Design of personnel productivity assessment system

Key words: motivation, staff, perks,achievements, estimation,skills set, survey, goals

Attracting and keeping employees is rather important to general executives of the modern enterprise. It is an extremely difficult task requiring balancing between loosing the employee due to low wage and overpaying.

One of the main tasks is that of personnel stimulation. There is a direct link between success of the company and system of rewards for its employees. Therefore, management of employees' stimulation of employees is strategically important administrative function in any enterprise.

However, the stimulation which is directly based on monetary interests of employees is an extremely vulnerable and the price of a mistake can be very high. Incorrect decisions can lead to serious consequences in the form of decline in production, the high staff turnover, strained relations with the employees. For this reason it is necessary to think over a productivity assessment system to avoid undesirable consequences following significant changes in this sphere.

One of forms of remuneration of the employees is bonus (work incentive), which is paid to an employee in case of achievement of a certain result by the organization as a whole or by its subdivision, individual contribution of the employee is also considered.

The important purpose of this system is to motivate the employee to the maximum delivery, by establishing sizes of earnings depending on the individual employee's results.

The income of staff of the enterprise needs to be linked to efficiency of their activity. Besides monetary encouragement, incentives of «prestigious» nature have to be provided in system of stimulation, such as career advancement, obtaining higher independence in operation, delegation of powers of authority.

Such system of material stimulation of the personnel has to play the role of the invisible controller at the enterprise. Due to this system in the organization individual employees and their groups approve of actions in the interest of the organization as a whole. If such a system is not created in the enterprise, individual interests of the employee (or those of a department as a local group of employees) will prevail over interests on the company.

The assessment of the personnel productivity is the course of determination of achievements of employees (or groups) reaching the objectives of the organization, which guarantees obtaining information for decision-making and adjustments to optimize the functioning of the labor collective [1].

The main tasks during the personnel productivity assessment are:

-        raising of efficiency of work of the personnel;

-        setting up a reasonable salary for work of the employee;

-        decision-making concerning further career of the employee.

Practice of different enterprises shows that the problem of exact and competent assessment of work of each employee still remains unresolved. It means that there is a serious need to revise models of the labor relations and management of human factors in the direction of more reasonable use of creative abilities of the person.

The main concept of the personnel management system as a whole is that of competence through which creative abilities of a person are shown.

Competence is an expedient combination of the abilities, individual qualities and motivation of staff of the organization analyzed through a certain interval.

Fig. 1. The meaning chart of the «Competence» concept

In assessment of competence of the personnel, it is necessary to consider that there is a general assessment going on that considers:

-        abilities of the personnel (the volume of knowledge, extent of education, experience, professional skills, length of service in a certain area, etc.);

-        individual properties (activity, initiative, communicative skills, independence, responsibility, etc.);

-        motivations (area of professional and personal interests, career aspirations, etc.) [2].

Competence of the personnel is a very dynamic and constantly developing area. Improvements in this sphere can be carried out due to continuous training, motivation of the personnel, its education and hiring new workers from outside the company. Therefore, the central problem of personnel management is optimization of productivity of staff's actions depending on competence and motivation.

For example, Victor Vroom, the author of the expectancy theory of motivation, considers productivity as a function of skillful motivation to be competent. From all this it is possible to draw a conclusion that Efficiency = f (competence + motivation).

For this paper we carried out a survey. Employees of a single department of Tomsk Polytechnic University were surveyed, 50 persons in total. The questionnaire consisted of 30 questions with intricate scoring system, the survey was conducted in writing and took about 15–17 min to complete. The questionnaire is intended for the differentiated assessment of two interconnected, but oppositely directed motivational tendencies: pursuit of success and fear of failure.

Examples of questions:

-        I spend more time reading special literature, than fiction.

-        If I had to choose, I would choose a job where the initial salary is moderate and constant, rather than a job where the initial salary is smaller, but there is a chance to shortly make it rather high with some effort.

The questions covered personal growth, self control, ability to make decisions on the basis of the experience. It was revealed that most of employees, 77 %, when performing the work show fear of failure as a dominating motivation, finding its way in form of search for new experience and extensive knowledge by self-development and training. About fifth of all the employees surveyed, 18 % showed pursuit of success as dominating. A minority of 5 % of respondents had their score in low boundaries thus not allowing any certain conclusions about domination of one motivations over another.

In order to increase the overall performance of the enterprise it is necessary to develop competence of each employee by any means, as well as to improve forms of motivation of work. Competence may be developed by professional education, in-house trainings, and personal self-education of the employee. Thus, there is a worthy explanation of many enterprises investing huge amounts of money in a vocational education, master classes, job rotation and foreign training.

Management of competence shall be installed both at the personal level and at the company level.

