Int. j. econ. manag. soc. sci., Vol(3), No (11), November, 2014. pp.

770-775

TI Journals

International Journal of Economy, Management and Social Sciences

www.tijournals.com

ISSN:
2306-7276

Copyright 2014. All rights reserved for TI Journals.

A Suggested Evaluation Model for Employees' Performance IT-based

Organizations
Jamshid Ali Nasab*
Department of Industrial Management, Najaf Abad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran

Mahsa Ghandehari
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Isfahan, Isfahan

Hasan Ghorbani
Department of Business Management, Islamic Azad University, Mobarakeh Branch, Isfahan, Iran
*Corresponding author: jamshid.alinasab@gmail.com

Keywords

Abstract

Evaluation
Excellence
Self-assessment
Performance

Since one of the important issues in human resource management, performance management and employee
performance improvement is organizations to provide appropriate role models to their staff's performance
to get the best feedback of the results for future decisions. This paper attempts to identify different patterns
of performance evaluation on the human resources to provide a good fit with the pattern-based
organizations and information technology to enable the Directors accordingly the monitoring of
organizational processes, programs and measures for the improvement and promote human resource
development efforts.

1.

Introduction

Today, organizations try to identify their weak and strong points along with offering and implementing their plans for needed improvements
toward favorable situation by installing promote systems and developing quality especially comprehensive quality system. Organizational
excellence model of European quality foundation, Baldridge and Deming models are among them. Each of these models tries to do self
assessment in organizations with the help of specific set of indexes.
The vague aspect of the issue is that, organizational excellence model has basis weak points in criteria and results, because in identifying subcriteria, it suggests total assessment and this leads to vagueness of human resources' managements during evaluation, planning and managing.
For an instance, development of job promotion is expressed in sub criteria number 1.
This criterion asks managers that how employees' job solutions developed and which implementations can improve human resources? But it is
unable to respond that how a human resources manager can evaluate employees' satisfaction in relation with process of job promotion
development. Therefore, a comprehensive model that involves all comprehensible indexes related to these criteria is a necessary need for on
organization which wants to step toward excellent path.
In addition, most of these models have considered constant weight coefficient for evaluation indexes in all the countries and haven't paid
attention to cultural and native conditions of organizations; while each existed index has different importance according to cultural and native
conditions.
In present study it is tried to identify patterns, in addition to different models and approaches toward improvement of human resources' self
assessment. Therefore, by relying on a research a self assessment model suitable for native conditions of organization is offered, by which
organization will be able to identify strong and weak points of employees and achieve determined orientation toward improving human
resources. By the help of this model, organization will be able to find side effects of present employees' situation, identify purposeful plans and
implementations toward achieving organizational excellent.

2.

Self assessment

There are many definitions for this term that two of the most important of them are listed as follow:
- Self assessment is a regular, systematic and comprehensive review of organization's performances and its results are on the basis of determined
model (Lee, 2001).
- Self assessment is a comprehensive, regular and strategic review of activities and finding of an organization by the help of excellent
organizational model (EFQM, 2000).

3.

Employees' self assessment

Employees' self assessment is an approach or methodology for evaluating the amount of success and effectiveness of organizational units, which
on the basis of definite indexes and criteria helps managers to do self assessment of their programs and activities and by identifying their strong
and weak points try to plan for improving their own situation (Abili, 2008).
In the present study self assessment means a process which allows organization to identify its strong and weak points clearly and improve the
weak points.

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A Suggested Evaluation Model for Employees Performance IT-based Organizations

International Journal of Economy, Management and Social Sciences Vol(3), No (11), November, 2014.

4.

Organizational Excellence

Excellence model is a managerial structure which provides basis of improvement by relying on basis principles and concepts and paying
attention to the main criteria of self assessment system and comprehensive quality management.
Excellence model is a tool for evaluating the amount of stability of systems in organizations and also is a guide which determines the best path
for the improved performances. Therefore, the key massage of excellence model is on the basis of answers of two questions: How this model can
be identified as a proper and reasonable managerial structure, and who can play the key roles in the interactional and relational chain.
In the first level of this model total aims are observable and in the next level total aims transformed and analyzed to measurable and quantitative
scales.

