Understanding of the various variants / components of the types Performance Management system available in EazeHR is essential before the process can be designed and configured through setup.

1. Plan and Cycle
The performance process for a company is managed through a performance cycle - called cycle in brief. A cycle is based on a performance plan which is created in setup. A plan can be used in multiple cycles across years if there is no change in requirements. Cycle typically is for one year but it need not be, it can be less or more than a year. Company can have multiple cycles running in parallel and an employee can also be mapped to more than one cycle at the same time. A cycle has multiple stages as explained below

2. Stages in PMS
There are multiple stages in a Performance management cycle, which stages are available depends upon the frequency of the process – Monthly, Quarterly, Half Yearly or Annual process selected. These stages are common across all types of cycles

Common Stages
1. Goal Setting – goals are defined by employee (or he can be excluded from this stage also) and can be edited and approved by Assessor. Ideally goals should be defined in consultation with the employee on each of the criteria based on the role and responsibility. Goals should be as specific and measurable as possible.
2. Annual Review – this is the most important part of the process. Assessor and Reviewer are expected to give recommended ratings and final feedback. If Individual Development Planning and Career Development Planning stages are activated these inputs also have to be provided at this stage. The recommended ratings are not visible to the employee but only to Performance Manager.
3. Results – HR team with the help of the senior management decides the final rating. In some scenarios this rating can be updated only by Performance Manager on the employee’s performance sheet and in some scenarios it is automatically calculated based on inputs captured during the year. Only when final ratings has been updated the results can be released. Results stage shows all records which are ready for release.
4. Finalized – When the rating and results are released to the employees the records are visible in Finalized stage.

Stages based on cycle design
1. Monthly frequency - there would be 11 monthly reviews, M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M6, M7, M8, M9, M10, M11 if the performance period is one year but for monthly frequency a period different from 12 months is also allowed
2. Quarterly frequency – there would be three quarterly reviews Q1, Q2 and Q3
3. Half yearly frequency – there would be one Mid Year review
4. Annual frequency – there would be no periodic review only the Annual review listed in the Common stages above

3. Performance Templates
Each employee is measured on a set of criteria against which his specific goals for the cycle are defined. These criteria can be predefined or can be customized by the employee or his assessor. The criteria are grouped together in groups and templates. Templates are used to have similar criteria for employees having same job role.

4. Roles in PMS

• Employee - employee is involved at all stages but in some cases if the employee is too junior the process might be designed to exclude him from the flow and the responsibility of updating goals, feedback is assigned to the Manager (assessor)
• Assessor - referred to as only Assessor, is the person who is responsible for finalizing goals and providing the assessment / feedback, typically this role is fulfilled by the Reporting Manager
• Reviewer - person who is responsible for the second level review, typically this role is fulfilled by functional / departmental / location head. This feature is optional and is enabled if selected in the plan
• Performance Manager -is the person who coordinates the PMS process

Assessors and reviewers can be mapped manually or can be set based on roles like Assessor = Reporting Manager and Reviewer = Department Head.

5. Sub-modules within PMS
The basic Performance Management process consists of a set of KRAs which are defined during the goal setting process and then on their basis periodic reviews are conducted. At the end of year a rating is given to the employee. The add-on modules which can be used with the basic process are -

1. Individual Development Planning : IDP process can be enabled, it is used to identify training needs and is also referred to as Training Need Identification (TNI) in HR domain. Refer to the article on "Individual Development Planning" for more details.

2. Career Development Plan - inputs for career planning of an employee can be taken from Assessors and Reviewers by enabling the "Career Development Planning" feature in PMS.

3. Project Based Assessment - if Project module is activated then project assessments can be done. Refer to the article on "Project Assessment Process Overview" for more details.

4. Key Behavior Assessment - employees can be evaluated on key behaviors which are associated with their job category. Refer to the article on "Key Behavior Assessment" for more details