An assessment of the performance management system at the organisation under study.

Abstract

The organisation under study is a global liner shipping company. It has about 170 modern ships, close to 7.4 million twenty-foot Equivalent Unit shipped each year. The company has 9,300 employees working at 360 sites in 120 countries. Though the organisation under study has been in existence for many years, the company has been working without evaluating its informal formal performance management system to ascertain if the system was effective to ensure that employees’ performance contributed to the realisation of the goals and objectives of the company. Therefore, the assessment of the informal performance management system at the organisation under study is important in ensuring that the company achieves its organisational vision and set of objectives. The study, therefore, aims at assessing the performance management system at the organisation under study. A case study research design was used as a research blueprint and a qualitative research method was employed in the study to uncover and understand the employees’ perceptions of the performance management system at the organisation under study using in-depth interviews. The data collected was analysed using the thematic analyses method. The main findings revealed that the performance management system at the organisation under study was quite effective because of the tools used to measure employee performance including having different forms of performance feedback provided to employees, provision of rewards, implementation of amendments to objectives, as well as the considerable understanding of objectives. It is recommended that for the informal performance management system at the organisation under study to yield better results, it should be managed by an administrator and monitoring team. This will ensure that the performance is measured fairly and in line with performance management guidelines, performance feedback is conducted on an ongoing basis, both financial and non-financial rewards are provided to employees, objectives are assessed frequently to ensure that they are in line with the changing business environment and communication is promoted at all levels of employees. These recommendations may enable the organisation under study to have an effective performance management system that will allow employees to achieve their set objectives.