PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
New research highlights how to develop effective performance management
Performance management remains a vitally important process for employers. But it is far from plain sailing to implement effectively. That’s the key conclusion to be drawn from work undertaken by Duncan Brown and Wendy Hirsh, featured in the latest issue of People Management.
The project suggests that HR should pay more attention to the well-researched difficulties of appraising performance. The article draws on a project carried out by Brown and Hirsh at the Institute for Employment Studies (IES), entitled "Performance Management: The Implementation Challenge". Brown, who is principal - reward and engagement at Aon Hewitt, and Hirsh, principal associate at IES, have been delving in detail into the evolution of performance management, with a comprehensive literature review and case study work carried out with seven organisations.
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Stumbling blocks
The research paints a common picture of "less-than-effective implementation", with typical difficulties including:
the quality of one-to-one manager/employee discussions
complaints at standardised, jargon-filled, prescriptive and overly-detailed paperwork
line managers lacking the required competence and commitment for the process
employees having a poor understanding of the goals and point of the process
rating and pay agendas tending to dominate and irritate, driving out feedback and development planning
lack of follow-up and practical action being taken between the formal reviews.
The route to genuinely performance-enhancing management
So how can you develop effective performance management? Based on their research, Brown and Hirsh highlight four key areas:
1. Get strategic. “HR needs to think less about performance management as a ‘process’ and more about how it can support all employees to achieve their individual objectives in support of the organisation’s strategy,” say Brown and Hirsh.
2. Keep it simple. Brown and Hirsh reckon all too many employees and managers seem confused about the “plethora of aims and components in their performance management process", so it should come as no surprise that it often does not function as intended.
3. Focus on the feedback. It’s vital that HR works on improving the essential elements of the process: open, two-way, year-round dialogue between an employee and their immediate manager.
4. Equip the managers. Training in performance management was often haphazard, even cursory. “In response, we are seeing a return to strengthened accountability for people management, along with mandatory training, plus better and more immediate support for managers through a variety of channels,” say Brown and Hirsh.
The authors conclude: “Our research suggests that a focus on these four priorities – together with a more realistic appreciation of the effort, investment and time it takes to implement effective performance management – can start to close the yawning gap between the high aspirations for performance management and how it is experienced in practice.”
Want to know more?
Title: “Performance management: Fine intentions”, by Duncan Brown and Wendy Hirsh, People management, 30 August 2011.
Availability: You can read the PM article online: click here.