The Cultureship Blog

Performance Management:  This is the supposedly value-free title given to the practice of getting the very best out of everyone in the organisation.  Setting clear objectives, monitoring and appraising through pre-defined indicators and rewarding or correcting where necessary. 

Except it’s not value free, or certainly not preconception free, is it?  It might be based on excellent intentions but all too often it is taken as a loaded gun – the start of bad stuff coming.

So, what do people, particularly those on the receiving end of Performance Management, generally think PM is all about:

A new name for the old trick of cutting staff numbers? 
Bashing staff with KPIs to get a little more out of them?
Providing new job specs and process charts in order to justify redundancies?
Or, a really good way to check everyone is on track and to add support where it is needed.

I spoke last week to Fiona, director of Seminars & Solutions, experts in Employment Law training for managers.  We both remarked on how many managers only turn to Performance Management when times get tough.  We also agreed that rather than make things better, it runs the risk of making things a whole lot worse.

From Fiona’s point of view, there are considerable legal implications in springing performance measurements on staff in a bid to increase productivity.  If done unfairly or clumsily it can lead to constructive dismissal claims, stress related absences, or discrimination cases.

No less crucially, after a fear-driven, manic activity increase it can lead to disengagement.  I am not talking about employees harbouring resentment and then leaving when the job market picks up (although that is a very real possibility).  It is perhaps even worse than that – disengagement today (and tomorrow, and the day after……) in their present jobs.  Frantically looking busy whilst quietly drifting further and further away.

Adopting new styles of management and appraisal are often no more than ill-conceived panic measures, which although giving rise to a greater level of determination in some employees – after all there are livelihoods at stake – do very little to increase the long-term and sustainable performance of the individual or the organisation.    It can become little more than a hollow demonstration of will power – up, down and across the organisation and replacing any sense of productive community or intrinsic motivation.

I have seen many instances where just about everyone in the organisation ends up grappling with some out-of-date, or simply woefully misaligned performance measure in a frustrating bid to raise efficiency levels. All that results is extra friction, in many ways.

It is not simply a case of management kicking down, although there are elements of this.  It is everyone grabbing out and grappling with something seemingly structured – some rules to try to cling to – in a time of uncertainty.  “Follow these are you’ll get great results, every time” is the mantra. 

But if they are so great, where were these targets and procedures when times were good and the organisation was performing?  – Probably gathering dust in a distant HR filing cabinet, or, perhaps, being dreamt up by some one-size-fits-all consultancy operation.

I am not trying to suggest that PM is useless, not even that it is naive – every employee from directors to new starters need clear objectives and methods of appraisal – but it must be used steadily, nuanced and carefully applied, and as part of the everyday management of an organisation, not grabbed and grappled with when times get tough.  It must take into account fulfilment and sustainability.

Performance Management is for living – not just for crises.