Performance Management

Performance Management

Employees are the greatest asset that an organisation possesses. It is therefore critical that everyone is firing on all cylinders and doing everything possible to help the organisation to be successful. It sounds simple, why wouldn’t everyone want to do their best?

Employees do generally want to do their best. However, communications between line managers and the staff they oversee can break down for a variety of reasons. This is likely to lead to lower productivity, damaged morale and increase the likelihood of people leaving.

What can happen to cause this unfortunate sequence of events? Perhaps the employee’s line manager didn’t discuss targets and no agreement was reached about what those targets were, or maybe the targets were vague.

If targets were not discussed with the individual concerned, it is hardly surprising that the employee may believe that a good job was done but their manager may not agree, believing that work should have been done differently. If an organisation decided to simply issue instructions, and not consult the employee, this is likely to cause resentment and frustration from the person with the large to do list. What is the solution to preventing such problems?

Performance management appears straightforward but is challenging to master.  For a start, your employees need to know what is expected of them and they should accept those targets. Nobody should be in any doubt about how things are going. Performance should not be a once a year task with frenetic activity from the employee in the weeks before the annual appraisal, in order to demonstrate they have met the grade.

Performance management should be an ongoing dialogue, meetings should be written up with targets and applicable timeframes. We have expertise in all aspects of performance management, such as developing a culture of continual improvement. This means not simply implementing a system of review which measures output, but one which establishes how things should be done by incorporating the desired values into performance management. We can also recommend and draft policies that would reinforce these expectations.

There will be occasions when, even with effective performance management, an employee may still be failing to achieve the required standard. The question then is why? Is the poor performance  due to a lack of skills or training, or is it a deliberate decision by the employee not to comply? Each reason leads to further action and handled either through a capability or disciplinary procedure.

If you find yourself needing help with performance management, we have expertise in drafting disciplinary procedures, capability procedures, and in delivering training on these topics. Either sign up for one of our HR support packages, or get in touch to discuss how we can support you on an ad-hoc basis.