NMIMS

Performance Management System

Internal Assignment Applicable for June 2022
Examination

1. Clean Tech is a chain of retail stores in India. The company has completed 2 years
and
has a chain of 40 retail stores in India. The stores specialize in end to end
productsranging from digital products, Apparels, furniture to groceries and more (eg
similar to Amazon). The company is considering implementing the Balanced Score
Card (BSC). Design a Balanced Score Card for the company covering 2 examples each
in theFinancial, Customer, Business Process and Learning & Growth quadrants. (10
Marks)

Answer 1:
The term balanced scorecard (BSC) refers to a strategic
management performance metric used to identify and improve various internal business
functions and their resulting external outcomes. Used to measure and provide feedback to
organizations, balanced scorecards are common among companies in the United States, the
United Kingdom, Japan, and Europe. Data collection is crucial to providing quantitative
results as managers and executives gather and interpret the information. Company personnel
can use this information to make better decisions for the future of their organizations.

It is meant to measure the intellectual capital of a company, such as training, skills,

knowledge, and any other proprietary information that gives it a competitive advantage in
the market. The balanced scorecard model reinforces good behavior in an organization by
isolating four separate areas that need to be analyzed. These four areas, also called legs,
involve:
 Learning and growth
 Business processes
 Customers
 Finance

The BSC is used to gather important information, such as objectives, measurements,

initiatives, and goals that result from these four primary functions of a business. Companies
can easily identify factors that hinder business performance and outline strategic changes
tracked by future scorecards

The financial perspective includes traditional accounting measures; the customer perspective
groups’ measures relating to the identification of target groups for the company's products in
addition to marketing-focused measures of customer satisfaction, retention, etc. The internal
business process perspective includes all the processes relating to the realization of products
and services. Finally, the learning and growth perspective includes all measures relating to
employees and systems available to facilitate learning and knowledge diffusion.

Financial Perspective
The financial performance section of a balanced scorecard retains the types of metrics that
have historically been set by companies to evaluate performance. The particular metric used
in the scorecard will vary depending on the type of company involved, who is being
evaluated, and what is being measured. You’ve learned that ROI, RI, and EVA can be used to
evaluate performance. There are other financial measures that can be used as well, for
example, earnings per share (EPS), revenue growth, sales growth, inventory turnover, and
many others. The type of financial measures used should capture the components of the
decision-making tasks of the person being evaluated. Financial measures can be very broad
and general, such as sales growth, or they can be more specific, such as seat revenue.
Looking back at the Scrumptious Sweets example, financial measures could include baked
goods revenue growth, drink revenue growth, and product cost containment.

Internal Business Perspective

A successful company should operate like a well-tuned machine. This requires that the
company monitor its internal operations and evaluate them to ensure they are meeting the
strategic goals of the corporation. There are many variables that could be used as internal
business measures, including number of defects produced, machine downtime, transaction
efficiency, and number of products completed per day per employee, or more refined
measures, such as percent of time planes are on the ground, or ensuring air tanks are well
stocked for a scuba diving business. For Scrumptious Sweets, internal measures could include
time between production and sale of the baked goods or amount of waste.

Customer Perspectives
All businesses have customers or clients—a business will cease to operate without them—
thus, it is important for a company to measure how well it is doing with respect to customers.
Examples of common variables that could be measured include customer satisfaction, number
of repeat customers, number of new customers, number of new customers from customer
referrals, and market share. Variables that are more specific to a particular business include
factors such as being ranked first in the industry by customers and providing a safe diving
environment for scuba diving. Customer measures for Scrumptious Sweets might include
customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, and number of new customers.

Learning and Growth

The business environment is a very dynamic one and requires a company to constantly evolve
in order to survive, let alone grow. To reach strategic targets such as increased market share,
management must focus on ways to grow the company. The learning and growth measures
are a means to assess how the employees and management are working together to grow the
company and to help the employees grow within the company. Examples of measures in this
category include the number of employee suggestions that are adopted, turnover rates, hours
of employee training, scope of process improvements, and number of new products.
Scrumptious Sweets may use learning and growth measures such as hours of customer
service training and hours on workforce relationship training.

Mission: Provide customers with superior quality products and after sales services

Financial
 Increase revenues through improved sales mix
 Lower production costs

Internal Business Perspective

 Meet customer‘s unique needs
 Brand recognition

Customer Perspectives
 Reduce time from production to customer/storefront
 Reduce product waste through improved uniformity of product

Learning and Growth

 New or improved product or process ideas
 Improve employee retention

Conclusion
The concept of BSCs was first introduced in 1992 by David Norton and Robert Kaplan, who
took previous metric performance measures and adapted them to include nonfinancial
information. A balanced scorecard is a performance metric used to identify, improve, and
control a business's various functions and resulting outcomes.
BSCs were originally developed for for-profit companies but were later adapted for use by
nonprofits and government agencies.

