Barclays Bank: Overview
Barclays bank is the third largest bank in the world with 155,000 employees around the globe. The bank was incorporated on 20th July 1896, and its financial services are global. The company is involved in wholesale banking, credit cards, investment banking, investment management and wealth management services. In this report, the focus is on the company’s mortgage section in North England which has about 800 employees. Due to the competitive market alignment of employees committed to the company’s objectives is essential. Employees are on a system that focuses 50% on the business objectives (what one does) and 50% on the attribute (how one does the job).
Company Strategy and Objectives
Company’s strategy developed business objectives and translated into departmental objectives. Team leaders facilitated employees to develop their objectives, responsibility areas, and measures that reflect the departmental objectives. The goal is to set expectations and measurable outcomes in the objectives specifying the nature of exceptional performance where possible. The danger of setting objectives is that they can be filed away and neglected. The only way of making objectives something to be followed by employees a quarterly review is undertaken in which employees’ individual achievements log is updated. These reviews facilitate changes in business priorities to be revealed in the employee’s aims.
Attributes and Performance Assessment
In hand, attributes are qualities and behavior expected of employees performing effectively. There is an attribute library containing eighteen attributes which are subdivided into dimensions reflecting jobs at different levels in the company and performance bands. Among the eighteen attributes eight of them are selected as core to a specific role, and assessed in the quarterly review which consists of a reviewer assessment and self-assessment. Feedback is delivered in writing and the attributes library objectives and specifications used as benchmarks to critic employee’s performance. Scores on the scale ‘exceed,’ ‘meet,’ ‘fall short’ and ‘fail’ are communicated. The employee is also required to gain feedback from six other people throughout the year. If there are deficiencies in performance, a development strategy is drawn up. In this report, the main aim is to discuss performance management system in the Barclays bank, its weaknesses and strengths and recommending some other methods to improve the current performance management system.
Performance Management: Importance and Connection to Organizational Goals
Performance management is an objective-oriented development focused towards ensuring that company’s processes are in place to exploit the productivity of employees, teams, and the business (Hersey 2007). It is one of the main keys to achieving organizational plan because it consists of improving and measuring the value of the employees. Performance management contains incentive goals and values so that the connection can be understood and communicated. Performance and incentives are closely connected. Performance management systems are one of the leading focuses in business today. Although every human resource function adds to performance management, performance appraisal and training play a more significant role.
Performance Management Process and Methods
Performance management is a dynamic, unending, continuous process while performance appraisal occurs at a particular time. Every person in the business is a part of the performance management system. Every part of the system, such as training, appraisal, and rewards, is incorporated and connected to endless organizational efficiency. With performance management, the strength of every employee should be focused toward accomplishing strategic goals. If an employee’s skills need to be enhanced, training is required. With performance management systems, training has a straight connection to accomplishing organizational efficiency. Also, pay and performance are directly connected to accomplishing organizational goals (Melnyk 2014).
Goal Setting and 360-Degree Feedback
Barclays’s performance management systems they use some concepts such as performance review, goal setting, 360-degree feedback, etc. Goal setting means setting realistic and attainable goals. Setting challenging and specific goals lead to higher performances in many businesses. So in any organization goal setting is an essential component of the performance management software. In Barclays bank when they set goals, they accomplish more though setting goals are not mainly for individuals but rather a team goal. Team goals motivate team members to work extra hard helping one another achieve individual goals and end up accomplishing team goals.
In Barclays bank the performance management system enables setting of goals to be a simple, straightforward and easy way encourage team leaders and members set realistic goals and accomplish milestones at work (Mone 2018). 360-degree feedback is one of the most important features of most performance management systems. Unlike the traditional methods, in the 360 feedback, one can get feedback from people around him or her such as the senior managers, team members, subordinates, supervisors, peers, internal or external customers and even the employee himself or herself (Cascio 2018). Most of the successful companies and businesses use the 360-degree feedback for the performance evaluation of their employees, and Barclays bank is one of them. It mainly focuses on skills required across organizational boundaries. Shifting the evaluation responsibility to more than one person eliminates or reduces common errors.
Advantages and Pitfalls of Performance Management Methods
The software also allows Barclays bank managers to give ratings in a fast and convenient manner. The method also provides a more objective perspective of an employee’s performance which includes a broader view of the employee’s performance due to multiple feedbacks thus minimizing biasness in the process. Multiple feedbacks also make the process more lawfully defensible. Although the method has its pitfalls where some colleagues may intentionally distort a colleague’s performance information and to other colleagues or say something good which may not be true. The method is still widely used by many companies find ways of avoiding the problem. Barclays also uses performance reviews to measure performance in the organization. A performance review which is also known as a performance appraisal is a tool that is used to assess and measure employee’s effectiveness and efficiency.