At the level of the personal management of competence it is carried out as follows:

-        An assessment of personal competence in comparison with requirements of a job position.

-        Development of new knowledge and skills if the above assessment shows any discrepancies with requirements to the job position

-        Further discrepancy with the requirements make the employee to resort to additional special training necessary to obtain the skills and knowledge.

Control of competence at the organizational level is exercised by specially trained employees and provides:

-        the analysis of personnel needs of the enterprise according to tasks and the purposes of the organization

-        degree of awareness of workers

-        coordination of available and desirable means by competence degree

-        the approval of decisions to grant a ratio of available and desirable means (by involvement of employees from the labor market or professional development of already employed staff members).

During the work with the system of personnel productivity assessment a special practical value is given to reasonable definition of quantitative and qualitative indicators that in an obvious way show the productive purposes of a department or enterprise in general.

Assessment criteria are such indicators on basis of which the employee's assessment is carried out.

The concept of an assessment of work of the personnel of the enterprise is based on the principle that the data reflecting employee's competence is given as conditions of an assessment.

«Surveys conducted in a number of firms in the USA showed that the frequency of use of different criteria are as follows: quality of work — 93 %; amount of work — 90 %; knowledge of work procedure — 85 %. The personal qualities used as criteria were: initiative — 87 %; communicative ability — 87 %; reliability — 86 %" [1].

The preference given to this assessment criterion depends on the employee's being a part of a category: experts, management or line employees.

In most cases, results of the management's work are visible in results of the organization, as raising profit.

The result of work of a manager is usually expressed through results of activity of the firm: profit markup, market share, increase in number of clients, and also will be expressed and in a social package of employees working under this manager, increase in salary, receiving additional benefits, etc.

Results of work of experts consist of quantity, quality, relevance and completeness of execution of their official duties.

There are three different aims developed upon the system of employee productivity assessment: administrative, motivational and informational.

Informational aims. Possibility to give notice about the relative level of work of the employee. Also gives the chance to record weak and strong points of work activity and to direct the actions in the necessary direction.

Administrative aims. This assessment is necessary for making such decisions as:

-        career advancement or demotion;

-        change of a place of work;

-        punishments, incentives;

-        retraining;

-        dismissal.

Motivational aims. This result of an assessment reveals strong workers thus allowing the administration of the enterprise to fairly encourage them.

The obtained data shows that systematic and regular performance appraisal positively affects professional development and growth, as well as motivation of employees.

Therefore, this system of an personnel productivity assessment has to include the following actions:

-        a formal statement of the rules and requirements, norms and standards attaining to a certain job position;

-        formation of the mechanism to compare results of an job assessment with system of retraining of workers and/or professional development.

-        definition of assessment criteria for level of competence aimed at implementation of official job position requirements;

-        creation of the mechanism connecting results of an assessment of work of the worker to the system of remuneration for work i. e. with definition of a salary, the size of bonus, privileges, etc.;

-        uniform scale of an assessment of work of the employee;

-        an assessment of compliance of abilities of the worker to requirements of a concrete job position (definition of a measure of proximity between official requirements and level of competence of the employee);

-        creation of the mechanism to connect the results of an performance assessment with system of career advancement and employee development within this company; [2].

For example, if the assessment of this or that employee (group of employees) personnel is required, it is necessary to consider all factors the influencing the work of this personnel, and also criteria of work and its condition. It will be also necessary to define which criteria are to use in assessment. It is also important to define a scale of the performance assessment.

Therefore, productivity of work of each employee is an obligatory link of control in any enterprise. This is one of functions of human resource management functions directed on determination of level of efficiency of performance of work. The assessment of labor efficiency level defines ability of the employee to have direct impact on activity of a subdivision or enterprise as a whole.

References:

1.      Bibliofond. Assessment of a personal labor contribution of workers. Access mode: http://bibliofond.ru/view.aspx? id=541115 (Date of access 19.03.15).

2.      Productivity of work of the personnel. Access mode: http://coolreferat. com/ %D0 %A0 %D0 %B5 %D0 %B7 %D1 %83 %D0 %BB %D1 %8C %D1 %82 %D0 %B0 %D1 %82 %D0 %B8 %D0 %B2 %D0 %BD %D0 %BE %D1 %81 %D1 %82 %D1 %8C_ %D1 %82 %D1 %80 %D1 %83 %D0 %B4 %D0 %B0_ %D0 %BF %D0 %B5 %D1 %80 %D1 %81 %D0 %BE %D0 %BD %D0 %B0 %D0 %BB %D0 %B0 (Date of access 21.03.15).

3.      Assessment of work of the personnel. Access mode: http://shop.forstuds.ru/work/24405/Ocenka-truda-personala (Date of access 19.03.15).