2. Ridhima Bose is working with Netmed Enterprises which is an online medical

solutionscompany. Her role is that of a tele-caller who interacts with patients and their
families.Ridhima has been an excellent performer and always exceeds her targets. Since
the past4 months, Ridhima has been undergoing some personal challenges with illness
in thefamily. She is very stressed on account of this and her attitude and behaviour at
work has also changed. She is often seen arguing with colleagues and her customer
service ratinghas also dropped. Her manager has now escalated the matter to the
Department Head,Tushar Wadia, who has now called Ridhima for a discussion. Assume
you are Tushar, how would you go about conducting the Performance Counselling
Discussion.(10 Marks)

Answer 2:
The uninterrupted efficiency and success of a company depend a lot on employee wellbeing.
This is why employers try their best to maintain their workforce’s health. But, most
employers mainly checkup on physical health and fail to address the issues affecting mental
health. For corrective measures to address this issue of mental health, employee counseling is
the need of the hour.

It helps employers understand the unique issues affecting their workers. While doing so, it
also helps build a better employer image, employee performance, reduced absenteeism, low
turnover, etc. to name a few.

Employee Counselling is a means of learning about your employee’s problems and helping
solve them. Such problems are generally caused by one’s work, emotional stance, mental
health, etc. Employee counseling is the outcome to combat stress, depression, anxiety, and
declining productivity in an office. The main objective here is to support your employees
through suitable guidance.

There are many situations where a counseling session is justified. In this respect, it is mainly
on four occasions.

First is the performance counseling. If you notice an employee having inconsistent

performance issues, counseling is a must to know the reasons behind it.

Secondly, disciplinary counseling comes in handy when an employee fails to maintain proper
ethics and etiquette. These can be employee absenteeism, irritable behavior, constant
arguments, etc.

Third comes the personal counseling. Sometimes an employee may be disturbed by personal
issues. These can be related to family, relationships, etc. Though this may not be of your
concern directly, it does affect that individual’s work-life.

Fourth comes the stress management in the workplace. With constant competition and
deadlines comes stress in the workplace. Ultimately, this stress will negatively impact an
employees’ overall health too. Thus, counseling sessions to address this issue is paramount.

In the given case, Ridhima falls under the second category. Although she is a top performer
in her department, yet she needs disciplinary counselling from Tushar Wadia.
A disciplinary counseling session is a meeting between a supervisor and employee. It is an
opportunity for face-to-face communication between the supervisor and the employee,
conducted in private, and is intended to have a constructive goal of providing feedback to the
employee to correct the problem.

Process of counseling Ridhima

Addressing Issues
The first step here is the acceptance of a problem and then addressing them. You must sit
down with your employees and discuss things out. Here, you can set a day and time in
advance to let the individual prepare. If they feel they need a person to support them, they
may bring them along as well. In this case, Tushar can listen to Ridhima’s point of view first
and then discuss the matter. In this meeting, it’s essential to be non-judgmental. Be friendly
and approachable in this aspect. Sometimes, talking about your problems and how you
overcome them helps employees open up too.
Get to know about their problems and what they think is affecting it and approach
accordingly.

Type of Counseling
The type of counseling is also essential to note here. There are three types of counseling.
These are directive, non-directive, and participative counseling. After the first session of
hearing your employees, you must decide on one of these.

In directive counseling, the appointed counselor plays a significant role here. He/she is
actively taking part in the process with guidance and action plans.

In non-directive, there is a significant absence of the counselor in this matter. Here, the
employees are allowed to deal with their problems themselves.

Participative counseling is a mix of the other two. This type helps the counselor and
employee function together and work things out. In the present case, Tushar should apply
Participative counselling with Ridhima.

Relying on innovations in the HR sector

Artificial intelligence has started playing a big role in analyzing the behavior of workers, and
it can often tell when somebody is acting out of the ordinary. Collecting data on the
employees’ typical work patterns can help HR decide whether someone needs a break or a
vacation. Furthermore, while the opinions on using AI differ, people can also opt to solve
their issues with the help of a virtual AI psychologist. AI psychologists are designed to
appropriately help people solve any issues they have, so this may be a viable option to guide
employees down the best path. For example, if Ridhima is not comfortable in counselling
with Tushar thinking that she might be biased towards her, she can counsel with AI
Psychologist.

Giving useful feedback to employees

Make sure to have regular performance reviews. Provide them with specific details in terms
of their performance and potential areas of improvement. For example: Tushar should not
just tell Ridhima that she is doing great; actually list all the things she is doing well. The
more specific you are, the better the chance they will know exactly what they should improve
in themselves. You should do this during counseling sessions as well – that way, they will
know where their progress stands.

Don’t forget to follow up

After the counseling period is completed, you should still pay close attention to that particular
employee. You need to make sure they are following the suggested methods of improvement.
For example, Tushar must monitor how Ridhima is behaving in a real work setting and
whether her behavior is actually better than before. Go through their results, and if they are
positive, encourage the employee to continue working at their newly improved level.