5.

Performance management in human resource management

It is a process in which each manager as a manager of experts' human resource tries to identify expectations and guide employees to achieve
those expectations besides providing a base for improving performances of employees during a period of time.
Most of the scholars know "management of employees' performances" as one of the most important key process of human resources
management in which other sub-systems of human resources' management are served as stimuli.

6.

The philosophy of self assessment models

The philosophy of European foundation quality management (EFQM) is on the basis of 8 concepts of comprehensive quality management which
are listed as follow:
1. Tendency to get result
2. Customer Focus
3. Leadership and stability in the aims
4. Management on the basis of processes and realities
5. Development and cooperation of employees
6. Learning, innovation and continuous improvement
7. Development of cooperation
8. Social responsibilities
According to the entity, the process of aims and features of EFQM it is understandable that this is a managerial technique which is related to
control and assessment area in organization. To prove this claim, familiarity with control, its definition, processes and EFQM gain necessity. In
the theory of POSDCORB which defined management as different steps: planning, organizing, task giving, leadership, coordination, reporting
and budget, reporting and budget are categorized in the group of controlling.

Figure 1. Deming's PDCA cycle

Now, among scholars of management knowledge, control is a principal, a stage or an important managerial task. Some researchers summarize
management principles to 5 levels of planning, organizing, providing resources, leadership and controlling. Some know these principles as
management process and the other know them as manager's tasks. However, by accepting each theory, control is the last step of managing.
In the last decade Deming identified control as a consideration with control in his famous circle this chain also called PDCA circle (Van, 2000).
Now, if we look at EFQM, we will understand that the role of EFQM is continuous controlling, evaluating and modifying. According to Banian's
definition, there are 9 main elements in EFQM which 5 of them are enablers (Leadership, strategy, employees, resources and processes) and 4 of
them involve the results (employees, costumers, society and key results of performance).
By 100 king at these elements carefully and paying attention to the process of this model, it is understandable that the entity this model is the
same as PDCA process or control process which defined before. In EFQM various techniques are used which all of them have controlling entity
such as radar reason and self assessment.
In radar reasoning, first results are understood on the basis of process, aims, comparison and reasons, then approach, application, evaluation and
control. And this is similar to Deming circle and self assessment process (Melville, 2000). Therefore, in EFQM organizations gain proper
feedback, determine their strong and weak points, and offer the best ways for modifying and improving their performances by the help of self
assessment (self control). This circle is understood as a controlling step and continuous improvement.
Therefore, the mission of EFQM is identifying present situation of organization, comparing it with aims, indexes and standards, and continuous
improving of organization's performance.

Jamshid Ali Nasab *, Mahsa Ghandehari, Hasan Ghorbani

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International Journal of Economy, Management and Social Sciences Vol(3), No (11), November, 2014.

Figure 2. European Foundation Quality Management (EFQM) model

7.

Performance's evaluation

There are many definitions for the term "performance's evaluation". To have a correct understanding of each phenomenon or subject it is
necessary to have a definition of it to gain common understanding of it.
It should be mentioned that according to relative similarity between the concept of evaluation from employee, usage of resources and facilities,
and organizational aspect, they will be identified orderly.
Neely and Platts believed performance evaluation is a process through which employees' performance will be evaluated; and if it happens
correctly, employees, managers and organization will benefit. Casio identified performance evaluation as a systematic description of weak and
strong points of individuals and group regarding with performing their tasks.
Performance evaluation from usage of resources and facilities aspect is expressed in efficiency indexes framework. If in the simplest definition,
the ratio of input to output is known as efficiency, the system of performance evaluation will evaluate the amount of manager's decision making
efficiency regarding with efficient usage of resources and facilities.
Performance evaluation from organizational aspect usually is synonym with the amount of effective activities. Effective means the amount of
achieving to the aims and plans besides the feature of efficiency of operations and activities (Rahimi, 2007; P. 36).
Totally, performance evaluation is referred to the process of measurement and evaluation of system's performance in definite periods in a way
that under consideration expectations and indexes had been clarified for evaluative system before the process (Tabarsa, 2000, p. 4).

