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Investigating design targets for Balance

scorecard
effective performance using QFD

management system:
an application of balance scorecard
using QFD Received 13 May 2020
Revised 1 June 2020
20 August 2020
Alpana Agarwal Accepted 3 September 2020
Department of Behavioural Science, Amity University, Noida, India

Abstract
Purpose – An effective performance management must track level of employee engagement, ensure employee
feedback on all aspects and ensure that the people act on that information. Also, it must ensure accessibility of
essential conditions to perform. Considering the challenges associated with existing performance management
system, present study attempts to discover factual expectations from the employees. The paper also establishes
required conditions for fulfilling such expectations.
Design/methodology/approach – Present study attempts to discover factual expectations from the
employees using the Balance Scorecard approach (BSC). Furthermore, using Quality Function Deployment
(QFD), relation between employers’ expectation and requirements necessary to fulfill such expectations has
also been determined.
Findings – The suggested model has been developed as House Of Performance Management (HOPM)
outlining potential leveraging points for enhancing the performance, based on which immediate actionable
measures for effective and efficient performance management can also been advocated. The HOQ suggested in
this paper can be source of reference while developing performance management system for an organization.
Besides, it can help the Human Resource team to discover strategic opportunities and set targets.
Originality/value – Effective goal setting, pooled with a method to track progress and identify obstacles,
contribute to attainment of bottom to top line results. However, designing and implementing such performance
management system has been associated with many challenges like lack of top management support,
perception of the process as time-consuming, failure to communicate clear and specific goals and expectations,
lack of consistency, etc. (Managing employee performance, 2019). Hence most organizations have been
increasingly looking for effective ways of assessing employee performance that can promote stakeholders’
satisfaction, employee engagement and continuous improvement.
Keywords Balance score card (BSC), Employer expectations, House of quality (HOQ), Employee performance,
Performance indicators, Management control, Performance evaluation, Performance management system,
Quality function deployment (QFD)
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Today’s organizations are operating in VUCA environment characterized by Volatility,
Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. The nature of task is changing with the
accelerating shift of socio-eco-techno activities. In such conditions, in order to adapt and
rise to the challenges, business leaders must give prudence and extreme care to all functional
areas. Any functional area being ignored may result in survival issues. One essential concern
pertaining to goal achievement and organizational sustainability is employee performance
management. Most organization views performance management as an instrument to
support decisions related to training, career development, compensation, transfers,
promotions, employee retention and termination. Nevertheless, performance management Journal of Advances in
Management Research
also helps employees to align their goals with strategic plan and objectives of the company. It © Emerald Publishing Limited
0972-7981
includes employee feedback on all aspects and a system for ensuring that the people act on DOI 10.1108/JAMR-05-2020-0075
JAMR that information (Moullin, 2004). It also tracks level of employee engagement, which in turn
help in discovering training needs. Therefore, an ingenious performance management system
is vital for ensuring cost-effective, high-quality service delivery.
Effective goal setting, pooled with a method to track progress and identify obstacles,
contribute to attainment of bottom to top line results. However, designing and implementing
such a performance management system has been associated with many challenges like
deficiency of strategic backing, opinion about the activity to be laborious, unclear
communication and ambiguous expectations, etc. (Managing employee performance, 2019).
Therefore, HR managers are still looking for ways of evaluating employee performance that
can contribute to intended goals (Kanji, 2007).
A number of performance appraisal techniques have been devised to help establish
employee’s performance each having some pros and cons (Idowu, 2017). Moreover, Balance
Scorecard approach (BSC) by Kaplan takes care of all the important aspects of assessment
crucial in organizational success. Balance Scorecard helps in defining the right expectations
from the employees being assessed. Although practitioners face several difficulties while
implementing BSC like with other performance appraisal tools. One important challenge is
finding out balance in providing right conditions for fulfillment of expectations the
organizations do have from its employees. Also, prioritizing these conditions in order of their
level of support to employee performance is another major challenge. To address such
problem, this paper is intended to develop a model using Quality Function Deployment
(QFD), showcasing the relation between employers’ expectation and conditions necessary to
fulfill such expectations. The suggested model has been developed as House Of Quality
(HOQ) outlining Technical requirements vis-a-vis employee performance expectations. It will
also involve a detailed evaluation of management expectations from employees in terms of
their importance in organizational goal achievement as well as prioritizing the requirements
crucial in fulfilling these expectations.

