Introduction
Business operating in the global business environment recognizes that the human resource management plays a significant role in enhancing and company's strategy. In the contemporary world, the performance management has become one of the essential and necessary components of the human resources management in the workplace. According to Jiang et al. (2012), the performance management is the HR policies and practices that lead to a particular type or level of performance and the management of the individual employees. For the National Australia Bank Group (NAB) to remain competitive in the banking industry, it has to formulate and implement various practices in the performance management. Effective practice in the performance manager could motivate the bank teller, reduce the boredom, and make a significant contribution to the bank. Several performance management practices for high performing employee include reward schemes, keeping challenged, engaging, monitoring, and providing the opportunities for advancement within the organization.
Background
National Australia Bank Group (NAB) is a financial institution that offers financial services franchises predominately in Australia, New Zealand, and also the United Kingdom and Asia. Currently, this organization has acquired a customer base of 12,700,000 customer and 42,000 employees operating in over 1,700 baking centres and stores around the world (NAB, 2016). Currently, the organization is facing a challenge of a high-performing employee who want to leave the organization. This employee feels bored and feel that they are not challenged enough. The manager holds that the employee has great potential in the institution and hence aims to maintain them.
Discussion
Some of the best practices include continuous challenging the employees through practice such as talent-building challenge and reward schemes. Nohria et al. argue, "Employees are motivated by jobs that challenge them and enable them to grow and learn, and they are demoralized by those that seem to be monotonous or to lead to a dead end" (2008, p.79). Therefore, to help the high performing workers make a meaningful contribution to the organization challenging them is essential. Jaeggi et al. (2008) also argue that engaging the high performing employees to help them to switch to a distinct and more processing mode. Reward schemes are also essential for motivating the high performing employees in the organization. Vucetic highlights that workers usually are responsive to the reward schemes that include recognition and incentives (2008, p.498). For the reward schemes to be effective, the reward manager must focus on the unique needs of the respective employees (MacLean and Redman, 2006). In the case of the banker teller who feels bored and not feeling challenged, keep challenging them is the effective performance management practices. This is the best practice because, "Talented employees who feel trapped often leave their companies to find new challenges elsewhere" (2008, p.79). Therefore, keeping challenging the high performers, who are usually talented employees, provides a conducive environment for their careers.
Various practices can be employed in which the NAB human resource development function integrate with its performance management function to assist in better management of the employee in the selected key bank teller position. One of the effective practice of the human resource management is the training development. According to Nohria et al. (2008), the human resource (HR) executives are usually preoccupied with training among other auditable initiatives. This illustrates the HR for the NAB should be engaged in training development as a way of maintaining the employee in the bank teller position. According to Drost et al., it is crucial for the companies in the contemporary global environment to facilitate the acquisition and development of the workers. Various studies have found the training and development is one of the effective practice of the HRM practices (p.67). Effective training and development build the employees who "employees are capable of not only technical service and product knowledge, but are equally capable of critical thinking skills, teams building skills, job rotation, and learning abilities on the job" (Drost et al., 2002, p.67). Studies also reveal that more training is prevalent in the managerial level compared at the blue-collar level (Drost et al., 2002, p.67).
NAB has adopted several training and development practices as well as performance and management practices to ensure that employees have the required skills and have the opportunity to learn new skills. NAB has focused on creating a work environment that empowers the employees and enables them to drive their own development and career (NAB, 2016). The leaders in the organization have the right skills and tools to support the employees and consequently maximize the customers benefit. Through induction, the organization ensures that there are various training courses that the new employees must complete in their first 12 weeks in the organization. These courses involve the induction into the organization or the enterprise induction, job ready learning, and other compliance training that are relevant to the specific role of the employee (NAB, 2016). Other training, development, and learning opportunities in NAB include the Academy, Career U, coaching, mentoring, talent building, people leadership, education and learning benefits, and further assistance and studies. On the performance and development plan, NAB ensures that the performance of employees is assessed to help them know their performance, improve, and build skills to help them in future (NAB, 2016). Various review methods can be employment. For instance, to review the behaviors of the employees, methods such as graphic rating scales, mixed standard scales, and behaviorally anchored scales can be applied. In addition, results are determined by the balanced scorecard and Management by objectives (MBO), while comparative approach includes ranking, paired comparison, and forced distribution. The performance management practices and the training and development practices match with the prevailing literature. For instance, according to 2010-11 SoSR, "only 50% of employees agreed that their most recent performance review would help them improve their performance" (Blackman, 2012, p.9). The practices also match with what Nohria et al. and Drost et al. reveal about the training and development as indicated previously.