8.

IT based companies

IT companies try to develop the business of their costumers as their business partners by using standards and developing IT. The experience of
these companies in the field of offering comprehensive solutions, management information systems and software production technology will
make their way flat. Therefore, these companies should pay more attention to rapid services and good quality of their products. Competitive
advantage, costumer and market judgment should be considered as their criteria and try to look to issues from costumers' view and come closer
to market reality. The main activities in IT companies are listed as follow:
- Offering software solutions for ventures on the basis of organizational operative processes
- Offering IT based solutions for organizations
- Offering training, establishing and supporting services for their software solutions
These companies always appreciate institutions and organizations to use more up-to-data technology for making the tasks simpler by focusing on
designing required application systems for them.
IT companies know software without proper services won't solve costumers' needs. They try to provide basis of success in organizations by
offering effective services. The first step in offering specific services is application of project establishment process which follows principals of
project management and includes the stages of measuring possibility, planning operations, installing and training the systems. After system
establishment, supporting activities will be started to guarantee the principled and correct use of systems and provide the latest facilities for
costumers.

9.

Suggested model

By corresponding organizational excellence model (Deming, Baldrige and EFQM) with suggest human resources self assessment model, it can
be suggested that most of the criteria of human resource area have strong relations with each other. This conclusion not only shows focus of
organizational excellence model on different aspects of human resource development, but also means comprehensive coverage of human
resource excellence model that has in different aspects of management and human resource development.
Therefore, operating human resources excellence model in organizations enables it to achieve present scores in human resource aspect.
Nevertheless, there is a basic weak point from the view of management of human resources excellence models. These models generally
introduce human resources criteria, and this leads managers have a vague and confused assessment, planning, and management. According to
this generalization, the excellence model should be changed properly and its changed format can be used for proper assessment of under
consideration units by offering proper score for each unit and prioritizing selected criteria. The national model has some criteria which are shown
in fig 3.

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A Suggested Evaluation Model for Employees Performance IT-based Organizations

International Journal of Economy, Management and Social Sciences Vol(3), No (11), November, 2014.

Figure 3. Suggested comprehensible model

Therefore, by using this model, some criteria that are proper for IT based organizations will be identified; and we can try to define correct scores
regarding the importance of each criteria and close definitions to sub criteria.
9.1. Criteria of performance evaluation according to suggested model in Hamkaran System Company performance criteria that were introduced
in this model and suggested weights were allocated to them are listed as below:
Table 1. Criteria of model IT-based organizations
Item
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Subject
Presence in teamwork
Training programs
Services amount and background
Customer satisfaction
Performing plan items in evaluating period
Service culture
System establishment
System survey
Process survey