Literature review
Managing employee performance is an essential exercise for development of both staff and
organization. It should be supported by a well-structured and effective management tool that
clarifies organization objective, translate them into clear individual goals and review these
goals regularly. Consequently, fulfilling this aim requires design and implementation of an
effective performance measurement and management system. The performance
management system should include measures synced with company strategies and
provide diverse and balanced support. Plenty of research evident relation of employee
performance with various factors like employees’ perceptions of diversity within
management levels (Kundu et al., 2019), Succession plan, staffing plan and talent
management strategies (Chakraborty and Biswas, 2019), internal communication and
reward and recognition (Ali et al., 2019), organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), leader–
member exchange (LMX), learning, innovative work behavior (IWB) (Atatsi, 2019), impact
of various competencies (Kaur et al., 2018). However, several challenges are associated with
most desired performance expectations. Researchers also claim that conventional
performance measures are inadequate and sometimes misleading. They are usually
expressed in irrelevant financial terms and are not directly related to the company’s
strategy (Maskell, 1989).
There are many performance measurement techniques that are commonly used.
Examples may include Benchmarking, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Relative Value.
However, Hamid et al. (2008), highlighted several limitations associated with these tools. For
instance, benchmarking standardizes performance assessment taking the best performance
in account only. But, compelling employees to follow the benchmarks may delimit their
creativity. Furthermore, implementation of KPIs as performance assessment tool requires Balance
aggregation with other performance measurement technique. Also, they are limited to scorecard
indicating the performance on defined goals only. Besides, the relative value tool for
performance measurement establishes the subjective value of the employee that cannot
using QFD
justify comprehensive performance assessment. Like-wise in appraisal, which is a relatively
familiar tool among all performance measurement techniques, the staff members are bound to
follow what ensures good payments (Coens and Jenkins, 2002).
Additionally, some other widely accepted performance appraisal methods include
360-degree/Multi-rater performance appraisals, Management by Objectives (MBO), Graphic
rating scales, etc. A critical review of these reveals the applications and limitations associated
(Idowu, 2017). For instance, according to Espinilla et al. (2013), 360-degree systems lack
information detailing because of personal discretion and language used by the rater.
Moreover, it does not provide precise clarification due to its qualitative nature (Hsu et al.,
2005). Besides, the main shortcoming of the MBO approach pertains to the fact that it does not
allow monitoring of how employee deal with every eventuality over the given work period
(Bipp and Kleingeld, 2011). Whereas, standardized nature of methods like graphic rating
overlooks the aspects of trait relevance (Armstrong, 2009) and may suffer from systemic
advantage (Woods, 2012). Also, such traditional methods of measuring performance focus on
short-term results, their relevance in the existing environment and its exclusive reliance on
financial measures of performance. This overlooks how the organization is going about
delivering results, and checking on the overall “strategic health” of the organization (Chavan,
2009). Nonetheless, not using any form of performance measurement would make efforts to
establish the rate of achieving goals somewhat hard to determine.
The limitations associated with most performance management tools can be addressed
using BSC technique which was invented by Kaplan. BSC method takes care of most
important aspects of organizational success. Since the BSC method of assessment has been
developed to consider corporate strategic goals and relevant individual contributions
(Kaplan and Norton, 1996), it can combat the challenges of most performance appraisal
methods associated with narrow contemplation. The feedback and learning component of the
tool allow organizations and its employees to reflect on the current performance and
necessary actions to meet expectations and improve continually (Hamid, 2008). BSC has been
extensively applied to improve human resource practices like Meena and Thakkar (2014)
have developed a Balanced Scorecard-based performance measurement framework for the
health care system. The BSC method has been extensively applied to give solutions of
problems of diverse domains (Kaplan and Norton, 1993). For instance, Rockwater, a global
engineering and construction company, has been applying BSC to respond to a changing
industry. It has helped Rockwater’s management highlight a process view of operations,
motivate its staff and incorporate client feedback into its operations. Furthermore, Apple
Computer has been the scorecard as a device to plan long-term performance, not as a device to
drive operating changes. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), a semiconductor company is
consolidating strategic information using BSC. They have developed a scorecard as a
structured repository for storing strategic information. Such a repository further supports a
long-term trend analysis for planning and performance evaluation. Besides, FMC
Corporation, Corporation, a diversified company in the United States, have applied
scorecard as a strategic measurement system. The monthly or quarterly scorecard
measures operations that have been configured to be consistent with their long-term
strategy (Kaplan and Norton, 1993).
Another challenge that exists in performance management is the psychological dynamics
of the employees while appraisal. This is due to management’s ignorance in ensuring
accessibility of essential conditions to perform. The result of such ignorance is the employees’
negative reaction to appraisal feedback, and it is less likely that employees use the available
JAMR information to improve their performance (Murphy and Cleveland, 1995). Therefore, in order
to make performance management a fruitful exercise, besides defining the strategically
aligned performance indicators, the managers should also explore detailed prerequisites for
attaining them. Nonetheless, simply enlisting and approving the prerequisites in the absence
of an appropriate reference model may refrain managers from taking right decisions.
The quality function deployment (QFD) is a structured method, used to determine what is
needed to accomplish to satisfy or delight customers. According to Dwivedi et al. (2018), the
crux of a widely used saying, “If you fail to plan, then you are planning to fail”, is indeed
echoed in the basic philosophy of QFD methodology. QFD was invented in Japan, in late
1960s as a form of cause and effect analysis by Akao (Akao, 1990; Akao et al., 1996). QFD
provides a process to allocate relative priorities to different requirements or criteria for
product development. The house of quality (HOQ) matrix, a key instrument in QFD
methodology, encapsulates the customer requirements also (Xiao-qing 2010). Besides, it
converts customer needs into design requirement (Tavana et al., 2013). QFD has been used in
various fields like product design, manufacturing, production, engineering, research and
development (R&D), information technology (IT), support, testing, regulatory and other
phases in hardware, software, service and system organizations (Chahal, 2011). It has also
been applied in bringing customer satisfaction, including business planning, procurement,
packaging and logistics, marketing and sales. QFD has also been deployed in quality
improvement, quality management, military needs and consumer products (Hauser and
Clausing, 2016).
It has also been applied successfully to build degree programs in many universities
(Clayton, 1995). Kim and Kim (2009) used QFD to prioritize engineering characteristics by
considering the uncertainty of input information. Şen and Baraçlı (2010) used QFD to
determine non-functional requirements important in software selection decisions.
Researchers have also applied it in the processes of design and product manufacturing
(Kelblerova and Vykydal, 2011). Zhai et al. (2010) used QFD methodology to develop an
approach to increase the leanness of the food chain. Fatima et al. (2015) have it applied for the
development of an organic product. QFD is posed with some limitations as well like the size of
matrix may become large and complicated for complex problems, the technique is more
qualitative in nature, it can be difficult to relate customer and technical requirements, etc.
(Boucherau and Roqlands, 2000). However, for department specific planning, the tool offers
many features.

