Employee Attitude And Performance Management

Employees are the major drivers of any form of business and good employee performance is the most important need for the current competitive business environment to run successfully. Many organisations have started to attach a great emphasis towards the knowledge workers as claimed by Armstrong and Baron (1998) which makes it even more essential to understand the various practices of performance management. Performance Management and Performance Appraisal are very important tools; it helps to motivate employees to work hard and improves overall companys productivity

Based on the study of Armstrong (2000) , performance management aims at improving the current results of the organisation or individuals or a group. A simple way to describe performance Management it is A process that significantly affects organizational success by having managers and employees work together to set expectations, review results and reward performance (Bowen, J. 2007).

Performance appraisal is a way of giving employees feedback about their performance at work. According to ACAS (2003) ¿½Performance appraisal is an assessment of employees performance, potential and development needs. Performance appraisal is an opportunity to take an overall view of work content, loads and volumes, to look back on what has been achieved during the reporting period and agree objectives for the next( ACAS, 2003).

1.1 Background Study

Research Question Performance Management &, regular, balanced and systematic appraisals must be administered consistently in order to evaluate the performance of each individual in the organization. This allows human resources to pinpoint the weaknesses of an individual¿½s work style and the strengths. They can then share this information with the employee in order to affect a change in performance. This in turn will lead to more productivity and potentially better returns on human investment. Design of Organization, Analyze the work processes and recommends improvements when necessary. HRM also need to scan the world environment and identify emerging trends that will affect the organization and the management of people therein. In this role, the HR person contributes to the development of and the accomplishment of the organization-wide business plan and objectives. The HR business objectives are established to support the attainment of the overall strategic business plan and objectives. performance appraisal method that ¿½ranks individuals performance by counting the number of times any one individual is the preferred member when compared with all other employees in an organization¿½ (Decenzo, D and Robbins, S. 2001)

According to Rue and Byars (2003) they illustrate the Paired Comparison Method using an example ¿½Suppose a manager is to evaluate six employees. The manager firstly compares the first employee with the second employee on a chosen performance criterion, such as quantity of work. If the manager thinks the first employee has produced more work then the second employee, he or she gets a higher rating. The first employee is then compared to the third, fourth, fifth and sixth employee on the same performance criterion. A better rating is given to the employee who produced the most work in each of these paired comparisons. The process is repeated until each employee has been compared to every other employee on all the chosen performance criteria. The employee with the best rating is considered to be the best performer. Likewise, the employee with the lowest rating is the lowest performer¿½. The main drawback of this method is that it can be used only in small organizations, with small numbers of employees, but in large organizations with large number of employees, it is difficult to compare each employee with every other employee in the organization.

An appraisal method in which the employee¿½s performance feedback comes from such sources ¿½as self assessment, peers, team members, managers in the organizational hierarchy, and also from external sources such as customers, suppliers and other interested stakeholders has become very popular in contemporary organizations¿½ (Decenzo, D and Robbins, S. 2001)

360-Degree appraisal is a very useful tool, the data for appraisal is collected from a wide range of resources and it provides a very through picture of how an individual¿½s performance is viewed and can be an extremely powerful tool in analyzing performance. According to Foot and Hook. (2005) they state. ¿½To have any genuine value or meaningful impact, 360? feedback must be far more than a standalone activity. It should involve managing the individual¿½s expectations, aligning questionnaires to competency frameworks, setting goals to integrate the exercise into personal development plans and providing feedback from trained facilitators. The process surrounding the 360? process itself is complex, and how well HR and learning managers plan that process will determine what impact it will have¿½ this shows that while 360? feedback is not an easy process to introduce into an organization, ¿½it does nevertheless provides a powerful tool that fits well with the performance management and performance appraisal approach¿½ (Foot, M. and Hook, C. 2005)

Career Management, managing people is one of the most difficult aspects of organizational management .It means dealing with people who differ physical and psychologically. HR need to always talk with employees to find out what are individual assessments of abilities, interests, career needs and goals or all kinds negative feedback.

