Performance management aims to acknowledge employee achievements，support their personal and professional development，and motivate and empower them to perform their work effectively.Performance management helps employees to develop their understanding，knowledge and skills so that they can contribute to the achievement of the enterprise’s goals and gain personal and job satisfaction.It is a vital part of any quality human resource system. Every enterprise wants and should expect high performance from each employee.The elements of a competency-based performance management system will，if implemented well，enable high performance which will define enterprise and personal success.Using performance management processes，an enterprise can be better placed to meet competitive challenges.This is done by： ●identifying the critical positions ●determining the most important competencies for those positions ●providing the education，training and feedback required by employees ●holding each person accountable for their results The key to the performance management process is ‘performance appraisal’.Performance appraisal is simply an evaluation of how well an employee performs his or her job compared to a set of predetermined standards.It is a systematic process of feedback on an employee’s work performance，and agreement to future training plans，job goals and job aspirations. To be effective，a performance appraisal needs to have a set of agreed criteria that will be the basis of feedback as well as of setting future goals.Units of competency provide a very effective tool for setting benchmarks or criteria for work performance.The performance criteria within units of competency can be used as measures to assess against in a performance appraisal or review. “Performance management”is also called “performance appraisal”.（）