Motivation of research
Preceding literature review have made it evident that both BSC and QFD have been mostly
applied separately to evaluate and establish effectual organizational strategies. Few
researches have combined QFD and BSC for diverse purposes (Dror and Barad, 2006) and
have applied them to see the performance of the entire organization not the employees,
Gunduz and Simsek (2011) have developed a safety management framework for construction
companies, Moussa (2017) have applied it in pavement management, Hajikhani and Jafari
(2013) have combined the methods for effective strategic planning. Furthermore, researchers
have also combined BSC with SWOT analysis for strategic planning in educational
organizations (Zohrabi and Manteghi, 2011), and few have developed a hybrid of BSC,
SWOT, QFD (Ip and Koo, 2004). However, existing literature combining BSC and QFD
techniques is inadequate to provide a realistic and strategic outlook of performance
management system. In fact, published papers applying QFD to device effective performance
management system is absolutely missing for employees. Therefore, this paper proposes
development of QFD-BSC model for employee performance management in a simple cost-
effective manner. Nevertheless, so far QFD has been mainly applied for industrial sector and Balance
certain modifications are required to apply it in Human Resource Management. scorecard
using QFD
Objectives
The main purpose of this article is to design a combined BSC-QFD (named House Of
Performance Management or HOPM) model to identify potential leveraging points for
enhancing the performance, based on which immediate actionable measures for effective and
efficient performance management can also be suggested.
Attainment of this objective will be done by accomplishing following sub-objectives:
(1) Identify the performance expectations in terms of key performance indicators using
the BSC method and also explore relevant technical prerequisites to perform on them.
(2) Develop a scientific model based on the relationship between the performance
expectations and technical requirements using QFD-HOQ

