The management of performance goals no doubt remains fundamental to the realization of organisation goals and objective. To be sure, it uncover areas that requires improvement for the overall growth of the organisation. In other words, while the need to set out performance goals is sacrosanct, the management of these goals is also vital. Here, participants were asked to reveal their perception on the performance gaols set by the organisation. Majority of the participants mentioned that such the performance goals of the organisation is managed towards ensuring gaols and objectives of the organisation are appropriately achieved at the run.
Specifically, one of the respondents has the following to say:
Performance Management goals of the organisation is to make sure that we achieve: volume targets, pricing, gain market share, visibility share (Participant 3).
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The above statements were broadly supported by other management team that participated in the study. For instance, majority of the managers’ interview agree that the performance management of the organisation is tied to issues of achieving target, pricing and market share.
However, one of the respondents clearly add that aside these issues, the performance management of the organisation is neatly related to ensuing all the working people are paid in commensurate with their output. This was further rehearsed in the following lines:
The company goal is to achieve the Volume Targets set, and to ensure employee happiness through paying employees well and the customers of the company to be kept happy (Participant 2).
Another respondents was asked similar questions about the performance management gaols of the organisation, the following were reported:
The organsaition wants to be the best leading company, not only in S.A but in the world, and leading in brands (Participant 7)
In agreement, the rest of the participants specified that the organisation’s goal is to be the leading company with leading brands in the world.
4.5.1 Performance Goals set by Managers
The thrust of this heading is to uncover the various strategy utilized in setting performance goals by managers of the organisation. It is important to mention here, that while the appraisal and implementation of performance management strategy lies with every manager in an organisation, it is crucial to understand how these managers set their performance gaols, for the overall understanding of the organisation performance management gaols. One of the manager interviewed report his view in the flowing lines:
Talking about the whole business strategy, my manager will actually follow up on the business strategy which is also to grow profit within the business while we are growing share in terms of the beer category and also growing share within the overall alcohol industry within our region and then my manager will go on to something that talks directly to his team and make sure that he manages that among the customer that we provide service on so that his target is among all the customers that he managers around
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us we are actually able to achieve to grow profit and to achieve our market share target (Respondent 1).
Another respondent reported that the performance management set by his/her manager is to ensure that winning is achieved with weekly, month and yearly assessment based on KPIs. This view is appropriately captured in the lines below:
The performance goals set by my manager is to make sure that I win in every KPI gaps or targets or whatever that is based on me to go through on weekly, monthly, and yearly bases. Under KPI you will have your weekly or daily volume target that you need to achieve that’s one of the things that your manager would want you to get , and then you get your pricing where you have to manage your pricing against the competitor of which we have two main competitors down here (Participant 11).
Making sense from the above, the majority of the participants agreed that managers in the process of implementing their performance goals, ensure these are done within the ambit of the organisation business strategy for growth and profit. In addition, other contested that managers likewise access their performance goals by weekly, monthly and yearly accessing the performance of their subordinates on how to manage their competitors.
4.5.2 Performance Goals set by Employees
This theme is laden with how employees set their performance gaols in the organisation. While the preceding chapter have unravel performance goals set by managers, it is crucial to understand how employees set their performance gaols as well. This is important as it will give a broad picture of the implementation of the performance management strategy in the organisation of study. One of the employees interviewed interview has the following to say on how his performance goal are set:
My goals are the one that will help me align to the business strategy.
We normally get volume goal targets based on a quarterly targets and then we track those ones on a weekly bases. The other one is that I adhere to my targets on a weekly basis and also to adhere to
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key performance indicators that will helper me to achieve my volume, availability and pricing. Those are the things that will help achieve the business strategy (Participant 6).
Another respondent have the following to say with respect to setting performance gaols:
I have targets as well, and every Tuesday we have meetings, then he is going to take us through as a team to see what we have done and what we have not done, and to see what we can do to close deficits if we have them (Participant 7).
However, another respondent chronicled that it is difficult to set performance goal, yet what they do is to ensure there is no gap in communication. In his explanation:
It is difficult to set a goal there basically what we ask of our reps for consistent communication between the managers and down to packing staff merchandising team, so we do measure that, it is part of the guys goals in the goal setting that we do annually.
Merchandising pricing, my goals for my guys pricing must always be above 90%, effectively they have to have 90% of their trade in line with the pricing requirement or below what the pricing requirement is (Participant 12).
Put together, majority of the respondents agreed that in order for them to meet the company goals, they need to adhere to the targets set by the company. Although, it is sometimes difficult to set a goal, yet it was reported that all the performance gaol related activities are strictly adhered to in order to realize the expected performance threshold.