Succession Planning and the Need for Improvements
In Barclays bank it is by managers’ use it to measure employee’s performance to see whether further training is needed, a salary or wage increase is merited or in a situation where an employee is being promoted to a higher position. The performance review involves several steps; the first step involves the manager and the employee sitting down and defining job responsibilities and expectations so that everything is clear on both parties. The manager should later conduct the performance of the employee based on the standards and expectations set in step one. In the final step, the manager should give the employee the feedback about his performance. Based on the employee’s performance the manager might recommend further training, a promotion or a salary increase for the employee (Hodge 2018).
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Performance Management System
Another method is the succession planning wherein Barclays bank the focus is also on those employees who retain a job position for long due to the benefits, employee’s engagement and also the happiness of the position. Employees’ mobility is a concern in many companies such as Barclays bank. Due to this concern, Barclays bank uses the succession plan where an employee is moved to the next position the skills and talents that make them suitable for the position or the job are passed on to the other employees through coaching and skill development as part of the performance management system (Rothwell 2015). Coaching is one of the ways used to increase employee’s performance, making an employee grow in what he or she does and by learning new ways of doing or performing tasks.
In every company, there are strengths and weaknesses in the performance management system, and Barclays bank is not an exception. Barclays bank uses methods which are very effective and use the results to improve the overall performance of an organization. The Goal setting method is one of the methods used in the organization, and it does not only measure performance it also helps employees to work as a team and helping each other where possible thus improving the overall performance and reduce the time taken to achieve the specified goal. The succession planning is strength in managing employees’ performance in Barclays bank. It enables job rotation within the organization and employees are coached and develop skills to replace the moved employees through these employees learn a lot about how to do businesses or perform various tasks. Their employees grow attaining different skills and abilities (Amirkhani 2016).
The 360-degree feedback may be one of the most used methods by many organizations and businesses, but it has some pitfalls. One can be when an employee may distort information of another employee so as he or she does not get a promotion or a pay raise, or an employee may favor another employee by praising him or her so as the same will be done to him or her when the time comes. A performance review being conducted by the manager to a particular employee may also be distorted by the manager so as not to promote the employee or increase the salary due to misunderstandings or conflicts between the manager and the employee (Hodge 2018). Other employees feel overworked and demotivated by the process which will affect their productivity. On the other hand, since some reviews are done online, it hastens the process thus reducing the time taken in decision making instead of the manual way of performance management. If appropriately conducted, appraisals or reviews are the most effective when it comes to performance evaluation.
Recommendations for Improving the Performance Management System
One of the suggestions I would recommend Barclays bank to use to improve the current performance management system is to outsource participants from other firms in the 360 feedback method. That will increase confidentiality in the organization and reduce the possibilities of incorrect information. Also when conducting performance reviews and an employee is found not satisfying he or she should be trained and motivated rather than discriminating him or her and in other cases fired. A good performance management system entails the following components; manager reviews, engagement survey, 360 feedbacks, social recognition, succession planning, goal setting, and alignment. For better overall performance, I would recommend an organization’s performance management system to entail all the components. For example, the goal setting method goes hand in hand with the goal alignment where the managers keep employees working towards the set goals or objectives.
References
Cascio, W., 2018. Managing human resources. McGraw-Hill Education.
Hersey, P., Blanchard, K.H. and Johnson, D.E., 2007. Management of organizational behavior
(Vol. 9). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice hall.
Mone, E.M. and London, M., 2018. Employee engagement through effective performance
management: A practical guide for managers. Routledge
Triandis, H.C., 2018. Individualism and collectivism. Routledge.
Melnyk, S.A., Bititci, U., Platts, K., Tobias, J. and Anderson, B., 2014. Is performance
measurement and management fit for the future? Management Accounting Research.
Morrow Jr, J.R., Mood, D., Disch, J. and Kang, M., 2015. Measurement and Evaluation in
Human Performance, 5E. Human Kinetics.
Friedman, S.D., 2017. Succession systems in large corporations: Characteristics and correlates of
performance. In Leadership succession (pp. 15-38). Routledge.
Rothwell, W.J., Jackson, R.D., Ressler, C.L., Jones, M.C. and Brower, M., 2015. Career
Planning and Succession Management: Developing Your Organization's Talent—for Today and Tomorrow: Developing Your Organization’s Talent—for Today and Tomorrow. ABC-CLIO.
Amirkhani, A., Nazeryani, M. and Faraz, M., 2016. The Effect of Succession Planning on the
Employees’ Performance based on the Balance Score Card with Regard to the Mediating Role of Commitment. Research Journal of Management Reviews, 2(1), pp.42-51.
Zhu, J., 2014. Qualitative models for performance evaluation and benchmarking: data
envelopment analysis with spreadsheets (vol. 213). Springer.
Hodge, G., 2018. Privatization: An international review of performance. Routledge.
Bryson, J.M., 2018. Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: A guide to
strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement. John Wiley " Sons.
Hill, C.W., Jones, G.R. and Schilling, M.A., 2014. Strategic management: theory: an integrated
approach. Cengage Learning.