Research methodology
Quality Function Deployment is a planning process that allows charting of customer wants
and the technical how’s that result in a better understanding of design relationships.
Basically, it enables people to think together. This paper intends to develop a combined BSC-
QFD model to understand the design relationship between performance expectations and
technical requirements based on which insights for effective and efficient performance
management can be drawn. The House of Quality, a key component of QFD (illustrated in
Figure 1), is a voice of customer analysis tool to translate what the customer wants into
products or services by way of creating relationship matrix. The developed model takes care
of the fact that employee performance appraisal is linked with their adherence to employers/
management expectations from them. However, so far QFD has been mainly applied for
product and service design in various industrial sectors, hence certain modifications will be
made to apply it in HRM.
Description of the HOPM is as follows:
Left side: Managements’ performance expectations from employees/Key performance
indicators/Employer’s Voice/What employees are expected to do? (What).
Ceiling: Design features in terms of functional or non-functional requirements/How those
performance expectations can be fulfilled? (Hows’).

How Interdependencies

Employer’s Voice/ Performance prerequisites (Hows)

performance expectations

performance indicators
from employees/Key

Why v/s What

Management’s

(What)

How well does How deliver What

Figure 1.
The architecture of
How v/s How Much House of Quality
JAMR The Roof: a matrix describing the relationship or interaction between the design features
(How v/s how). This is created on ordinal measurement scale.
Competitive Section: Employer’s voice prioritization based on company’s present status on
availability of design features (Why v/s what).
Lower level/Foundation: Rank the technical requirements (How v/s how much). These are
the actions which organization shall take to satisfy their own expectations. Gives design
target to the management.
The construction process of HOQ is distributed into six stages that are described in the
subsequent sections. Since purpose of this paper is to develop a framework, the evaluation
has been done with an anonymous organization. The figures resulted from the evaluation will
be used only to develop and understand the conceptual framework.
(1) Determining the employer’s voice/expectations
Einstein “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be
counted”.
As discussed in the previous section, organizations face many challenges in developing
performance measurement systems that measure most relevant things. The system requires
balancing financial accuracy and drivers of future performance while supporting strategic
implementation. The Balance Scorecard is a tool that answers both the challenge. BSC
method considers four perspectives for assessment, that is Financial, Customer, Internal
Processes and Learning and growth.
During the first step employer’s performance expectations are sought and taped on the
y-axis (Refer Table 2). Taking cues from academic literature and interviews undertaken
with the human resource management practitioners, employer expectations were
identified. The performance appraisal forms of five companies using BSC have also been
explored to substantiate the list. Furthermore, using the consolidated list of employer
expectations, human resource management practitioners were interviewed to identify the
most common and critical factors. The identified performance expectations (whats’) are
shown in Figure 2.
(2) Employer voice prioritization
The next stage of the HOQ is the preparation matrix (Chan and Wu, 2002). After gathering
employer expectations, similar ones were grouped to eliminate duplicity. The next step is to
evaluate and prioritize them in real system. The system evaluation comprises two other
columns for each of the user requirement: system at present and at planned level. Linear scale
from 1 to 5 was taken to prioritize expectations in both columns, wherein the most important
got the value of 5.
In Table 1 employer expectations are listed in the first column. The column degree of
importance shows employer’s point of view on the comparative significance of them. Few
management practitioners were contacted and they were requested to determine the
significance of the expectations. The same scale of 1–5 has been used for this purpose.
The column system now signifies the status of the current system corresponding to the
employer expectations, whereas, the column planned level indicates its planning
preparedness corresponding to the new system. The column Improvement ratio can be
calculated in the following manner:
Improvement weight ¼ Planned level=System now
Whereas, the column Importance weight can be calculated as follows:
Importance weight Degree of importance  Improvement ratio
 Balance
Budget Adherence Successful internal
customer relationships
scorecard
Right compensation for using QFD
responsibility level
Successful external
Contribution in increase customer relationships
in overall profit

Financial Perspective Customer Perspective

Task Completed on
schedule Trainings Undertaken

Task success rate Figure 2.

