In its November edition the British magazine “Human Resources” (www.hrmagazine.co.uk) published the article “Must try harder”, which indicates that appraisals are still considered a waste of time by far too many employees.

At iProCon HCM we have found a very cynical attitude towards appraisal or performance management systems in general. While the article mentioned above names a lack of integration into reward and career management, we believe the problem is of a much broader nature: the appraisee can rarely see the links between their performance and the performance of the core business, and the process is all too often owned by HR rather than line management. It is therefore often considered an HR-admin nuisance, while it should be one of the most important tools for line managers on all levels to manage their people. This topic was addressed during the HR2009 conference in Prague by iProCon Partner Sven Ringling in his session “Proven techniques to optimize your global performance management strategy”. If you would like to learn more, please contact us.

In its edition from 31st October 2009 The Economist magazine published an article with the title “A tough search for talent”. This article points out that the public sector across most rich countries struggles to find the right talent, an issue expected to get even worse when the labour market becomes more difficult for employers once the current economic crisis ends.

Two factors making it particularly difficult are:

• The public sector is increasingly looking for candidates with profiles closer to what the private sector is looking for.
• The culture within many public sector organisations can easily alienate the talent needed to face the challenges of the future.

These factors lead to the public sector losing many of the better candidates to the private or the charity sectors. You can read the full article via this link: www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14753826