Tijdschrift voor HRM - Volume 24, Issue 2, 2021

As an HR tool, performance management aims to increase employee commitment and motivation and seeks to ascertain that employees contribute to the strategic goals of the organization. In practice, however, these outcomes are not always achieved, and frustration is growing among managers and employees with the slow, cumbersome and subjective nature of these traditional performance management systems. In response, an increasing number of organizations are abandoning this traditional, mainstream approach to performance management and have begun to experiment with a more flexible, employee-driven approach instead, in which the needs of the employee take centre stage. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of this alternative approach to performance management by exploring (1) what the defining features of this alternative approach to performance management are and (2) how organizations transition from one system to the other. As part of this transition, the focus of performance management shifts from past performance to future performance, while the responsibility for the performance management process shifts from the manager to the employee. Nonetheless, and through a process of experimentation, evaluation, and adjustment, organizations often end up with a hybrid system in which elements of traditional and employee-driven performance management are combined. The nature of this transition can be seen as evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary.

Due to demographic trends organizations are challenged to extend the working lives of their employees. Therefore, research in to the extension of working lives is increasing. However, there are few empirical studies that study the role of major life events in this process. The goal of this article is to examine through which process major life events can influence the ability, motivation, and opportunity to continue working. To meet this goal 33 employees were interviewed. This article shows that major life events can have a major impact on the ability, motivation, and opportunity to continue working. Major life events can cause changes in the resources and demands that an individual faces. When these fluctuations lead to changes in person-job fit the ability, motivation, and opportunity to continue working are influenced. Employees who experience major life events in their private lives find it important to have access to accommodative practices, whereas employees who experience major life events at work find it important to have access to developmental and utilization practices. It is always important that employees who experience major life events receive sufficient job resources such as the support of colleagues and the supervisor, regardless of the type of life event that they experience.

This paper deals with the question of how we can improve performance management systems in higher education institutions. Performance management systems are defined as configurations of complementary human resource management (HRM) practices that enable organizations to set goals, give feedback and evaluate the efforts of their employees. Higher education institutions have adopted performance management systems to manage their staff more efficiently and effectively against the backdrop of challenges like democratization, marketization and public accountability. However, in higher education institutions, such systems often result in unintended effects on academic employees’ well-being and performances. Like burnout, reduced innovation and lower team performances. This particularly applies to non-professorial higher education staff. In response, scholars have started to inquire into the ‘success conditions’, particular conditions under which the unintended effects of performance management systems can be avoided or reversed. Drawing on four empirical studies, this paper examined how and when performance management systems yield positive outcomes for the well-being and performance of academic employees in higher education institutions. The findings show that performance management systems have positive synergies with both employees’ well-being and performances (mutual gains). In addition, leaders are observed to be key supporters of performance management systems. However, they should not be regarded as a panacea, as our findings also seem to suggest a more complex interplay. Such findings contrast with the dysfunctional effects of performance management systems as described in higher education literature. However, it is important to remain critical. The main message is that academic employees’ personal perceptions of performance management implementation are a force to be reckoned with in striving for healthy and performant academic employees. Therefore, the subsequent challenge moves to managing those perceptions and building academic leaders.

The current labor market requires that people take responsibility for their own professional development. At the same time, this requires a stimulating work environment that supports self directed employability. This article, which is an adaptation of the recently published knowledge document ‘Eigen Regie op Loopbaan en Ontwikkeling’ of the Sociaal Economische Raad (SER), focuses on how self-directed employability can be stimulated. In this article we discuss the building blocks of self-directed employability that provide insight into how employees can influence their own professional development. Based on these building blocks, we describe concrete actions to stimulate self-directed employability within organizations and which roles HR professionals should take in facilitating this behavior. First, this concerns offering direction, i.e. emphasize of how labor market development relates to changes in the organization, how specific tasks and roles will change, in what time frame this will occur, and the direct consequences for employees. Second, it concerns a safe environment in which employees and managers trust each other and in which learning and development are attractive (support). Finally, it is about organizing the work in such a way that people can actually make their own choices and there is room for learning from and during work.

Dutch industrial manufacturers are confronted with a new and promising industrial robot: the collaborative robot (cobot). These small robotic arms are revolutionary as they allow direct and safe interaction with production workers for the very first time. The direct interaction between production worker and cobot has the potential to not only increase efficiency, but also enhance flexibility as it can align the strengths of (wo)man and machine more thoroughly. Currently, Dutch manufacturers are experimenting with cobots. To obtain a first understanding about the use of cobots in Dutch industrial practice and to see what the consequences are for production workers and production work, we conducted an exploratory interview study (N=61). We learnt that most cobots under study are used for the production of one or a few large product batches (mass production) and work highly autonomous. The interaction between cobot and production worker is limited and reduced to production workers preventing the cobot from falling into a standstill. The results tend to be in line with traditional industrial automation practices: an overemphasis on leveraging the technology’s potential and limited attention for the production workers’ work design and decision latitude. HR professionals were not involved and, therefore, miss out on a crucial opportunity to be of an added value.