Resource efficiency
Internal Process Perspective
Number of improvement Basic design of balance
suggestions made scorecard performance
system (Adapted from
Kaplan and Norton,
Learning & Growth Perspective 1996, 2001)

Degree of
Performance importance System Planned Improvement Importance Relative
requirements (1–5) now level ratio weight weight

Budget Adherence 5 3 5 1.67 8.33 0.17

Right 3 3 3 1.00 3.00 0.06
compensation for
responsibility level
Contribution in 4 3 4 1.33 5.33 0.11
increase in overall
profit
Successful internal 3 3 4 1.33 4.00 0.08
customer
relationships
Successful external 3 2 3 1.50 4.5 0.09
customer
relationships
Task completed on 4 3 4 1.33 5.33 0.11
schedule
Task success rate 5 2 4 2.00 10.00 0.20
Resource efficiency 4 4 4 1.00 4.00 0.08
Training 2 3 4 1.33 2.67 0.05
opportunities
participated in
Number of 2 2 3 1.50 3.00 0.06 Table 1.
improvement The employer
suggestions made expectations
JAMR S.
No. Technical requirement Unit Target

1 Realistic Budget Deviation from previous goals and budget allocated ↓

2 Appropriate compensation for the role and Comparing with industry average ↓
responsibility
3 Clear objectives derived from company’s Extent to which SMART goals are assigned to the ↑
vision employees
4 Clearly defined policies and organizational Number of deviations when the policy documents could not ↓
hierarchy be linked to decisions made
5 Improved post-sale service/supplier Number of customer/supplier complaints ↓
relationships
6 Improved departmental communication Number of events of miscommunication/delays due to lack ↓
and coordination system of coordination
7 Quality of production/service process Number of deviations ↓
8 Clarity in product/service specifications Quantity of rejected products ↓
9 Access to training and growth Number of relevant training opportunities provided by ↑
opportunities inside or outside the company company/Budget allocated on employee training
Table 2. 10 Employee empowerment Number of employee suggestions Applied/Executed ↑
The technical Note(s): ↑ Aim to maximize
requirements ↓ Aim to minimize

The last column relative weight is the importance weight normalized to 100%:
Relative weight ¼ Importance weight=Σ Importance weight  100

The employer expectations with detailed characteristic are shown in Table 1 and in the
HOPM matrix. With this method employer expectations have weightings based on their
prioritization and the level of improvisation needed. Therefore, the weightings indicate
employers’ voice based on present and planned level for setting improvement goals from the
system developers’ point of view.
(3) Technical requirements
In the next stage technical requirements are discovered. In QFD, they are called technical
because it takes design features (technical requirements in present research) into
consideration. In this stage the employers’ voice is decoded into design necessities to be
executed. The performance expectations identified using BSC in the previous sections were
explored and analyzed in detail to look for prerequisites for employees to perform (can also be
called employees’ voice). These prerequisites should be controllable and measurable in
nature. The generation of technical requirements is a crucial part of the HOQ.
Practitioners from the industry were contacted to understand the functional and non-
functional requirements. The Delphi technique has been used for this purpose wherein, seven
experts with relevant knowledge and expertise in the field were approached with an open-
ended questionnaire. Thematic analysis during the first round of meeting helped in forming
base statements for later rounds. In all, it took three rounds in building consensus. The
process resulted in identification of following technical requirements (hows’):
(1) Realistic budget
(2) Appropriate compensation for the role and responsibility
(3) Clear objectives derived from company’s vision
(4) Clearly defined policies and organizational hierarchy
(5) Improved post-sale service/supplier relationships
 (6) Improved departmental communication and coordination system Balance
(7) Quality of production/service process scorecard
(8) Clarity in product/service specifications
using QFD
(9) Access to training and growth opportunities inside or outside the company
(10) Employee empowerment
Keeping with the principle of “what gets measured gets done”; the technical requirements
have to be measurable so that they can be controlled. Though finding measurable technical
requirements is difficult, but in order to be controlled each requirement has to have a target
value, which can be planned to be achieve in future. To clarify an arrow is added for each
technical requirement for pointing which direction is good. The measurement unit and target
for each technical requirement are shown in Table 2.
(4) Composing the House of Performance Management Matrix: Requirement Correlation
By enlisting the employer expectations as rows and the technical requirements as the column
of the matrix, construction of the House of Performance Management matrix has been done.
Also, the indicators of the employer’s voice, that is degree of importance, system now,
planned level, improvement ratio, importance weight and relative weight; are added as
columns on the left and right side of the matrix respectively. The cells at the middle of the
matrix show the strength of correlation between the employer expectations and the technical
requirements. The strength may vary: strong, moderate, weak or non-existent. A unique
symbol has been assigned for each level of correlation. For non-existent correlation the cell is
kept vacant. By assigning these symbols a numeric value the employers’ priority to technical
requirements can be calculated. 1, 3 and 9 have been used for weak, moderate and strong
correlation respectively. Pair-wise comparisons of all employer expectations and technical
requirements have been done to determine the correlations. The correlations were determined
after discussion with set of experts approached during previous steps. Figure 3 presents the
complete House of Performance Management matrix.
The importance weight of the technical requirement has been computed by taking sum of
product of correlation value in each cell and its consequent relative weight. The importance
weight of the technical requirement shows the importance of them to be controlled (or
improved).
Importance weight of the technical reuirement
¼ Σ ðCorrelation value  Corresponding Relative weightÞ

