Is PMS a measurement tool for Rewards, Promotion and Talent Management? Need for a fresh review of HR in context of technologically advanced world.

The question that troubles me as a HR professional is - why as a community we are confused and use PMS as a tool for reward distribution?

The fundamental question we need to ask ourselves is what is the purpose of PMS? Is it to monitor and record performance to distribute the goodies with an attempt for perceived fairness? or the objective really is to enhance, course correct and improve performance? What is the use of telling an individual at the end of the year that since your performance lacked the following initiative due to which the goals could not be achieved as desired at the end of the year? Will the year roll back for making improvements and change the output for the year in discussion... the year gone by? No, it would not. Then telling an individual at the end of the year  contrary to his or her expectations that he is not meeting the desired performance is only going to ruin the next year goals or deplete engagement. What if, you as a leader would have told him or her during the course of the year to make changes in his/ her approach toward dealing with the goal achievement and supported the efforts put in? Probably the goal would have been achieved and at the end of the year you both could have celebrated the success.  

Critiques would ask, how would you differentiate performance and extra efforts that some others put in? how do you keep the motivation of a highly driven and ambitious individual who is proactive and makes efforts beyond the call of duty and achieves/ contributes more than others.  How do you meet his/ her expectation of being appreciated and continue to be driven. Their need to be promoted and experience growth. How do you ensure that organisation's need to give them larger responsibilities is met. How you keep their enthusiasm to contribute more and more towards organisation goals?

Here I draw our attention to the reward process in the organisation? Which currently enjoys a much marginalized status in the people management efforts. Are we taking shortcuts by using PMS as a tool to help distribution of rewards? Are we as HR professionals mixing the two HR processes and making mess of both?

Rewards system in organisations seem to have not reached the maturity of effective utilization and practice, as yet. We all would agree that rewards work better when you reward and appreciate at the closer to the act of appreciation. Not when the individual has forgotten what he/ she did for which he/she is being rewarded. Time gap between act and reward distribution reduces the impact and value of reward. Thus, the proposal is for a continuous well worked out reward process. Rewards used for strategic intent of enabling individuals feel the connect with role, the organisation and its objectives. If we spend the budget for incentives or the variable pay during the year with detailed and carefully worked out policy for appreciating individual's at the time of the good work/ demonstrating the desired behaviors etc., a robust process may be established and rewards practices can mature. It would only create a culture of appreciation where employees will get multiple chances to put in more efforts and even change and improve their behaviors for better performance and get appreciated. Yes, it will require a little more efforts on part of the managers to carefully decide the rewards based on the level of efforts put in/ difficulty faced by the individual due to factors in the environment beyond the control of the individual. Each manager will have to play the role of an HR on continuous basis. Even peers and subordinates of the individual can support the process by recommending others for appreciation and contribute towards managers decision. 

Promotion and Talent Management are other processes, the effective execution of these processes is also in question. 

What is promotion? Gaining larger responsibility and getting higher rewards and benefits? Talent management is a linked process where are making efforts to enable talented individuals to grow faster in the organisation.

Promotion and being part of the high potential list also has to do with he match of capabilities with the future role/ job to be handled. Why can't the big data be used for matching the nature of rewards accumulated/ behaviors appreciated with the potential job. For example - if an individual has accumulated more rewards from his/her subordinates for being an effective team leader more than others, he/she becomes more suitable for the job that requires management of multiple teams. At the same time if his/her subordinates appreciate his/her team management skills but the superiors appreciated my goal achievements and they have rewarded the individual for  being detailed oriented and analytical ability. He/she may not be as suitable an another individual who was rewarded on team management (i.e. even by seniors and peers) for larger team management role. However, the individual may become suitable for a detailed oriented work to be done by a set of supporting team. 

Gosh! am I proposing a  complete change in the approach towards managing people? It may seem difficult but I believe that with the aid of technological support available the load will not be as cumbersome as it seems at the first glance. I do not discount the fact that a much deeper thinking and researching is required. Experimenting and piloting in small pockets of an organisation will help take this to light. 

I am cognizant of the fact that this would require aligning of compensation and recruitment and other HR processes in a big way around this philosophy. It may require an entire re-look at the role definition, structure and design of an organisation.  The positives of this approach will be in - 

1) Separating rewards from PMS2) Enhanced motivations and engagement3) Opportunity to course correct ones efforts and enhance performance4) A culture of appreciation5) Doing away of de-motivation due to perceived subjectivity and unfair process6) Movements/ promotions based on match of individual strengths with the role. 7) Leveraging strengths and not focusing on weakness8) A team culture with varied strengths - appreciation of diversity and roles 9) Doing away with Hierarchy to a large extent10) Many more... 

P.S.: These are my personal thoughts and nothing to do with the organisation that I am working with.