'Concubine' is author Elechi Amadi's masterpiece of African literature that captures the practices of a village life in Nigeria. The novel's protagonist, a hardworking beautiful lady Ihouma, is the attraction of every man in the village. Yet any man who expresses love for her meets mysterious tragedy. Men after men continue to seek her, despite the tragedies that befell those who came before them.
This enticing odyssey, where exemplary attributes of men to win the lady seem not to bear fruits reflects emerging performance contracting outcomes in the ever changing workplace. Since inception in Kenya, performance contracting has been embraced by virtually every organisation as a means to an end in improving performance. However, overtime, the limitations of performance contracting have emerged, and are slowly anticipated to overshadow its benefits in the future.
Like men attracted to Ihuoma, organisations seem to be glued to performance contracting, perhaps because of the absence of alternative suitors, despite emerging evidence that something is not right. Performance contracting faces teething challenges. It is therefore important to consider potential alternatives.
Performance contracting is static, while the workplace and employees are dynamic. Every year, employees sit down with their supervisors to set targets. The targets are permanent and cannot be changed over this period. On the other hand, an employee will be required to meet their own targets in addition to carrying out responsibilities not set initially. The role of employees is not static. If they are not holding for a colleague who is sick, they are standing in for another that just resigned.
Occasionally, they will be incorporated into ad hoc committees, and spend time, sometimes weeks, yet these committees were never envisioned when the employee was setting targets and will therefore not be scored. Because an employee is aware that this none target roles will not be scored, productivity on them is low and they do not work to their optimum.
The aim of performance contracting is to improve productivity, right? However, in performance contracting, evaluation of an employee's performance is done at the end of the year. Some organizations have introduced mid-year evaluations to reduce this gap. Studies support that employees need to get their feedback immediately after a task. If the aim is to improve performance, waiting for a year or six months is rather long.
Teamwork is a key pillar in modern workplace. Yet performance contracting is pegged on individual work. The limited personnel and other resources are encouraging employees to work in teams, besides the nature of work shifting to team-based delivery. Performance contracting only recognises individual efforts, despite other responsibilities delivered through teams. From inception performance contracting was accompanied by reward. Over time, reward for best performers has taken a backseat. The lack of motivation has seen employees lose enthusiasm in performance contracting. In a number of studies participants have reported biasness in performance contracting evaluation and scoring.
The writer is a human resource professional
