AMITY BUSINESS SCHOOL

AMITY UNIVERSITY
UTTAR PRADESH

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

PROJECT

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AT BSNL

Submitted to: Submitted By:

Ms.Parul Jhajharia Deepika Anand ( D – 24)

Shweta Verma ( A – 15)

 INTRODUCTION TO THE TOPIC
Human Resource (or personnel) management, in the sense of getting things done through people,
is an essential part of every manager’s responsibility, but many organizations find it
advantageous to establish a specialist division to provide an expert service dedicated to ensuring
that the human resource function is performed efficiently.

“People are our most valuable asset” is a cliché, which no member of any senior management
team would disagree with. Yet, the reality for many organizations are that their people remain
under valued, under trained and under utilized.

Performance Appraisal is the process of assessing the performance and progress of an employee
or a group of employees on a given job and his / their potential for future development. It
consists of all formal procedures used in the working organizations to evaluate personalities,
contributions and potentials of employees. Here we have studied the performance management
system at BSNL and the policies being conducted there.
 RATIONALE OF THE STUDY

Performance Appraisal is the important aspect in the organization to evaluate the employees
performance. It helps in understanding the employees work culture, involvement, and
satisfaction. It helps the organization in deciding employees promotion, transfer, incentives, pay
increase.

WHAT IS “PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL”?

Performance Appraisal is defined as the process of assessing the performance and progress of an
employee or a group of employees on a given job and his / their potential for future development.
It consists of all formal procedures used in working organizations and potential of employees.
According to Flippo, “Performance Appraisal is the systematic, periodic and an important rating
of an employee’s excellence in matters pertaining to his present job and his potential for a better
job.”

CHARACTERISTICS

1. Performance Appraisal is a process.

2. It is the systematic examination of the strengths and weakness of an employee in

terms of his job.

3. It is scientific and objective study. Formal procedures are used in the study.

4. It is an ongoing and continuous process wherein the evaluations are arranged

periodically according to a definite plan.
 5. The main purpose of Performance Appraisal is to secure information necessary
for making objective and correct decision an employee.

PROCESS

The process of performance appraisal:

1. Establishing performance standards

2. Communicating the Standards

3. Measuring Performance

4. Comparing the actual with the standards

5. Discussing the appraisal

6.Taking Corrective Action

LIMITATIONS

1. Errors in Rating

2. Lack of reliability

3. Negative approach

4. Multiple objectives

5. Lack of knowledge

METHODS OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL AT BSNL

The foregoing list of major program pitfalls represents a formidable challenge, even considering
the available battery of appraisal techniques. But attempting to avoid these pitfalls by doing
away with appraisals themselves is like trying to solve the problems of life by committing
suicide. The more logical task is to identify those appraisal practices that are (a) most likely to
achieve a particular objective and (b) least vulnerable to the obstacles already discussed.
The various techniques of performance appraisal used at BSNL are:

ESSAY APPRAISAL

In its simplest form, this technique asks the rater to write a paragraph or more covering an
individual's strengths, weaknesses, potential, and so on. In most selection situations, particularly
those involving professional, sales, or managerial positions, essay appraisals from former
employers, teachers, or associates carry significant weight.

GRAPHIC RATING SCALE

This technique may not yield the depth of an essay appraisal, but it is more consistent and
reliable. Typically, a graphic scale assesses a person on the quality and quantity of his work (is
he outstanding, above average, average, or unsatisfactory?) and on a variety of other factors that
vary with the job but usually include personal traits like reliability and cooperation. It may also
include specific performance items like oral and written communication.

FORCED-CHOICE RATING

Like the field review, this technique was developed to reduce bias and establish objective
standards of comparison between individuals, but it does not involve the intervention of a third
party.

MANAGEMENT BY OBJECTIVES

To avoid, or to deal with, the feeling that they are being judged by unfairly high standards,
employees in some organizations are being asked to set - or help set - their own performance
goals.

RANKING METHODS

For comparative purposes, particularly when it is necessary to compare people who work for
different supervisors, individual statements, ratings, or appraisal forms are not particularly
useful. Instead, it is necessary to recognize that comparisons involve an overall subjective
judgment to which a host of additional facts and impressions must somehow be added. There is
no single form or way to do this:

The two most effective methods are alternation ranking and paired comparison ranking.

