Critical Review of Performance Management System at Telenor Pakistan

Critical Review of Performance Management System Company: Telenor Pakistan

05835 Faisal Ahmad Jafri

Critical Review of Performance Management System at Telenor Pakistan Introduction As per Telenor’s policy document, performance review is meant to have following objectives:  To allow an opportunity to have a constructive dialogue and gain necessary feedback  During the dialogue, should focus on performance against your set goals  Do ensure that you align performance expectations for the remainder of the year  Review your development activities and discuss progress against each development goal  Perfect opportunity to bring in practice the tools & techniques from the recent “Conversations with Candor” training in order to have a more meaningful dialogue Background The performance management system at Telenor is called Telenor Development Process (TDP). It starts every year in Feb after goal settings and ends by Jan every year.

Goal Design

At the start of every year in Jan, line manager and employee sit together to devise yearly targets and goals. Based on the significance and relation to work, weightage is also given to every goal. Individual is also expected to come up his own individual development plan and share it with his line manager. Goals are then fed into the HR system managed by Workday Inc. Half Yearly Discussion A half yearly discussion with line manager is done on a review of six month performance. No evaluation is required. However a dialogue is necessary with comments on performance by both the line and his manager and same needs to be locked on the Workday portal. Self-Evaluation: The TDP process starts in December every year. The CEO formally sends out an email to start the TDP process. The whole process is run online through organization’s own intranet portal developed by Workday Inc. A few days’ time is first given to every employee, to self-evaluate himself, in a selfevaluation form, against the goals pre-set at the start of every year (ideally).

Employee is required to rate himself against every goal with necessary justification. After doing self-evaluation, employee is required to review his development of leadership and skill development plan which he and his line manager agreed at the start of every year. Employee is required to provide his feedback and give suggestions for improvement. A part of self-evaluation form also includes ‘feedback to your leader’ where any employee can write down anything which he wants to discuss. Since this is all online, so the feedback entered is saved and it is binding on the manager to discuss it during the ‘pre-dialogue’. Pre-Dialogue Once all the employees have entered their self-evaluation, line manager schedules a ‘pre-dialogue’ with his reports. Self-evaluation is discussed and employee is given ample and sufficient time to justify and defend his ratings. Line managers discuss their evaluation and rationale behind it and employee and manager both try to come to a common ground. Evaluation is based on a 3 point scale: below expectation, meets expectation or exceeds expectations. Employee can only evaluate on the performance part. The potential and the ‘how’ part is evaluated by the line manager. The ratings are however not locked into the system at this stage. Line manager takes these ratings to his line manager and discusses it.

Discussion with Grandfather After the pre-dialogue, line manager takes every individual’s rating to his own line manager – in the purview of the employee, to his grandfather. Being a cross functional and integrated organization, these ratings are also discussed with managers of teams/department with which an employee interacts often. In this stage a final review of performance is done as well as potential of the employee is identified. Each candidate is put into one of the performance and potential graph plot, which is essentially a nine box matrix, illustrated in table on the next page. Ratings of performance and potential

proposed by the line manager can be accepted or modified, based on the review of every candidate’s profile. However, in practice, usually only potential based discussion is done in this round and line manager is assumed to be the best judge of any candidate’s performance.

Dialogue Once the discussion with the grandfather has been finished, line manager gets back to the employee where his performance and potential is communicated to him. If there is a serious conflict, employee can contact his grandfather for review (indirect channel and permitted).

Accept or Rebut Option If the ratings are in agreement, employee ‘accepts’ it in the Workday portal. If the situation is grave and serious, then employee has the right to ‘rebut’ in the Workday portal, after which HR would jump in for a settlement and reconciliation.

Reward Determination Process After the acceptance of the performance review, each employee is accorded his annual variable payout and bonus. This bonus is a combination of employee’s own performance and company’s achievement of annual objectives. 80% weightage is given to employee’s own performance and 20% to organization’s objectives. The payout can be on a scale of 1 – 6. Employees awardee ‘exceeds expectation’ and ‘high potential’ may get a payout of 6 bonuses (6 monthly salaries), if the company’s objectives are met 100. This payout is usually given with the salary of the month of March Analysis of the Performance Management System 

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According to internal engagement surveys, many line managers fill in goals of their reports for the sake of filling only. Just before half yearly review, the actual goals are added which then carry forward till the end of the year. Therefore, this practice needs to be eliminated. HR needs to be involved here and goal modification must be made slightly difficult process so that editing may be needed only when there is a genuine need. Usually the half yearly evaluation is done quickly by the line managers as the goals are newly entered. Hence the exercise loses its essence. Due time is given for self-evaluation to provide justifications. However, in the online portal, these justifications can be entered in just text format. There must be a provision to attach file(s) or presentation(s) in the justification part for a greater visibility and summary view for both the manager and employee. The TDP form needs serious revision. There is no section/room which identifies the training needs of an employee and in what functional or behavioral area he needs trainings. Trainings are common in the organization but there is no proper section for training needs and their evaluation There is no proper document available to prepare goals and document. No HR guideline is available Values part is not incorporated anyway in the TDP system. The how part needs to be developed further into the system

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Succession Planning process is vague, only potential is identified to the employee