Performance management is an integral human resource process that allows managers to assess the overall contribution of an employee to the organization. Being a continuous process, performance management involves a range of activities such as setting work objectives, evaluating progress, and providing professional coaching to employees (Houldsworth & Jirasinghe 2006, p.47). In virtually all organizations, performance management is necessitated by the need enhance employee effectiveness. With past studies highlighting the benefits of keeping the right people in an organization, performance management has emerged as a popular research area in human resource because it affects organizations ability to achieve their goals and objectives. In view of this, the current paper discusses performance management at Apple and the impact of this issue on the organization. The paper will further evaluate Apple’s approach to the issue and compare this to contemporary theory and practice.
Apple Inc
Apple Inc is a multinational technology company whose headquarters are in Cupertino, California. Founded in 1976, Apple manufactures and distributes a range of consumer electronics and computer software and has acquired reputation as one of the most innovative technology companies globally. Through its highly innovative products and services, the company has built a strong global brand image and emerged as the world’s largest IT Company by revenue (Houldsworth & Jirasinghe, 2006). Apple’s valuation as of November 25, 2014, stood at over $700 billion and established the company as the largest by valuation in the US. With over 100,000 full-time workers and 453 retail stores spread across 16 countries, the company has a notable global presence.
Although Apple’s vision and mission statements are not readily available to the public, current CEO Tim Cook has in the past appeared to describe the company’s vision statement by asserting that “Apple is constantly focused on innovating and only targets those markets it believes it can make a significant change”. In a similar manner, Tim Cook has appeared to describe the company’s mission statement as “defining the future of mobile media and computing devices”.
Performance Management at Apple
Performance management at Apple has played an integral role in helping the company realize impressive success in innovation and workforce productivity. One of the key pillars of Apple’s performance management model is agility in talent. While the company carefully evaluates agility in talent while recruiting, it should be noted that much of Apple’s agility is developed onboard. With a cultural expectation that success in one task will move one to another task, Apple employees are adequately prepared to retool and learn quickly as a way of addressing emerging work needs (Houldsworth & Jirasinghe, 2006). Agility further enables the company’s employees to be mentally prepared for extraordinary challenges in the technology industry. To ensure this level of agility, the company places its employees in disconnected team silos that work against each other but for a common purpose.
Apple’s senior leadership plays an important role in promoting agility among employees. By promoting agility, the company has managed to enter and dominate new industries. Initially a computer company, Apple has expanded to the music industry through its iPod product and iTunes distribution channel. In the smart phone industry, the company has dominated through its iPhone product. With plans to disrupt the publishing industry, the company can be expected to continue shifting from one industry to another with impressive success. At the center of this ability to shift industries has been a culture of agility that keeps employees ready for the next change (Houldsworth & Jirasinghe, 2006).
Another key pillar of Apple’s performance management model relates to how the company designs workloads for its employees. Employees at Apple are assigned rapidly shifting workloads and this ensures work duties do not become monotonous and boring. Since workloads change frequently, employees are kept highly motivated. As a result, the company is able to rely on its workforce to successfully break into completely unrelated industries and dominate markets.
Apple’s application of lean management has immensely contributed to the company’s impressive productivity. Over the years, the company’s leadership has relied on the concept of lean management to ensure prime employee productivity. In this regard, Apple purposely operates with reduced funding while understaffing key departments as a strategy for making employees more innovative and productive. While this strategy may be criticized for its potential effect on employees, it is critical to note the vast benefits it has had on Apple’s productivity.
The lean approach enables the company to not only improve innovation but also make it less expensive. In most modern organizations, innovation has proved particularly expensive due to the many trial and error experiments required to come up with a new product or service. With the lean approach, however, there is hardly enough time and resources for major upset and this keeps employees highly focused on tasks at hand (Walters 2010, p.136). In addition to this, a lean work schedule promotes cohesiveness among teams as members know there is little room for slippage. Despite its benefits, the lean approach demands that employees maintain a usually impossible level of performance and meet unrealistic deadlines.
Another important element of Apple’s performance management is the emphasis on work rather than a work-life balance. While most modern organizations emphasize on the need for employees to balance between work and life, Apple strongly makes it clear that it only hires extremely hardworking individuals. The company’s emphasis on work has been the subject of criticism due to the potential effect it has on employees. Being a renowned global brand, however, the company continues to attract top talent from across the world (Houldsworth & Jirasinghe, 2006).