The relative weight of the technical requirement has been calculated as follows:
Relative weight of the technical reuirement ¼ Important weight calculated above
=Σ Importance weight calculated above  100

After completing the matrix, it was substantiated and crosschecked with experts to get that
information put in and resulted weightings make sense.
(5) Building roof of House of Performance Management: Technical attribute comparison
Next stage involves finding out the correlation within the technical needs. The purpose of this
phase is to help the PMS designers understand the effect of one part of the system over others.
Each of the correlations can either be positive (U), negative (✕) or there could be no
correlation. Positive correlation signifies improvement of a technical feature because of other
JAMR

Figure 3.
House of performance
management

one in comparison. Whereas, negative correlation shows inverse relation between technical
features.
(6) Design Targets: The Findings (Research Outcomes)
The last stage involves three tasks: technical requirement prioritization, standardization of
significant performance indicators (employer’s voice) and setting technical design targets.
The aim of this stage is to combine the information gathered from the preceding steps into
prearranged targets to be applied in design and implementation.
 The resultant matrix looked amazingly logical (refer Figure 3). The HOQ-based Balance
performance management system indicates the following: scorecard
(1) Analyses of the identified performance expectations with respect to its relative using QFD
significance in goal achievement, current status of employee performance on them
and planned target performance level (all on the scale of five) illustrates reasonable
outcomes (with relative weight in parentheses). Task success rate (0.20), adherence to
the allocated budget (0.17) originated as the key performance indicators.
Furthermore, other vital performance indicators revealed are on-time completion of
task (0.11) and contribution to increase overall profit (0.11).
Task success rate reveals the efficiency of employees in completing assigned tasks. The
overall success rate of goal achievement can only be measured by looking at individual tasks
completion rate. Besides, employees should spend the allocated budget accurately and
consistently. Because achieving vital KPIs by overspending is not appreciated by employers
as they may not have extra money. Similarly, underspending allocated money reflects
inconsistency in measuring return on investment as the employee may not have pulled all
required resources to finish the tasks.
(5) For employees to perform on the given parameters, there are certain enduring
technical requirements. In all, ten technical requirements based on given performance
expectations were identified in the previous sections. However, human resource policy
formulation shall include only those technical design features, which have a strong
positive relationship with the performance indicator. Statistics on the floor of the
correlation matrix based on rigorous examination of the technical requirements in
relation to the performance expectation reveals that quality of production/service
processes, clarity in product/service specifications, improved departmental
communication and coordination system, access to training and growth inside or
outside the company, scored top weightages.
This also indicates the design targets for the policy makers. This also suggests that the
company management shall consider reducing number of deviations (24.71), rejected product
quantity (19.85) and events of miscommunication or delays due to coordination issues (17).
Coordination issues in any organization can reduce productivity and delays in delivering
work. To solve this, organization shall establish well-defined communication guidelines.
Also, they shall not ignore initial signs of coordination issues within an organization.
The results of HOPM also recommend considering increasing the number of training
opportunities for the employees for achieving planned performance (11.2). Relevant training
programs will upgrade required skills of employees, thereby enhancing their ability to
perform without any delays and deviations.
The HOPM also shows certain performance indicators that appeared to be less important
but are highly correlated with suggested design targets, so, need to be taken up sincerely.
According to the view of the management the number of training opportunities an employees
has attended is not a vital performance indicator, however, it is a prerequisite for
accomplishing other performing indicators. Besides, right compensation at a particular
position is also an important precursor for achieving desired performance.
(6) Next, the HOPM distinctive roof of matrix helps management specify the various
design features which shall be improved collaterally. Relationships established at the
roof of HOQ reveal some design features parallel to the targeted ones. Clear objectives
derived from the company’s vision would facilitate improvement in departmental
communication, whereas clearly defined policies and organizational hierarchy would
improve quality of processes. Setting specific objectives in-line with the vision can also
JAMR help in determining organization progress in visualizing vision. This will also tell the
tasks that should by amended in order to meet the set objectives.