Conclusion
Today’s workforce is more inclined towards a company that actually cares about its workers
besides its brand. The feeling that a company cares about its employees attracts the best
around. Employee counseling is a brilliant way of doing so. And it is not only beneficial for
your employees but also productivity.
3. Roohi Films Ltd is in the visual medium business, focusing on filmmaking
(movies,television and digital series) and advertisements. The company has been in
existencesince 2017. The company now has plans to list on the Bombay Stock Exchange
and alsoexpand globally. You are Aarti the HR manager at the company:

a. Prepare a Vision and Mission statement for the company (5 Marks)

b. Write 2 SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timebound) which can

help the company achieve its vision that you have prepared.

Answer 3 a:

Sometimes, ‘mission’ and ‘vision’ of a company are used synonymously or interchangeably.

This is not correct. A clear distinction exists between the two. Mission is concerned more
with the present; the vision more with the future. The mission statement answers the
question: ‘What is our business?’ The vision statement answers the question: ‘What do we
want to become or, which way should we be going?’ The mission statement focuses on the
present strategic thrust, while the vision statement outlines the strategic path. All visionary
companies have a vision statement. The vision of Microsoft (since 1999) has been ‘to broad
base its outlook to empower people through great software anytime, anywhere and on any
device including the PC and an incredibly rich variety of digital devices accessing the power
of the Internet’.

Vision
A vision statement describes what a company desires to achieve in the long-run, generally in
a time frame of five to ten years, or sometimes even longer. It depicts a vision of what the
company will look like in the future and sets a defined direction for the planning and
execution of corporate-level strategies. The vision of Showbiz Ltd films should be to become
leading company in Film making business in next few years and to stay ahead with its rivals.
As the company is doing well in India for last few years, it is correct to go international. Its
vision must be to mark its presence in overseas market as well and to be the most preferred
global brand offering value added films, television serials and related merchandise.

Mission statement
A mission statement is a statement of an organization's purpose, what its overall goal is,
identifying the goal of its operations: what kind of product or service it provides, its primary
customers or market, and its geographical region of operation. Normally, mission statement is
somehow similar to vision statement. Company’s mission should be to deliver quality
products to the viewers through this company and entertain viewers. Apart from this, its
mission should be to increase its customer base using promotional techniques and expansion
in overseas markets. For employees, its mission should be to nurture a working environment
that fosters personal and professional growth. For shareholders, its mission should be to
generate sustainable long term returns on investment with focus on transparency. And for
community, its mission must be to contribute in education, skill development and sustainable
green practices. Mission statement should be related to provide quality content to the viewers
and grow the business to stay ahead of its competitors.

Answer 3 b:

The performance targets/goals are to be set (for a period of one year), which is split into
monthly or quarterly targets. Performance goals should be SMART (the principle of being
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound). These goals are agreed to
mutually by the manager as well as the employee at the beginning of the performance period.
Most PMS require the employee and manager to enter it into a prescribed performance
appraisal template and sign off on the commitments prior to the commencement of the
performance period or at the start of it.

SMART Goals
Specific: A clear message as to what needs to be achieved must be provided. Your goal
should be clear and specific, otherwise you won't be able to focus your efforts or feel truly
motivated to achieve it.
Measurable: There must be at least one indicator to measure progress against fulfilling the
objective.
Achievable: The objectives must be consistent with the given vision and mission of the
organisation. Your goal also needs to be realistic and attainable to be successful
Realistic: The objectives must be achievable given the organisation’s abilities and
opportunities in the environment.
Timely: To accomplish the objective there must be a time frame. Every goal needs a target
date, so that you have a deadline to focus on and something to work toward.

Smart goals to achieve the vision

1. Business Growth
In this case we want to grow our business, it is a simple goal but it can also be converted into
a smart goal. To grow our business, we will acquire regularly new clients so our goal is
specific and measurable. I can measure the growth by how many new clients I bring on and
the films or serials made, while maintaining my current client base. I will ask current clients
for referrals, advertise the business and will take the help of social marketing campaign so
this makes the goal achievable. Using these activities, will add more clients to the business
and accordingly revenue of the business will be increased so it makes the goal relevant and
realistic. As we have already decided that new clients will be added in regularly so goal is
time bound as well. At last; we can say that, mentioned goal is a smart goal.

2. Overseas expansion
As the company is planning to go global, this should also be a smart goal. Here company’s
purpose is clear that it wants to go abroad and expand itself so goal is specific and
measurable. It may measure its growth after it settle down in overseas markets. Contracts,
revenue, overseas clients, profit etc. may decide the position of the company. Company has
done well in domestic market so it has good chance to mark its presence in international
markets as well so goal is achievable as well. Goal is realistic as company can achieve its
goal using its capabilities and strengths in certain period of time.