1. “Alternation ranking”:

Ranking of employees from best to worst on a trait or traits is another method for evaluating
employees. Since it is usually easier to distinguish between the worst and the best employees
than to rank them, an alternation ranking method is most popular. Here subordinates to be rated
are listed and the names of those not well enough to rank are crossed. Then on a form as shown
below, the employee who is highest on the characteristic being measured and the one who is the
lowest are indicated. Then chose the next highest and the next lowest, alternating between
highest and lowest until all the employees to be rated have been ranked.

2. “Paired-comparison ranking”:

This technique is probably just as accurate as alternation ranking and might be more so. But
with large numbers of employees it becomes extremely time consuming and cumbersome.

Both ranking techniques, particularly when combined with multiple rankings (i.e., when two or
more people are asked to make independent rankings of the same work group and their lists are
averaged), are among the best available for generating valid order-of-merit rankings for salary
administration purposes.

ASSESSMENT CENTERS

So far, we have been talking about assessing past performance. What about the assessment of
future performance or potential? In any placement decision and even more so in promotion
decisions, some prediction of future performance is necessary. How can this kind of prediction
be made most validly and most fairly?
Rationale of Performance Appraisal at BSNL

• Measures an employee’s performance.

• Helps in clarifying, defining, redefining priorities and objectives.
• Motivates the employee through achievement and feedback.
• Facilitates assessment and agreement of training needs.
• Helps in identification of personal strengths and weaknesses.
• Plays an important role in Personal career and succession planning.
• Clarifies team roles and facilitates team building.
• Plays major role in organizational training needs assessment and analysis.
• Improves understanding and relationship between the employee and the
reporting manager and also helps in resolving confusions and misunderstandings.
• Plays an important tool for communicating the organization’s
philosophies, values, aims, strategies, priorities, etc among its employees.
• Helps in counseling and feedback.

Rating Errors in Performance Appraisals

Performance appraisals are subject to a wide variety of inaccuracies and biases referred to as
'rating errors'. These errors can seriously affect assessment results. Some of the most common
rating errors are: -

Leniency or severity: - Leniency or severity on the part of the rater makes the assessment
subjective. Subjective assessment defeats the very purpose of performance appraisal. Ratings are
lenient for the following reasons:

a) The rater may feel that anyone under his or her jurisdiction who is rated
unfavorably will reflect poorly on his or her own worthiness.

b) He/She may feel that a derogatory rating will be revealed to the rate to
detriment the relations between the rater and the ratee.

c) He/She may rate leniently in order to win promotions for the subordinates
and therefore, indirectly increase his/her hold over him.

Central tendency: - This occurs when employees are incorrectly rated near the average or
middle of the scale. The attitude of the rater is to play safe. This safe playing attitude stems from
certain doubts and anxieties, which the raters have been assessing the rates.
Halo error: - A halo error takes place when one aspect of an individual's performance influences
the evaluation of the entire performance of the individual. The halo error occurs when an
employee who works late constantly might be rated high on productivity and quality of output as
well ax on motivation. Similarly, an attractive or popular personality might be given a high
overall rating. Rating employees separately on each of the performance measures and
encouraging raters to guard against the halo effect are the two ways to reduce the halo effect.

Rater effect: -This includes favoritism, stereotyping, and hostility. Extensively high or low score
are given only to certain individuals or groups based on the rater's attitude towards them and not
on actual outcomes or behaviors; sex, age, race and friendship biases are examples of this type of
error.

Primacy and Regency effects: - The rater's rating is heavily influenced either by behavior
exhibited by the ratee during his early stage of the review period (primacy) or by the outcomes,
or behavior exhibited by the ratee near the end of the review period (regency). For example, if a
salesperson captures an important contract/sale just before the completion of the appraisal, the
timing of the incident may inflate his or her standing, even though the overall performance of the
sales person may not have been encouraging. One way of guarding against such an error is to ask
the rater to consider the composite performance of the rate and not to be influenced by one
incident or an achievement.

Performance dimension order: - Two or more dimensions on a performance instrument follow

each other and both describe or rotate to a similar quality. The rater rates the first dimensions
accurately and then rates the second dimension to the first because of the proximity. If the
dimensions had been arranged in a significantly different order, the ratings might have been
different.

