Friday, May 27, 2011

Thursdays with cc: is performance punishing?

i saw this post this morning. with 14+ comments.

tama ba naman yung dahil maganda ang performance mo sa trabaho, yung load ng palpak mong kasama sa department ay kunin sa kanya at ibigay sa iyo??? I was punished for being the best in what I do, at yung pumapalpak naman ay rewarded by removing a bulk of the work load nya. :(

a lot of the comments were sympathetic, of course. some were empowering him to complain directly (which he did but apparently, did not get satisfactory answers from the bosses)

i was tempted to jump in to comment but he might not appreciate what i was about to write.

my pov

bosses will always have the firm's profitability and total productivity as top-of-mind. if a section's productivity is faltering, they would need to re-allocate resources (including people) to remedy the situation. and sometimes, it means giving the job to those they know will perform and deliver more consistently than others.

it will seem like performance is punishing, from the employee's pov. and it will feel like it is, with the added load. but what is not apparent to the employee is how his evaluation becomes more favorable, a cumulative effect that manifests itself in due time (merit increases, promotions). the 'rewarded' employee, on the contrary, will be evaluated less favorably and well, you get the picture.

of course, that is most simplistic. there are other factors that will come into play. the other employee may have other skills (or strengths) that contribute to productivity, hence, he remains in the section. or 'punished' employee may have limitations in supervisory skills, hence, the limited upward movement.

it is very tempting to always look at the situation and feel 'victimized' and look at the bosses and owners as evil taskmasters. i shared a different pov in the hope of expanding horizons when looking at the same situation.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

2 comments:

Mugen said...

If I am the manager/supervisor who failed, and my project given to another manager, I'd feel very ashamed, very very ashamed.

It appears the one who wrote the passage you commented needs more training about leadership and management.

markyboy said...

Looking at it from a economics perspective, I believe that performance is an increasing function of work (assuming one sees more work as an incentive). As more work is given, one's confidence increases and performance improves. But one also has to consider that the performance function is not a straight line function but concave (inverted U) with respect to the amount of work. There is a saturation point where the additional amount of work would actually reduce performance rather than increase it, as just what the initial the question has asked.

The employer should be aware of the presence of such a saturation point to avoid the loss of performance.