ISLAMABAD: The board of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), the government’s social safety net, has decided to adopt an international system of assessing performance of its employees in order to encourage them to improve work and get rewarded accordingly.

Called as the ‘Bell Curve Concept’, the new Performance Management System (PMS) was approved at a meeting of the BISP board on Tuesday.

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection Dr Sania Nishtar chaired the meeting.

The system will help in rating the employees’ performance. Those who are identified as high-top performers are rewarded: they feel motivated and work harder to grow.

“Since the current PMS is not compatible with the modern PMS being used by progressive organisations, the board has approved the new principles based on ‘Bell Curve Concept’, essential to leverage optimum performance from employees. The new system will be applicable to regular and contractual employees,” said Dr Sania.

Current system lacks ability to differentiate between good performers and average or poor performers, board meeting told

The new PMS will access the relative performance of employees based on goal-setting sheets and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) developed for benchmark positions. A new rating grid will be adopted, providing flexibility to recognise the employees who perform and deliver results beyond expectations and identifying those not measuring up.

It will link the employee performance to reward and compensation, training, career development and succession planning, and alignment with key BISP goals and objectives.

Participants of the meeting noted that the existing PMS at the BISP was similar to the methodology used by the government of Pakistan (ACR/PER system). There are several issues in the current system. The system lacks the ability to differentiate between good performers and the average or poor performers. The current system is not creating value for BISP as good performers have no incentives to work harder and poor performers have no reason to perform better.

The system will evaluate every job’s performance in three areas: organisational growth, beneficiary and employee management.

Employees will also be provided appropriate level of training in order to develop comprehensive understanding of PMS’s concepts to ensure smooth implementation of the PMS.

The board approved a new organisational structure, introducing the concept of opening BISP offices at the district level and dividing all provinces into three empowered zones with delegation of administrative and financial powers to ensure quick decision making at the appropriate level.

Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2021