Performance Monitoring Plan Definition

Components of Performance Management and how they enhance an effective work environment

Components of Performance Management and how they enhance an effective work environment.

By Agaba Herbert.

ahsimollins@yahoo.com

About performance Management

According to the US office of Personnel Management, personnel management is the systematic process by which an agency involves its employees, as individuals and members of a group in improving organizational effectiveness in the accomplishment of agency mission and goals. Employee performance includes: planning work and setting expectations, continually monitoring performance, developing the capacity to perform, periodically rating performance in a summary fashion, and rewarding good performance.

Planning: In an effective organization, work is planned out in advance. Planning   means setting performance expectations and goals for groups and individuals to channel their efforts toward achieving organizational objectives. Getting employees involved in the planning process will help them understand the goals of the organization, what needs to be done, why it needs to be done, and how well it should be done. The regulatory requirements for planning employees’ performance include establishing the elements and standards of their performance appraisal plans. Performance elements and standards should be measurable, understandable, verifiable, equitable, and achievable. Through critical elements, employees are held accountable as individuals for work assignments or responsibilities. Employee performance plans should be flexible so that they can be adjusted for changing program objectives and work requirements. When used effectively, these plans can be beneficial working documents that are discussed often, and not merely paperwork that is filed in a drawer and seen only when ratings of record are required. The US office of personnel management further gives details of the elements in performance management as follows:

Monitoring: In an effective organization, assignments and projects are monitored continually. Monitoring well means consistently measuring performance and providing ongoing feedback to employees and work groups on their progress toward reaching their goals. Regulatory requirements for monitoring performance include conducting progress reviews with employees where their performance is compared against their elements and standards. Ongoing monitoring provides the opportunity to check how well employees are meeting predetermined standards and to make changes to unrealistic or problematic standards. And by monitoring continually, unacceptable performance can be identified at any time during the appraisal period and assistance provided to address such performance rather than wait until the end of the period when summary rating levels are assigned.

Developing: In an effective organization, employee developmental needs are evaluated and addressed. Developing in this instance means increasing the capacity to perform through training, giving assignments that introduce new skills or higher levels of responsibility, improving work processes, or other methods. Providing employees with training and developmental opportunities encourages good performance, strengthens job-related skills and competencies, and helps employees keep up with changes in the workplace, such as the introduction of new technology. Carrying out the processes of performance management provides an excellent opportunity to identify developmental needs. During planning and monitoring of work, deficiencies in performance become evident and can be addressed. Areas for improving good performance also stand out, and action can be taken to help successful employees improve even further.

Rating: From time to time, organizations find it useful to summarize employee performance. This can be helpful for looking at and comparing performance over time or among various employees. Organizations need to know who their best performers are. Within the context of formal performance appraisal requirements, rating means evaluating employee or group performance against the elements and standards in an employee’s performance plan and assigning a summary rating of record. The rating of record is assigned according to procedures included in the organization’s appraisal program. It is based on work performed during an entire appraisal period. The rating of record has a bearing on various other personnel actions, such as granting within-grade pay increases and determining additional retention service credit in a reduction in force.

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Note: Although group performance may have an impact on an employee’s summary rating, a rating of record is assigned only to an individual, not to a group.

Rewarding: In an effective organization, rewards are used well. Rewarding means recognizing employees, individually and as members of groups, for their performance and acknowledging their contributions to the agency’s mission. A basic principle of effective management is that all behavior is controlled by its consequences. Those consequences can and should be both formal and informal and both positive and negative.

Good performance is recognized without waiting for nominations for formal awards to be solicited. Recognition is an ongoing, natural part of day-to-day experience. A lot of the actions that reward good performance — like saying “Thank you” — don’t require a specific regulatory authority. Nonetheless, awards regulations provide a broad range of forms that more formal rewards can take, such as cash, time off, and many non monetary items. The regulations also cover a variety of contributions that can be rewarded, from suggestions to group accomplishments.

According to Klaus performance management is comprised of four major sets of activities including: defining objectives and standards; allocating resources and taking actions to achieve the objectives; analyzing and reporting on results; taking necessary collective actions to mitigate risk and ensure success. Klaus further says that organizations typically manage their long-term strategic performance independently from their short-term operational performance.

This means that with effective planning, monitoring, developing, rating, rewarding, an organization can fully enhance an effective work environment. An effective work environment presupposes that the relationship between employees and is enhanced and hence a better working culture is promoted. Employees and employers, stakeholders, all become an important component in the organizational framework. Communication channels are clear; it is advisable to adopt a two pronged approach to communication-a mix between top-bottom and bottom-up strategy for better communication, effective handling of grievances if any, better work procedures and improved relationship with customers, among others. Peponis (1985) in Fischer (1997) emphasized a specific aspect of the symbolic dimension which he called the spatial culture of a company. He showed that work organizations fulfills social roles that transcends purely technical roles and that these social roles can be described unequivocally. He establishes a correlation between an organization’s design choices and spatial needs and thinks that any interior arrangement design in particular, has strategic effects on the workspace culture.  The term work environment refers to working conditions. It refers to all of the conditions and factors that influence work. In general, these include physical, social, psychological, and environmental conditions and factors. Work environment includes lighting, temperature, and noise factors, as well as the whole range of economic influences. It also includes things like supervisory practices as well as reward and recognition programs. All of these things influence work. (ISO 9000, 9001, and 9004 quality management definitions)

The Balanced Scorecard as a Performance Management Tool

According to Kaplan (2010) David Norton and I introduced the balanced scorecard in 1992 Harvard Business Review article (Kaplan and Norton, 1992). The article was based on a multi-company research project to study performance measurement in companies whose intangible assets played a central role in value creation. Norton and I believed that if companies were to improve the management of their intangible assets they had to integrate the measurement of intangible assets into their management systems. After publication of the 1992 HBR article, several companies quickly adopted the balanced scorecard giving us deeper and broader insights into its power and potential. When performance measures are added to the financial metrics, the result is not only a broader perspective on the company’s health and activities, it is also a powerful organizing framework. New learning about key internal processes, technological discoveries. All this information can be fed into the scorecard enabling strategic reinforcements to be made continually. Kaplan and Norton, (Harvard Business Review Article.)

How effective work environment is enhanced

In case there are good and effective planning system in place then the work force is prepared in time to perform their duties. This means that all the departments are coordinated towards a systemic program. This does not only promote effectiveness since everything goes according to the schedule but it also promotes efficiency where the organization can use little resources to achieve much.

Since planning also involves predicting the future; it means that the planners are focused towards achieving success at every level and have got measures in place to take care of unfortunate occurrences in the implementation process. As the plans are being implemented then effective monitoring procedures are taking place as different departments are coordinating and planning together in order to bring out a final product that is acceptable to both internal customers; external customers, all the stakeholders and stock holders. If this is done it means that all the beneficiaries of the organizational workings enhance an effective corporate governance strategy.

In conclusion performance management and work environment are interrelated in every aspect of work life and so they should be taken seriously if innovations and technological changes at the work place are to have meaning for all the stakeholders.

References

U.S. Office of Personnel Management:    www.opm.gov – Recruiting…

Fischer, Gustave-Nicolas (1997) Individuals and environment: a psychosocial approach to workspace.  Walter de Gruyter

Kaplan,   Robert S (2010) Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard. As a Working Paper.

Kaplan and Norton (1992) Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System. Harvard Business Review on Point.

Maurice Klaus: “A Performance Management Framework.”  http://www.epmreview.com/Resources/Articles/A-Performance-Management-Framework.html.  Retrieved on 17-08-2010.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com.    Retrieved on 17-08-2010.