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Managing Performance Effectively

The success of a business depends ultimately on the engagement, contributions, and actions of its staff at all levels, whether they are efficiently running ‘customer facing or front line operations up to senior managers who need to make the right strategic decisions about the direction of the business.
Managing performance therefore is about maximising the engagement and contributions, from each employee, their teams and ultimately the whole business. Performance management is the activity of setting goals and tracking performance against them and identifying opportunities for development and performance improvement. While reviewing past performance is important, the real focus of performance management should be on the future. The key question to ask is, what is it that my employees need to be able to do and how can they do it better?

To achieve this everyone across the business needs to:
• Know what the business is aiming for and trying to achieve.
• Understand how their role and goals fit with the overall aims of the business
• Know what they have to do to meet their goals.
• Recognise how progress against goals is measured.
• Understands the consequences for achievement or non achievement of
goals.
Ultimately, performance management is about delivering improved bottom line performance such as better customer service, improved productivity, and increased sales and profitability. However, there are a number of factors that are critical for the success. For example:
• All staff need to understand what is meant by performance (e.g. achievement of targets, meeting behavioural standards, competencies).
• Individual employees also need to understand how they will benefit and play their part in improving performance.
• Performance management is a tool for line managers as well as their staff and its success will depend on both parties’ ability to use it effectively.
• Performance should be discussed and measured in terms of outcomes rather than detail tasks and activities.
• The business must align individual reward and remuneration with achievement of outcomes.
• The business should manage performance from the top down but build capability from the bottom-up.
Finally, and probably the most important factor is to recognise that the behaviour of any manager will dictate the behaviour of their team members. within their team. For example, if a senior manager doesn’t spend the time to develop the performance and capability of his own managers, they cannot complain when they don’t develop the performance and capability of their staff either.