Optimizing HR: Performance Evaluation, Compensation, Conflict
Employee Assessment
Employee assessment is the process of evaluating an individual’s quality, quantity of work, and the efficiency with which they carry out activities, roles, and responsibilities within their position. This evaluation process can be challenging for two main reasons:
- It involves subjective judgment and is not free of bias.
- Friction may arise between the appraiser and appraisee.
Despite these challenges, the assessment process offers significant positive aspects:
- Provides crucial information for making decisions on important aspects of working life.
- By identifying employee strengths and weaknesses, programs can be designed to address deficiencies and enhance capabilities.
- Serves as a personal assessment tool, enabling individuals to objectively understand and overcome their weaknesses while leveraging strengths.
- HR management gains valuable information, leading to improved workforce management and better overall results.
- Enables the evaluation of training and development programs or plans.
Evaluation Systems
These systems measure the attitudes, skills, and competencies needed to perform a job. The most common include:
- Graphic Scale: A standardized rating scale.
- Open Valuation: The assessor determines the approach to evaluate the candidate.
- Assessment by Objectives: Evaluates the degree to which a series of objectives, set by agreement between the appraiser and appraisee, have been achieved.
Compensation Strategies
Compensation refers to the benefits employees receive from a company in exchange for their work. There are two main types of compensation:
- Financial Compensation:
- Direct: Monetary remuneration received by employees (e.g., salary, wages, bonuses).
- Indirect: Other property or benefits (e.g., insurance, restaurant vouchers, company car).
- Non-Financial Compensation: Moral satisfactions and intangible benefits (e.g., recognition, work-life balance, career development opportunities).
Analysis of Compensation
Key considerations in compensation analysis include:
- Relationship Between Productivity and Compensation: Salary often comprises fixed and variable components. The variable portion is linked to objective achievement. This system motivates higher performance (more work, more earnings), allows companies to reduce costs during sales downturns, and helps retain top talent by increasing their variable wage.
Composition of Compensation
Individual preferences for compensation composition depend on factors such as:
- Salary level
- Age
- Life situation
- Professional status
- Other personal circumstances
Understanding these preferences is crucial, as compensation is closely linked to employee motivation and retention.
Labor Disputes
A labor dispute is a state of disagreement arising from real or perceived opposition of needs, values, and interests among individuals working together. These disputes usually arise within companies due to various factors:
Causes of Labor Disputes
- Personal Causes: Incompatibility, ideological clashes (political, cultural, etc.).
- Structural Causes: Conflicting ideas, decisions, or actions related to work.
- Relationships: Issues related to boss-subordinate authority.
- Shared Resources: Disputes over resource allocation.
- Conflicting Objectives: Disagreements on departmental goals leading to conflicts of interest.
- Ambiguity in Reporting Lines: Uncertainty about an individual’s or workgroup’s reporting structure.
While conflict is often viewed negatively, it can be a source of creativity and positive for the company. Conflicts can be distinguished as:
- Functional Conflicts: Those that benefit the organization, often related to roles or tasks, leading to improved processes or innovation.
- Dysfunctional Conflicts: Those that hinder the achievement of business goals, causing disruption and inefficiency.
Dispute Resolution Techniques
Dispute resolution involves intervention to resolve a disagreement through an agreement between conflicting parties. Common techniques include:
- Expanding Perspectives: Helping parties realize their interests align with and are subordinate to company goals, emphasizing the need for collaboration.
- Face-to-Face Discussion: Allowing all parties to present their reasons and work towards an agreement.
- Avoiding the Conflict: Postponing resolution to save time or address other, more pressing issues.
- Collaboration: Conflicting parties work together to find a mutually beneficial solution.
- Resource Expansion: If the dispute stems from scarce shared resources that can be expanded, the solution is relatively easy (e.g., enhancing common resources or allocating them separately).
- Imposing a Solution: One party’s viewpoint is enforced over others, often by a higher authority.
- Compromise: Limiting differences between opposing parties to find a middle ground where each is partially satisfied.
- Accommodation: One party waives its needs to satisfy the other, often to preserve a relationship.