PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT WEBINAR

Conducted a very informative webinar today with Mr. Avais Waseem (returns coordinator at catch.com.au) who is a graduate of La Trobe University, Australia and holds a Master’s degree in business analytics and information technology. The company where he currently works at, ‘Catch.com.au’ is a subsidiary of Wesfarmers group which is largest retail conglomerate in Australia and New Zealand. The session lasted for half an hour almost and was quite interactive as he works as a team leader and returns coordinator. The audience got such a great opportunity to learn about performance management, employee s KPI’s and goals, employee motivation, team management, impacts of COVID on performance management, opportunities for students and much more. Since he works in Australia, he made us familiar with international work trends and kind of strategies and reward systems used by them. I gained an understanding about integration of different departments within a firm for the sake of performance assistance and management. The returns department is divided into four sections and there are different KPI’s within a team which are changed yearly but he monitors those KPI’s on daily basis to keep a check on employee performance. Performance monitoring is done strategically and employees are also kept motivated to get the best out of them. When we moved on to employee motivation, he highlighted the importance of it and how employee motivation impacts and boosts employee morale. Returns department which comprises of almost 18 employees has adopted quite interesting employee motivation strategies like one ‘weekly superstar’ award and ‘player of the month’ award however, the company (catch.com.au) itself gives one team award as well. The reward consists of some amount of money and a certificate which is given on the same criteria of extra work done and how much assistance is given by an employee to other teams. The discussion moved further when he pointed out the importance of re-skilling in his company and how cross-training and assisting other departments results in re-skilling of employees. When asked about one challenge that he faced while working in this department, he explained how COVID-19 had an impact on employee performance and how difficult it was to deal with it. Employees who were newly hired at that time had no idea and it was very challengeable to make them understand work online but on the other hand, it proved to be very successful for the company as people started shopping for everything online which almost doubled their sales and profit. On a lighter note, he was asked about one thing he doesn’t like about team management and he pointed out that sometimes people think you’re being biased because in some situations, it’s better to look at the effort and quality of work than just KPI’s and numbers. Overall, the webinar session by guest speaker was very productive, interactive and engaging for me and my audience. His efforts of sharing so much and giving out his precious time to make us understand how things work in real life is much appreciated and will really help us all in future.