Individual reflection

Teacher Reflection Writing a report and a presentation about a real world company can be challenging. When my group first met, we thought it will be just a walk in the park since Nokia is a very popular company. But when we did the actual research and writing, it was not as easy as though.
We realize that we cannot just make up things about performance management in the company because it is a real company with real employees that have real issues. If we are going to elect a performance management tool, it should be grounded on reality and that we could justify it. Reflecting on it however, it gave us a real world feel on how managers address performance issues in their respective companies.
The process was tough but I learned from the exercise however of figuring out what is the best performance management tool for Nokia. Especially when our part focuses on the underperformer which is not easy to determine which performance tools are appropriate to improve their performance. There are a lot of tools to choose from and along with it, are also our debates which should we use. These debates however crystallize our understanding about performance management and its use and relevance in a business organization.
After so much debate, we have agreed that the most appropriate performance management tools for Nokia are BARS and 360 degree feedback. BARS, it is a simple performance evaluation method where a rating scale is developed indicating the employee’s abilities using a rating scale (Jacobs et al., 1980). According to Campbell, “ The use of BARS provides two important tools to management; first, an accurate “ snapshot” of the learning disabilities and strengths of the organization. We deemed BARS to be appropriate for Nokia because the goal was to identify areas of improvement where management can help. The BARS evaluation gives them a ready idea or “ snapshot” whereby it can help to address performance issues.
The second performance tool we chose is 360 degree feedback – A performance appraisal method where feedback is given by 6 different sources from within the workplace. These sources may include different managers, work colleagues, peers, customers and well as a self-assessment. 360 degree feedback is an appropriate supplement for BARS evaluation method because it provides the “ reason” behind the less than ideal performance identified by BARS evaluation method.
Combining the two methods of BARS evaluation and 360 degrees feedback allows several advantages in improving the underperformers of Nokia. First, BARS helps identify the areas of weakness of underperformers by providing a snapshot of the underperformer’s capability. But BARS evaluation method alone is inadequate to help employees improve their performance because it lacks some critical information. It only “ gauges” performance and does not provide information why did employees perform that way. Complementing it with 360 degrees feedback, we are able to know the holistic situation of the employees performance and also able to know the factors that led to such poor performance. This way, the management is in a better position to apply remedial measures to improve performance.