Performance Management is about ensuring the people in your team carry out the work you need them to do, by the required timescales and to the prescribed standard. It involves setting individual, team and organisation goal focused tasks and then ensuring that they are achieved. This will mean tackling problems that get in the way of achieving those tasks and targets.
Successful managers I have worked with want to build a successful organisation where people enjoy being at work. In an ideal world employees come to work as planned, carry out tasks efficiently and everyone in the team gets along. As we don’t live in an ideal world you will find that Performance Management will also include discussions about problems between employees, challenging unacceptable performance and behaviours, and dealing with disciplinary and grievance matters. As the boss you will need to build trust by dealing with people problems in a consistent and fair way.
A conscious and consistent approach to Performance Management will help you to develop a high performing team. Creating conditions that maximise performance is also likely to minimise other workplace problems.
A Good Place to Start: Keep It Simple
Performance Management is not complicated. In simple terms for your team it means they need to:
- Know what they have to do, the targets they have to achieve and the timescales involved.
- Be made aware of required standards of performance and behaviour when at work.
- Have or develop the skills to do the work you want them to do.
- Understand the organisation goals, and the part they have to play in achieving them.
Your Performance Management tasks will include:
- Giving clear direction and coaching to all of the members of your team. This includes pointing out the good and the less good of what they are doing.
- Creating an environment of effective team support.
- Ensuring people are given the resources, tools, coaching and training necessary to do their job. The coaching includes ensuring they understand their freedom to make decisions and the limits of their authority.
- That as well as communicating (and following) the standards for performance and behaviour that are required of your team, you take prompt, consistent and even handed action when they are not being met.
When developing an approach to Performance Management, a good place to start is ensuring you have the right number of people, with the right level of ability, and to provide them with the tools, training and personal development, they need to carry out their jobs.
The output of your organisation can be damaged by a lack of resources. The reasons can include not providing the right tools, absenteeism, or insufficient people. In respect of employee numbers, it is a balance between keeping costs under control and having enough people to do the work. The significant risk from too high a workload due to a lack of resources is stress, which results in time off work that compounds the problem. It also means there is no energy or goodwill left for times when there is an emergency or a surge in work.
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