Prestasiebestuur : 'n intergrale deel van loopbaanontwikkeling

Abstract

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: AN INTEGRAL PART OF CAREER DEVELOPMENT The development of career development as a dynamic function of personeel management, has necessitated an integrative approach to those functions constituting career development. It is true that personnel management, traditionally, has been practised on a fragmented basis and in a rather monolithic fashion. This mechanistic approach to performance management detracts from a composite focus on the performance areas of the individual and negates the dynamic properties of meaningful career development. Practical experience by the researcher in a consulting capacity amongst a number of organisations over the past three years, precipitated research towards the construction and implementation of a performance management model. This model is aimed at the production of a unified system integrating those activities which constitute career development as part of on-going general management. Furthermore, this activity is placed in the hands of each supervisor and is not reserved exclusively as a personnel management function to be performed by personnel practitioners only. Where as the observation made by the researcher was essentially subjective initially, it was subsequently verified through an objective emperical study amongst employees in the various organisations. The results of this research clearly indicated the need for this integrative approach to career development and the emphasis to be placed on the concept and practise of performance management.

A post implementation evaluation of the implemented model clearly reflected,and substantiated,its worth and its facilitative value as a vechicle for change. It succeeded to isolate those activities of management aimed at the directing of targeted human behaviour at work. It also succeeded to place in the hands of each supervisor a set of skills to influence the behaviour of people at work and to develop the sensitivity for the behavioural dimension of management overall. The nature of this research was fundamentally diagnostic as a result of the disjointed nature of what existed to be performance management in the respective consulted organisations. The result of the conducted research was the construction of the performance management m~del aimed mt -the enrichment of both job and worker and the integration of both into meaningful career development. The most significant conclusion drawn is the fact that with the critical shortage of manpower in South Africa, it has become fundamentally important to utilise every human skill at an optimum level and to ensure that -the necessary awareness for and commitment towards such endeavours exist. In addition, the lack of proficiency in the area of man management and the .integration of such skills into general management endeavour reflects a particularly important area of management development.

Recommendations made as a result of the research conducted focus on the importance of an organisational audit to establish the condition of performance management and, subsequently,to develop a remedial and developmental strategy for the practise of performance management as a prerequisite for career development on a differentialised and individualised basis . It can be concluded that the overall objective of this research has been to produce a case for the systematic synthesis of requisite performance management ingredients to be practised by all supervisors in pursuit of career development in an economy with full employment and unprecedented economic growthh