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The advantages of employee performance management (EPM) are widely recognized today. Thousands of companies have implemented EPM systems-enhancing their employee performance appraisals and assessments, and obtaining greater strategic value out of their HR divisions. This is why more than 90 percent of HR professionals rate EPM as a top priority. Yet considerably fewer have EPM systems deployed within their organizations.
Human Capital Management (a high-level While there are no short cuts to getting project approval, a structured categorization) and thorough approach to selecting, planning for and implementing an EPM solution provides HR managers with strong arguments for their organizations to move forward.
This white paper details such an approach, outlining all the key steps involved and indicating ways for HR practitioners to shine a bright light on the benefits of EPM.
Building a vendor selection plan
To drive the acquisition of an appropriate EPM system, HR managers must establish a vendor selection project plan. This involves creating a timeframe for progressing through eight critical steps:
1) Become familiar with solution pricing
2) Establish organization-specific business needs, priorities and benefit expectations
3) Gaining initial management buy-in
4) Prepare a draft Implementation Plan
5) Evaluate EPM vendors
6) Refine the draft Implementation Plan with preferred vendor in mind
7) Present vendor recommendation to executive
8) Act on executive approval and establishing contract
The final stage, following all of the above, is the execution of the Implementation Plan. The following sections explain each of these steps in greater detail.
1. Become familiar with solution pricing
This is a straightforward activity that can be completed with minimal effort over the course of a day or two. It is important for an HR manager to appreciate, starting out, how the various offerings available conform to his or her organization's budget. Any of the top vendors should be willing to estimate rough costs for this purpose, and many provide license-pricing figures on their websites.
2. Establish organization-specific business needs, priorities and benefit expectations
To establish the business needs of their organization, HR managers should begin by documenting their current employee appraisal processes. Any modifications to this process-changes that it is hoped can be achieved through EPM automation-should also be noted.
It is critically important that the organization's own unique needs are captured through this exercise. While vendors may offer generic matrices for evaluating requirements and benefits, these are of little use if a company's essential EPM needs areas are left out of the equation. The ability to achieve a strong return on investment-which will be discussed further in this paper-derives in large part from the requirements defined at this early stage.
The following points indicate the kinds of 'pains' organizations typically face with respect to managing employee performance:
Lack of goal alignment
- Employees are not focused on organizational priorities, wasting effort
Inefficient appraisal process
- Employees and managers spend too much time on appraisals rather than main business functions
- HR spends too much time on process rather than optimizing human resources
- Appraisal work is lost through clumsy electronic document handling (e.g. loss of file attachments, etc.)
Failure to complete appraisals/Unprofessional appraisal process
- Resulting in situations where top performers are being lost, employees are dissatisfied and productivity is affected
- Creating risks around accreditation
- Creating risks around litigation and cost for wrongful dismissals
Whether these or other so-called pain points are identified and an organization-specific set of requirements is laid out, HR practitioners can then view top vendors' marketing materials and online demos, knowing exactly what they are looking for.
Following that kind of brief survey, it is a good idea to revisit the original requirements list and subdivide it into mandatory and desirable elements as in the following example:
- Easy creation of appraisal form and process
- Sophisticated workflow capabilities workflow
- Performance journal
- Goal and competency management
- Electronic signature
- Line manager authoring aids including spell check,
- Seamless integration with merit-based language sensitivity and comment helper compensation programs
- Automated email reminders
- Customizations available if needed
- Development plan recording and reporting
- Centralized at-a-glance process status view
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