Weight
20
10
15
15
15
10
15

Suggested weights can be changed according to introduced max and min in description part of each criteria the following a brief definition for
each criteria is provided:
I. Presence in team works
Team work is important because it is the reason of increasing motivation, efficiency, improving communications, career skills and creativity
among employees. According to the necessity of team work and importance of the role of team in organizations' structure, those performances
that are reason of team performance's improvement should be recorded and a score should be allocated to them.
II. The amount and background of services
The aim of this item is learning from the work, recognizing the problems, managing knowledge and experiences and evaluating the quality of
work.
III. Training programs
As training has the basic role in improvement of employees function, the coverage of training programs with the aim of improving expertise
skills are important in evaluation of experts. The bases of training programs are receiving certificates and attending in training courses with IT
content.
IV. System establishment
This item will evaluate the quality and methodology of establishment of system in costumer organization.
V. System survey
It refers to data collection about costumer systems and evaluation of correct establishment according to costumers' needs and their work
structure.
VI. Process survey
For this item the following rations can be defined for evaluating the process of IT system establishment in costumer organizations:
- The ratio of delivered system according to the methodology than total delivered project that are related to process survey.
- The ratio of (the number of surveyed system in face to face format) than (total delivered projects non project services).
VII. Customer satisfaction
As the most important aim of all activities is enhancement of customer satisfaction, according to informational infrastructures the following
criteria are defined to evaluate this item:
- The number of unsatisfied costumers or complaint letters
- The number of compliment letters from costumers for experts' performances
VIII. Execution of plan's items during evaluation period
Regarding the importance of work courses' plans and the necessity of this issue that each IT expert's plan should be derived from this plans, this
item is important in evaluation of each expert through which the individual plan go along organization seasonal plans.
IX. Service culture
This item is considered according to value making of those behaviors which led to improvement of service qualities. Researchers showed that
the noticeable amount of costumer' understanding of service quality is the function of those behaviors that improve empathy, respect,
understanding and problem solving senses. Therefore, there are criteria for value making of these behaviors in service culture section.
So, the first 6 items are model enablers which system establishment, system survey, and process survey all are three sub criteria of them, and the
last 3 items are the result of execution of enablers which according to their generality can be applied in IT based organizations as self assessment
criteria.

Jamshid Ali Nasab *, Mahsa Ghandehari, Hasan Ghorbani

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International Journal of Economy, Management and Social Sciences Vol(3), No (11), November, 2014.

10. Description of case study

Hamkaran System Company was established in 1985 by 3 determined entrepreneurs with the aim of providing management needs of economic
enterprise through IT based solutions. Rapid reorganization of markets, and production standard software could make proper bases for rapid
consolidation of Hamkaran System in software market. For developing, this company could offer specialized and comprehensive solutions for
different industries to be identified as one of the most valid companies in this field. Today after passage of 2 decades of successful activity in
offering products and secure services, Hamkaran System as one of the valid economic enterprises continues its investment for providing
costumers' needs by relying on modern IT based solutions. IT develops its management capabilities by a mixture of unique technology,
specialized services and business management methods.
Production, research and development sections of this company could develop its business solutions such as financial systems, supply chain
management systems, production management and planning systems, human resources management system by absorbing and training creative
and efficient resources in different fields. Now it has a network, included 60 specialized companies with trade partners and more than 1000
personnel whose tasks are offering, establishing and supporting of these solutions.
About 6000 organizations and economic enterprises which use Hamkaran System Software solutions show wide range of this company's
function. This company has selected as superior informatics company among private companies.
The most important activities of this company are listed as follow:
- Offering business software solutions according to operational processes of medium and large organizations in mother industries that produce,
give services and have trades.
- Offering IT solutions for state organizations
- Giving services related to establishment and supporting of offered solutions.
- Offering services related to engineering developed networks and information security.

11. Methodology
Population of this research was Hamkaran System's employees who their numbers were 1104 persons. From this number 540 persons were
supportive employees and 320 persons were staffs. All staffs and supportive employees were the population of this experimental study. The
developed questionnaire (Appendix 1) was distributed among employees. After data collection and analysis of exploratory and confirmatory
factors, assessment scale of suggested model was corrected and confirmed.
In present study, organization managers were selected as main experts. The link of online questionnaire was mailed to all the population. Two
reminders were sent to different units for completion of questionnaires to increase the rate of responses. Eventually, at the first phase 211
questionnaires (126 supportive employees and 85 staffs), and in second phase 205 questionnaires (119 supportive employees and 86 staffs) were
collected.

12. Reliability and validity analysis

The questionnaire had 10 items with 5 Likert scales (1=completely disagree, 5=completely agree). This questionnaire developed after a pilot test
among experts and employees. To be sure of content validity, a pilot test was done in limited level (30 participates), then questionnaire's items
were corrected for better understanding of participants.
By using a reliability coefficient ( Chronbach), the reliability was analyzed. This coefficient was more 0.9 for all the variables which confirmed
reliability of questionnaire.

13. Model testing

At the first part of first phase, the performance assessment system was executed by using briefing session, then the score of each criteria and sub
criteria was described and the direct effect of each gained score on work condition and rewards was explained to all employees. Then at the end
of two continuous seasons and after performance assessment according suggested model, the satisfaction survey questionnaire was distributed
among participants.
The collected data was analyzed by descriptive statistics, correlation and K square by the help of SPSS software. In both seasons K square test
didn't show any significant relation among sexes, marital statues and satisfaction amount, but there was a significant relation between age and
job satisfaction (P<0.05). The results of satisfaction survey from execution of suggested model in 2 continuous seasons (summer and fall) are
shown in table 2:
Table 2. Mean and SD of employees for implementing performance evaluation system
Mean
Summer
Fall

Supportive experts
3.08
4.23

SD
Committee employees
3.12
3.89

Supportive experts
0.45
0.62

Committee employees
0.52
0.78

14. Results analysis

At the end of first phase with 99% certainty can be said that employees were satisfied of execution of performance assessment system and its
results in their company. It means that zero hypothesis about equality of means is rejected with 99% certainty (H o: 1 =3) and H1: 13 can be
accepted. But acceptance of H1 is a weak acceptance and this means that suggested model should continue its training and try to increase
employees' motivation although it was executed correctly.
At the end of second phase with 99% certainty can be said that employees were satisfied of the execution of performance assessment system. It
means that zero hypothesis about equality of means is rejected with 99% certainty (H 0: 1=3) and H1: 13 can be accepted.
But this time the acceptance is strong and this shows better execution of criteria at the second phase and its more acceptability among employees
because of continuous training.

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A Suggested Evaluation Model for Employees Performance IT-based Organizations

International Journal of Economy, Management and Social Sciences Vol(3), No (11), November, 2014.

15. Conclusion
According to achieved results, by passage of time the amount of employees' satisfaction increased which confirmed the correct efficiency of
suggested model.
But the significant relation among satisfaction level and the age of employees may have effects on the next period's results and it's better to
consider next period's results for gaining more certainty.

References
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Abtahi, SH. Human resources management, Research and Training Institute of Power Ministry Pub, Tehran, Iran, 2006
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Mirsepasi, N, Strategic management of human resources, Mir Pub, 2006
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Saadat, E, Human resource management, Samt Pub, 2009
Serlam Nemko, Strategic planning for strategic recorces of human forces, Translated by: Hassan Zaree Matin, Management Knowledge monthly, No. 17,
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Appendix 1
Questionnaire
One of the valid instruments for evaluating job satisfaction is job determinant index (JDI). This descriptive questionnaire which was developed
by smith, Condle and Halin included 54 items. It has 5 Likert scales and data analysis was done according to smith's guidance's job satisfaction
rooted in different aspects such as payment, promotion opportunities, supervisor, colleagues and environmental factors such as approaches, job
advantages, benefits and soon. In JDI model 5 main factors are listed as different aspects of job satisfaction:
Payment: the amount of salary and justification in payments.
Job: the amount of tasks which can provide opportunities for training.
Promotion opportunities: the ability to access to improvement opportunities.
Supervisor: the abilities of supervisor for showing his / her attentions to employees
Colleagues: the amount that colleagues are supportive and friendly
After doing modification on aforementioned questionnaire, according to group's consolers, present questionnaire was prepared.
1. The amount of your salary changed positively after assessment
2. Performance assessment had positive effect on the amount of payment justifications
3. Assessment with this method provides opportunity for better training
4. Assessment led to enhancement of your responsibilities
5. Assessment with this method resulted in increasing your accessibility to improvement opportunities.
6. This assessment resulted in supervisor's more interests to employees
7. This assessment improved the relation between supervisor and employees.
8. This assessment led to supervisor's more attention to employees
9. This assessment led to more supports among colleagues
10. This assessment led to more friendly relation among colleagues
a) Completely agree
b) Agree
c) Neutral
d) Disagree
E) Completely disagree