in which a team leader or a manager can boost the performance of his team and build a cohesive team.

3. Should the new performance review system at Vitality Health be revised?