Managerial implications
Performance management commences with the senior manager linking the strategic goal to
the team goal. Thereafter, corresponding departmental goals are developed for the bottom
line. This way goals and objectives for all employees are directly related to the overall
objectives of the larger organizations. Effective and efficient achievement of these goals shall
be the basis of employee performance evaluation.
The HOQ suggested in this paper can be a source of reference while developing a
performance management system for an organization. The matrix in the house gives us
employer expectations, technical requirements to facilitate performance. It would help in
prioritizing the technical requirements, and will also give target values for required technical
support to facilitate performance.
The benefit of using the House of Quality is that the top management can trace each
requirement back to its source along with the rationale behind it. It can significantly decrease
the time needed in the planning process. The cross-functional evaluation involved while
developing the correlation matrix can help in determining what the management expects
from its employees and then evaluate if the employees shall meet the requirements with the
system now in place. So, the process ensures that performance requirements effectively
translate the employer’s voice. Besides, it would help the HR team to discover strategic
opportunities and set targets. It would also reduce the redundancies involved in design
changes and alterations. It also encourages various functional areas to work together to
understand the company’s priorities at a larger level. The roof matrix also simplifies
necessary design trade-offs. This can be noted during times when the targeted feature ruins
other important ones, leading to changing the strategic target. Overall it would help in
benchmarking the processes with significant saving in time, cost, effort required, prioritizing
plans for performance appraisal design process with greater employee satisfaction.

Conclusion
This research clearly bridges the gap between existing literation and requirements to make
the performance appraisal tool more fool proof. The principles underlying HOPM can be
applied to establish a clear relationship between performance expectations and the respective
requirements that are not easy to visualize. Each step in the process of building HOPM
reveals information worth being taken-up at the strategic level. Ten key employers’
expectations in the form of performance indicators were identified in this paper. Furthermore,
through analysis of targeted and planned status of each performance expectations, HOPM
helps to identify the design targets for the policy makers. Core design targets are discovered
based on the evaluation of performance indicators. It included reducing number of deviations
during production, rejected product quantity and events of miscommunication or delays due
to coordination issues. It shall also consider increasing the number of training opportunities
for the employees for achieving planned performance. So, the issues that may never have
surfaced before are addressed.

Future scope of this research

This research proposes a prescriptive method that can be used by companies for
management control. Further this model can be upgraded by adding more variables for
assessing performance of employees that would make it more appropriate for a large segment
of modern business organizations. This research presents a generalized model that can Balance
further be tested by self-assessment by some organizations to see the effectiveness of the scorecard
results. Based on the results of self-assessment, the model can be customized for individual
requirements which in turn will flag the way for better employee management.
using QFD
Key Points
(1) The employee performance appraisal is linked with their adherence to employers/
management expectations from them. Task success rate, adherence to the allocated
budget originated as the key performance indicators.
(2) For employees to perform on the given parameters, there are certain enduring
technical requirements like-quality of production/service processes, clarity in
product/service specifications, improved departmental communication and
coordination system, access to training and growth inside or outside the company,
scored top weightages.
(3) The HOPM also shows certain performance indicators, like the number of training
opportunities an employee has attended, which appeared to be less important but are
highly correlated with suggested design targets, so, they need to be taken up
sincerely.

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About the author

Dr. Alpana Agarwal is an Assistant Professor in Department of Behavioural Science at Amity
University Uttar Pradesh. She has conducted her Ph.D. work on a new and unique area of research that is
“Bio-inspired Management System”. She is an MBA (Gold medalist) from Mody Institute of Technology
and Science, Laxmangarh, Rajasthan. She has over 9 years of experience in teaching and research. She
had qualified UGC NET-JRF. She has several international publications to her credit with journals of
repute. Alpana Agarwal can be contacted at: alpana.agarwal1984@gmail.com

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