Prestatiemanagement 2.0?

Abstract

As an HR tool, performance management aims to increase employee commitment and motivation and seeks to ascertain that employees contribute to the strategic goals of the organization. In practice, however, these outcomes are not always achieved, and frustration is growing among managers and employees with the slow, cumbersome and subjective nature of these traditional performance management systems. In response, an increasing number of organizations are abandoning this traditional, mainstream approach to performance management and have begun to experiment with a more flexible, employee-driven approach instead, in which the needs of the employee take centre stage. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of this alternative approach to performance management by exploring (1) what the defining features of this alternative approach to performance management are and (2) how organizations transition from one system to the other. As part of this transition, the focus of performance management shifts from past performance to future performance, while the responsibility for the performance management process shifts from the manager to the employee. Nonetheless, and through a process of experimentation, evaluation, and adjustment, organizations often end up with a hybrid system in which elements of traditional and employee-driven performance management are combined. The nature of this transition can be seen as evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary.