Date of publication: September 7, 2005
In recent 10 years, Japan's economy and enterprises have experienced major problems. Matsushita Electric, Japan's largest home appliance company, suffered losses for the first time in 48 years, with losses as high as 4310 billion yen. Among the seven major electronics companies in Japan, only Sony remains profitable.
What happened to Japanese companies? Where will Japan go from here? The current phenomenon is still not good news for Japanese companies: more and more young talents have left Japanese companies. There are many reasons for this phenomenon, among which the most important performance management system of Japanese enterprises has problems.
First of all, from the basis of performance management system, Japanese enterprises have natural defects.
The basis of performance management system is job analysis. Job analysis includes job analysis and job evaluation. As a whole of these two parts, job analysis uses scientific methods to collect and analyze job information, and then classifies and evaluates it according to the nature, complexity, difficulty and required qualifications of the job, and forms a job description on this basis. The final job description is the foothold and foundation of performance management. Without job descriptions, all forms of performance management can only be empty talk, boring and unconvincing.
At this point, the job analysis of Japanese enterprises is generally vague and unclear. The reason is still influenced by Japanese culture. Historically, Japan belongs to the farming nation, and the characteristics of the farming nation are first manifested as "mutual assistance and cooperation within the collective", that is, "familism". Compared with individual talents, they attach more importance to collaboration and technology. This is reflected in the management of Japanese enterprises, which shows that the company emphasizes the collective concept and requires everyone to do a good job in the department. Each employee's division of labor is not detailed, and the division of responsibilities in many positions is vague, and there are even obvious overlaps and intersections. The defect is obvious: if everyone is responsible for one thing, it is actually irresponsible. Once there is a problem, the responsible person cannot be found because the responsibility is not subdivided into individuals.
Secondly, judging from the setting of performance targets, Japanese enterprises have the problem of unclear assessment contents and standards.
Establishing performance goals is a very important step in performance management, which is based on employee job descriptions, combined with the company's future planning and strategic tasks, and usually decomposes the company's performance goals.
However, the personal assessment of Japanese enterprises, especially the assessment of managers, is very unclear. This situation is directly related to the unclear division of job responsibilities. Without a clear division of responsibilities, there will be no clear personal assessment indicators. The standard of performance appraisal is too vague, unclear, incomplete and irregular, and the subjective replaces the objective. The evaluation results will not be recognized by the appraisers.
Thirdly, judging from the evaluation and encouragement of performance results, the annual performance sequence system and lifelong employment system of Japanese enterprises directly lead to the inefficiency of performance management system. The annual merit system, lifelong employment system, deliberation and decision-making system and enterprise trade unions are also called the "four pillars of successful management" of Japanese enterprises.
"seniority wage system" is a kind of wage system combining seniority wage and ability wage. The salary of employees will increase steadily every year from the time they enter the factory. The size of age and the length of continuous service are not only important factors to determine the wage level, but also an important basis to determine job promotion.
"Lifelong employment system" means that once a person is formally employed by an enterprise, if there are no special circumstances (such as enterprise closure, etc.). ), as long as he works hard, he can work until retirement (retirement age is 55-60 years old).
The combination of these two points will directly lead to the failure of the performance management system. If some employees have poor performance, according to this system of Japanese enterprises, they can stay all the time, and their income will increase as time goes on. Therefore, among many Japanese companies, the most dissatisfied are young people with strong ability and active thinking, which leads to insufficient efficiency and innovation.
Learning from the mistakes of Japanese enterprises, we China enterprises should have a deep understanding of the performance management system. The performance management system should be the transmission system of the company's strategic objectives. Through a scientific and reasonable performance appraisal system, the company's strategic thinking, goals and core values are transmitted to employees layer by layer, making it a conscious behavior of employees; At the same time, through a reasonable salary system to strengthen the effective behavior of employees, let employees continue to work hard for the development of the company, so as to achieve the development of outstanding enterprises and enterprises in China.