1.2 Research Questions

1. What is the relationship between performance appraisal and Employee attitude?

2. What is the attitude of employees towards goal setting?

3. What is the attitude of employees towards agency relations?

4. What is the attitude of employees towards dynamic capability?

5. What is the employee attitude towards relevant resources?

1.3 Research Objective

1. To investigate the relationship between performance Management and employee attitude

2. To investigate the employee attitude towards goal setting

3. To investigate the employee attitude towards Agency relations

4. To investigate the employee attitude towards Dynamic capability

5. To investigate the employee attitude towards Relevant resources

1.4 Problem Statement

Many SME¿½s in Malaysia are facing numerous problems in the current business world which comprise of the information age, development of the technological factors at a rapid pace and globalisation are some examples, these changes are very rapid and highly unpredictable and the only department which manages this pressure is the HR department and the polices of the department which have equipped themselves to overcome these situations and volatile changes in the business environment and such policies include manpower planning performance plans and development performance plans and frequent appraisal of employees and performance guidance. Many organisations fail at this level which is a major concern, and the organisations which have overcome these obstacle have gone a long way bringing in many revolutionary changes in the business world and HR practices. (Becker et al., 2001; Zairi, 1998).

1.5 Significance of the study

SME¿½s represent the major group of business organisations in Malaysia based on the Malaysia SME¿½s Report (2008) which contributes to a total of 99.2% , which in itself has its own significance and lays emphasis behind conducting this research study . The research paper also aims at establishing the relationship that exists between performance management practices and employee attitude. The purpose of this paper is to establish the relationship between performances

1.6 Research design and research context:

The research philosophy which the researcher thinks is suitable is the positivist philosophy of research. The method used will be a survey method with questionnaires with both primary and secondary sources of data. This will include questionnaires, interviews and document analysis. The data analysis technique for the proposed research will be multiple regression analysis to find the relationship between the variables. In terms of the research context, the proposed research is based on Ahsan Ullah and Routray¿½s (2007) research employee attitude and performance management in Malaysian SME¿½s. The research will be carried in Malaysian SME¿½s. The reason for choosing Malaysian SME¿½s for this research purpose is largely due to their representation in Malaysian business as claimed by the Malaysian SME¿½s Report (2008).

1.7 Structure of Dissertation

The dissertation is laid out in five chapters; the first chapter introduces the reader to the concept of Mutual funds and describes the aims and objectives of the study. The actual study begins from chapter two with Review of Literature analyzing the concept of mutual funds and assessing the previous research carried in analysing the mutual fund performance. The contents in the research report can be elaborated briefly as shown under the following headings.

Chapter One: Introduction

The first chapter of the research study as the name suggests the chapter introduces the study and the major area of focus in the research. The chapters clearly describe the aims and objectives of the study giving the reader glimpse about overall research. It also gives out the scope of the research and spells out the rationale behind the study.

Chapter Two: Literature Review

This chapter primarily prepares the study for empirical work by looking at evaluations and conclusions drawn on certain theories and concepts to check for similarities and difference made by past writers on similar or related studies. It¿½s on this basis, that later stages in the research are developed. In particular, academic journals, websites and textbooks that articulate models and related theories are used as a reference.

Chapter Three: Research Methodology

The Chapter three reviews a range of research methods and highlights the strength and weakness and also research design discussion.

Chapter Four: Research Findings and Analysis

Chapter four discusses the main research findings and provides critical evaluation of primary and secondary data¿½s about the leadership behaviors in the engineering organization.

Chapter Five: Conclusions and Recommendations

After careful examination, evaluation, assessment and analysis of data, in this chapter, the study points out how the aims and objectives of the research are met. It points out how the respective objectives are realized and tries to give an answer to the research question.

1.8 Limitations

1. The Research Study will be based only in Malaysian SME¿½s in Kuala Lumpur due to time constraint.

2. The research study will be cut short to just the evaluate the relationship between employee attitude and performance management

3. The research study will be carried out in Limited number of organisations only.

1.9 The Research Framework

Adapted from James Kagaari (2010)