Spillover effect: - This refers lo allowing past performance appraisal rating lo unjustifiably
influence current ratings. Past ratings, good or bad, result in similar rating for current period
although the demonstrated behavior docs not deserve the rating, good or bad.
ROLES IN THE PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL PROCESS at
BSNL

a) Reporting Manager

• Provide feedback to the reviewer / HOD on the employees’ behavioral traits indicated
in the PMS Policy Manual

• Ensures that employee is aware of the normalization / performance appraisal process

• Address employee concerns / queries on performance rating, in consultation with the

reviewer

b) Reviewer (Reporting Manager’s Reporting Manager)

• Discuss with the reporting managers on the behavioral traits of all the employees for
whom he / she is the reviewer

• Where required, independently assess employees for the said behavioral traits; such
assessments might require collecting data directly from other relevant employees

c) HOD (In some cases, a reviewer may not be a HOD)

• Presents the proposed Performance Rating for every employee of his / her function to
the Normalization committee.

• HOD also plays the role of a normalization committee member

• Owns the performance rating of every employee in the department

d) HR Head

• Secretary to the normalization committee

 • Assists HOD’s / Reporting Managers in communicating the performance rating of all
the employees

e) Normalization Committee

• Decides on the final bell curve for each function in the respective Business Unit /
Circle

• Reviews the performance ratings proposed by the HOD’s, specifically on the

upward / downward shift in ratings, to ensure an unbiased relative ranking of
employees on overall performance, and thus finalize the performance rating of each
employee

KEY CONCEPTS IN PMS used at BSNL

In order to understand the Performance Management System at Bsnl, some concepts need to be
explained which play a very important role in using the PMS successfully. They are:

• KRA’S (KEY RESULT AREAS): The performance of an employee is largely

dependent on the KRA score achieved by the employee during that particular year.
Thus, it is necessary to answer a few basic questions i.e.

• What are the guidelines for setting the KRA’s for an employee?

• How does an employee write down his KRA’s for a particular financial year?

• KRA’s: The Four Perspectives.

• How is the KRA score calculated for an employee on the basis of the targets sets
and targets achieved?

• BEHAVIORAL TRAITS: Some of the qualitative aspects of an employees’

performance combined with the general behavioral traits displayed by the employee
during a year constitutes his behavior traits. An employee is assigned the rating on
 the basis of the intensity of the behavior displayed by him. They play a very
important role in the deciding the final performance rating for an employee as is
even capable of shifting the rating one level upwards/downwards.

• BSNL 2010 LEADERSHIP COMPETENCY FRAMEWORK: This competency

framework is a simple and structured way to describe the elements of behaviors
required to perform a role effectively. This framework also tries to assess the
performance of an employee objectively.

• THE PERFORMANCE RATING PROCESS: The rating process tries to explain

the four different types of rating that an employee can achieve i.e. EC, SC, C and
PC. It also explains the criteria, which is considered for awarding any of these
ratings to the employee.

• PROMOTION AND RATING DISRTRIBUTION GUIDELINES: The

promotion and normal distribution guidelines provide the framework within which
the performance appraisal process has to work. It is very important that the HR
department pays due attention to these guidelines while preparing the bell curves
for various functions and the consolidated bell curve for all the functions. These
guidelines also help in deciding upon the promotion cases in a year.
PERFORMANCE RATING PROCESS AT BSNL

EXCEPTIONAL CONTRIBUTOR (EC) SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTOR (SC)

· Performs consistently and substantially above · Performs above expectations in all areas
expectations in all areas
· Achieves final score between 100-114%
· Achieves a final score greater than or equal to
115% • Versatile in his/ her area of operation

· Consistently delivers on stretch targets • Develops creative solutions and require

· Is proactive little / minimal supervision

· Spots and anticipates problems, implements

• Sets examples for others
solutions
• Take ownership of own development
· Sees and exploits opportunities

· Delivers ahead of time • Coaches others

· Sees the wider picture-impacts across business • Demonstrates business initiative

· Focuses on what’s good for the business

• Is self motivated
· Seen as role model by others
• Supportive team player
· Recognized as exceptional by other functions
as well • Leads own team very effectively

· Motivates others to solve problems • Demonstrate functional initiative

· Develops others
·
· Provides open and honest feedback

· Able to establish and lead cross-functional

teams