Overall, the performance culture at Apple can be described as result-oriented. Rewards and recognition are only accorded for final results. In this regard, employees at the company are hardly recognized for trying to innovate but rather for actual innovation. Through this approach, realization of new products takes less time since the numerous product milestones are not allowed to diverge focus from the main goal (Walters 2010, p.136). With its highly competitive work culture, Apple manages to keep its most important employees focused on developing or contributing to the development of the most innovative technology products and services.
Comparing Apple’s Performance Management Approach to Contemporary Theory and Practice
As earlier noted, performance management is a vast construct that borrows from virtually all facets of human resource management. If one or several components of human resource management fail to function appropriately, employee performance is affected negatively (Markos & Sridevi 2010, p.94). Past studies have tried to identify the various factors that influence employee performance and develop models for managers to enhance engagement. According to Penna 2007 (p.5), meaning at work is a key factor when seeking to bring together employers and employees. When employees find meaning at work, they tend to look for opportunities to make contribution.
A 2008 Blessing White study established that approximately 60% of employees today regard availability of opportunities to grow forward as a major determinant of job satisfaction levels (Blessing White 2008, p.9). The study further established that strong manager-employee relation is critical in any performance management model as it influences employee engagement and retention (Blessing White 2008, p.11). In the context of Apple’s model, it could be noted that the company has continued to provide opportunities for employees to advance their skills and competency. Apple’s highly competitively culture allows employees to challenge their work capabilities and seek continued improvement.
While Apple’s approach to performance management has enabled the company realize admirable productivity, it raises several ethical issues. Firstly, Apple’s extreme focus on improving productivity has serious implications on its workforce. Although employees may meet unrealistic deadlines in the short term, it is critical to acknowledge the same is not possible in the long run. Past studies have established that the benefits of the lean management model extend up to a certain level of refinement. When this level is met, lean approaches start to impact negatively on production through such ways as discouraging workers, undermining current leadership, and repealing positive motivation (Kloster & Swire 2015, p.112).
Past studies have associated lean management with declined psychological wellbeing in employees. Employees working under lean management may feel overworked and this can lead to psychological distress (Pedro & Eisenberger 2012, p.461). Such employees may also suffer from high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases. In addition to this, employees working under lean management may report more workplace accidents especially when there are perceptions of high workload. While workplace accidents have been rare at Apple’s corporate headquarters, several incidents have been reported in some of the company’s supplier factories.
The proposition that lean management has negative effects on employee performance has, however, been contradicted in some past studies. According to Kirkpatrick 2006 (p.94), lean management improves employee motivation since it provides opportunities for increased training and cross-functional placement. In this regard, modern managers should seek to motivate employees in ways that are consistent with the principles of lean management. Jacobs and Topfer 2015 (p.71), on the other hand, argue that using the lean concept not only improves the performance of processes but also the intensity of work. According to the authors, this is achieved by using time as a means to higher worker capacity.
Based on the above discussion, it could be noted that although the lean management model has been successful in improving employee performance at Apple, research suggests that such an intensive approach to work is usually not feasible in the long term. For Apple to be so successful, therefore, it must be doing more than just applying the model in its human resource management (Houldsworth & Jirasinghe, 2006).
Apple’s performance culture has played a vital role in making the company’s performance management model successful. The performance culture at the company requires that employees be differentiated based on performance. In this regard, employees working on critical projects do not get the same treatment as the rest since they are considered as top performers. By using this strategy, the company allows for its top performers to exercise their talents and creativity without fear of the repercussions of failure. Although treating top performers differently may reverse the morale of some employees, it is critical to acknowledge that doing otherwise would frustrate an organization’s top talent and potentially cause them to leave (Williams 2001, p.53).
Conclusion
Performance management is an integral human resource process that allows managers to assess the overall contribution of an employee to the organization. Being a continuous process, performance management involves a range of activities such as setting work objectives, evaluating progress, and providing professional coaching to employees (Houldsworth & Jirasinghe 2006, p.47). In virtually all organizations, performance management is necessitated by the need enhance employee effectiveness. With past studies highlighting the benefits of keeping the right people in an organization, performance management has emerged as a popular research area in human resource because it affects organizations ability to achieve their goals and objectives.
Performance management is of importance for the reason that employee performance affects virtually all facets of human resource management and is a critical success factor in production. Being a continuous process, performance management involves a range of activities such as setting work objectives, evaluating progress, and providing professional coaching to employees In virtually all organizations, performance management is necessitated by the need enhance employee effectiveness (Houldsworth & Jirasinghe, 2006). As highlighted in the case of Apple, performance management requires an organization to identify its human resource needs and apply a model that is consistent with its culture. When managing performance, it is also important to factor that several models and approaches can be combined in accordance with the organization’s culture.
References List
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