Improvement Study Of Performance Management System Of XC Construction Cost Firm

Nowadays, performance management is an important management tool of modern business. With the deepening development of knowledge economy, enterprises pay more attention to human resources management and training of personnel. Thus emphasis on performance management application and improvement of the system is also increased. With regard of small and medium enterprises, some internal problems still exist. For instance, internal management mechanism of companies is imperfect; staffs lack the sense of management participation and know little about performance management. Furthermore, there lacks successful experiences of benchmark firm for Chinese companies to learn from. To a certain degree, all these inherent problems have restricted the effective implementation of performance management in some Chinese companies. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of performance management with applying scientific methods in a targeted manner has important practical significance for enterprises, in order to build and optimize the performance management system with the purpose of enhancing competitive advantage of one company.This paper selects XC Construction Cost Engineer Firm as the object of this case study. XC Construction Cost Engineer Firm is a small private enterprise, which belongs to the consulting industry. XC Construction Cost Engineer Firm has a typical industry characteristic of "knowledge-intensive". In recent years, construction cost consulting industry is developing steadily. As a result, the demand for talent of this industry is gradually growing. Regarding to XC Construction Cost Engineer Firm, its manager has come to realize that the traditional way of applied performance management system has been difficult to adapt to the competitive industry environment. More importantly, if such a traditional management model was no longer adjusted or optimized, it would be difficult to meet the internal demand of retaining qualified talent and nurturing talent to win over talent. In order to help XC overcome such obstacle, this paper is dedicated in analyzing performance management status quo of XC Construction Cost Engineer Firm in-depth. For accumulating more theoretical knowledge and practical experience, this paper reviews theoretical results data from home and abroad and briefly describes successful experience of typical case, which helps designing optimization plans for XC’s current performance management system.Regarding to the research process, this paper can be divided into three parts: theoretical construction, analysis of XC’s current condition and optimization plan designing of performance management system. For first part, theoretical construction concludes five contents. They are literature review, basic theory description of performance management, induction of knowledge-based enterprise performance management theory, brief introduction of knowledge-based enterprises and employees’ characteristics and performance management analysis of the typical case. Summarization of basic theory provides support for subsequent analysis, and guides XC to design optimization plans of performance management system. The part of XC’s current condition analysis pays emphasis on current performance management system’s condition of XC. It aims to find out problems that exert a negative effect on effective application of performance management system. Besides, try to find out possible causes to such problems, as well as making analysis correspondingly. Existing problems and possible causes of XC’s current performance management system are the focal point for XC’s optimization plan designing.Finally, designing optimization plan is the pivotal part of this case study. Optimization design of performance management system bases current problems of XC’s performance management system for the main breakthrough. Optimization plan is designed to detailed operation of each program in the performance management process, ensuring overall operational efficiency of the performance management system. In accordance with the process of performance management system, designing optimization plan contains five steps. The first process is performance planning and index system constructing. Make detailed job description of each position for XC, analyzing and finding out Key Success Factors (KSF) that help XC achieve organizational goals, then designing hierarchical Key Performance Indicator (KPI) system according to the job description along with KSF. Besides, develop employee development programs to guide performance behavior for employees. The second process is performance process controlling. In this part, make relative policy or rules to encourage employees to continuously communicate with managers or colleagues about performance management problems in the implementation process. In order to make performance management system effectively operate, relative performance information should be collected in time. Thus, standardize performance information collection mechanism will be helpful for management mechanism. The third process is performance assessment and evaluation. This process optimization aims at detailing assessment programs of performance appraisal. Besides, apply complaint mechanism for employees to assure openness, fairness and impartiality of performance assessment results. In order to improve the performance of XC’s business projects, suggests XC introduce project evaluation system. The forth process is performance feedback. In this part, we suggest XC to strengthen the effective implementation of performance feedback from manager level. Besides, standardized performance feedback records to improve management system. The final process is performance results application. Performance results application is one important process to motivate knowledge staff. Thus, XC should broaden application channels of performance results. More specifically, application ways can be broaden from three parts:the salary distribution, training mechanisms and performance improvement plans.This paper pays attention to the integrity of the performance management system, focusing on effective convergence and mutual support of five processes in performance management system in applications. These five processes are performance planning and index system constructing, performance process controlling, performance assessment and evaluation, performance feedback and performance results application. Characteristic of knowledge workers is taken into consideration when designing optimization plan for the improved performance management processes. The optimization plan is designed to enhance staff’s performance management awareness and give employees a certain degree of performance management authority, with purpose of encouraging all employees of XC to take an active part in continuous performance communication and performance management. This case study wishes that optimized performance management system can become an effective tool for knowledge management for XC Construction Cost Engineer Firm, as well as to provide some reference suggestion for help XC achieve their organizational goals.