Various specific issues surrounding the management of ‘high performers' need to be addressed in an effective performance management system and HRD function at NAB. One of the issues of the management of high performers is that high performers prefer the organization that allows the teamwork to enhance productivity. According to Nohria et al., the employees' "low productivity drags down the performance of all they work with: teams go underdeveloped, and high performers get discouraged and leave" (2008, p.85). In addition, it is evident that the pay growth enhances voluntary turnover more of high performers compared to the lower performers (Nyberg, 2010, p.451). Therefore, the managers must focus on paying growth for higher performance because the employees who receive lower pay growth, especially the high performing ones, may be more susceptible to external job solicitations even if they are satisfied in their jobs" (Nyberg, 2010, p.451). As indicated earlier, high-performance employees are highly influenced and motivated by the work environment that challenge them and allow them to learn and grow (Nohria et al., 2008, p.79). Therefore, these are some of the issues surrounding the management of high performers and need to be addressed to retain and motivate such employees. For instance, in the new employee is clearly bored, not feeling challenged and indicating they might start looking for another job.
NAB also has the reward management strategy that can help the company comply with the solution offered by the NAB's management, in relation to the bank teller position. The prevailing situation of the bank indicates that it provides minimum cash payments and payment in ‘equity performance' to determine whose employment is terminated. In addition, the outcome employers are looking for include preserving reputation of the business. The termination payments are not made upon the retirement of the executive. The reward management team need to focus on such issues by developing an effective reward and recognition system through increased responsibilities, promotions, and acknowledgment. Various types of motivation such as extrinsic and intrinsic are vital in determining the reward strategy. According to Lin, "Extrinsic motivation focuses on the goal-driven reasons, e.g. rewards or benefits earned when performing an activity" (2007, p.137). On the other hand, intrinsic focuses on the inherent satisfaction and pressure derived from a certain activity. Lin argues that both types of motivation affect the individual intentions on activity and their actual behaviors (2007, 137).
According to the case study, the bank teller does not have the inherent satisfaction and pressure derived from carrying out banking activities at NAB. Therefore, the high perfumer employee lacks the intrinsic motivation. Several rewards that can be offered to such individual in this case include introducing job challenges, autonomy, responsibility involvement, autonomy, and task variety. Such rewards "contribute to employee's sense of the meaningfulness of their work, the responsibility for the outcomes of their work, and knowledge of the results of their work" (Doherty et al. 2009, p.176). Such practices can be termed as the rewards that motivate employees intrinsically. According to Shields et al., Developmental rewards such as succession planning, career progression, learning, training and development, and other non-cash and indirect benefits are extrinsic rewards but can lead to intrinsic rewards (2015, p.12). However, the good reward system should achieve roles such as attracting, retaining, motivating, and developing. For the high performers, the rewarding and recognizing efforts must always be fair, affordable, satisfying needs and strategic aligned (MacLean and Redman, 2006, p.173).
In theory, NAB's human resource management function should support the organization corporate strategies with the respect to both under performing and high performing employees. One way in, which, this should be done, is to ensure that the reward system is strategically aligned. NAB's corporate strategy ‘is built around delivering a great customer experience'. (NAB 2016). The position and responsibilities of bank tellers directly aid the implication of this corporate strategy, with their first most responsibility being customer service
Findings
The study found out that the NAB needs to invest in three main components of human resources that include performance management, reward management, and Training and development department. On the performance management practices help the employees to make a meaningful contribution to the organization challenging them is essential. In this case, practices such as reward schemes, keeping challenged, engaging, monitoring, and providing the opportunities for advancement within the organization can help the employees to enhance customer experience. Regarding reward management, various practices such as Job challenges, autonomy, responsibility involvement, autonomy, and task variety help the employees to make a meaningful contribution to the organization. Such contribution must align to the corporate strategy of the NAB. Training and development also play a significant role in facilitating the corporate strategic of the company. This is because training and development ensure that employees have the required skills and have the opportunity to learn new skills (Drost et al., 2002, p.67).
Conclusion
The report is significant because it highlights the strategies that NAB will utilize to retain the high performing employee. The report also shed light to the weakness of the organization and provide solutions to mitigate the problem. The report has highlighted that the management should ensure that the reward system achieves roles such as attracting, retaining, motivating, and developing so that it can fit into the NAB's corporate strategy. The manager must also focus on the unique needs of the respective employees because different employees have different motivational degrees. Therefore, the performance management, reward management, and training and development can be integrated to ensure all employees within the organization establish strong customer relations.
Recommendation
As recommend by various literature in the above text, several practices can be adopted in the NAB as a strategic goal to retain high performer. These recommendations of such practices are highlighted below.
The NAB need to provide a differentiated workforce. In this case, the company needs to focus on balancing the allocation of the necessary resources, rewards, and development opportunities between the high performers and low performers. Therefore, the company should not concentrate on the low performers and overlook the high performers through practices such as challenging the employees through practice such as talent-building challenges and reward schemes.
Another strategic practice is to ensure that the company has an effective Talent Management. For NAB to retain the high performer, I need to develop and continuously refine the employee value proposition. The senior management must be in a position to explain why the high performer would prefer to continue working with the organization rather than with other companies. Therefore, the company must determine the effective ways of recruiting the great talent and then focus on developing them (Nohria et al., 2008, p.78).
The Bank must also embrace Succession Management so that the company can recognize the jobs that are defined to be critical to the organization. In this case, the company can formulate the strategic plan to fill those positions or maintain them with capable and experienced employees.
Bibliography
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