Whether you "reinvent" it or stick with the traditional process, performance management can become a tedious, time-consuming, and administratively burdensome ordeal. If that happens, it defeats the whole purpose of performance management. What to do to avoid this? Or to make your existing process more relevant and less dysfunctional?
Think of performance management from the supervisor's perspective. The process has, when you get down to the basics, two components:
- Action — Performance management is at the core of everyone's job. Supervisors must manage the performance of their employees to ensure that the goals supervisors are responsible for achieving are, in fact, achieved. Employees must manage their own performance so that they can deliver the results for which they are accountable.
- Administration — Performance management involves certain administrative tasks. These tasks include filling out forms and providing documentation — paperwork.
For example, the essence of performance planning is the discussion between supervisor and employee in which performance expectations are established. This discussion is an integral part of both the supervisor's and the employee's jobs. Completing the paperwork to document what has been agreed upon is an added, administrative task. Similarly, discussing results achieved is part of the supervisor's and the employee's jobs. Filling out the appraisal form is the supplementary paperwork.
To streamline the performance management process, optimize the action and minimize the administration. In other words, spend more time engaged with your employees than with paperwork. Optimizing the action creates a more effective process and minimizing administration frees time for more important tasks.
Following are suggestions for streamlining each of the three stages of the performance management process.
Planning
- Limit the number of results expectations — Working on three to ten goals is manageable. More than ten goals too thinly spread an employee's efforts. If you have a laundry list of goals, ask: What are the most important accountabilities of the job? Rank order the goals according to their priority or the impact they will have on the unit's overall performance, and lop off the low priority goals.
- Transform a series of tasks into a statement of expected results — Too often, supervisors write goals as a series of tasks or procedures. If this is the case, ask: What results are expected when these tasks are finished? Take the tasks out of the work plan (put them in the procedures manual) and clarify how to measure the results.
- Limit the number of dimensions or competencies — If dimensions contribute to an employee's overall performance rating in the appraisal, try limiting the number of dimensions to the four to seven that are most relevant to effective job performance over the coming year. Overcome the urge to create an exhaustive list and instead ask: What competencies does this employee really need to successfully achieve the goals of this job? (Note: If competencies are included in the performance management process for development purposes only and do not contribute to the overall rating, then it is appropriate to include a complete menu of competencies.)
- Use a simplified work-planning template — The forms used for work plans, under the traditional approach, have evolved into complex templates that attempt to "cover all the bases" and account for all aspects of goals and competencies. Such across-the-board thoroughness is not necessary. Simplify your work plan template.
- Give the work plan the "exposure" test — Imagine that your employee's work plan appears in the local newspaper as an example of how state government manages its workforce. Would you be proud or embarrassed? Would the theme of the newspaper article be the professionalism of management in state government, how state government has quietly moved away from its bureaucratic past and into a modern day performance culture? Or would the article be another exposé of government waste and bureaucratic silliness?
On-going Management
- Position performance management as the essence of the supervisory role, not an annoying add-on — This philosophy may require changes in practice and adopting a new attitude toward performance management. This attitude is not about filling out forms. In fact, spending time completing forms gets in the way of the action component of performance management. Instead of focusing on the paperwork process, spend time with your employees talking about performance. A healthy dialogue between supervisor and employee centered on performance creates a culture of continuous performance management.
- Focus day-to-day conversations around goals — When supervisors talk to their employees about performance, the conversations should revolve around the employees' goals. How is the work progressing? Where are you encountering obstacles? Where are you having problems? What is going well? Where are you ahead of schedule? What adjustments need to be made in ensure you achieve your goals?
- Treat issues as problem solving and learning opportunities — Performance problems provide opportunities for supervisors to involve employees in diagnosing the cause of the problem and prescribing a treatment. Dealing directly with performance problems and involving employees in their solution can significantly reduce the time usually spent dancing around performance issues. This approach has two happy outcomes for both supervisor and employee: (a) the work gets done and (b) the supervisor fosters a collaborative learning environment.
- Have employees track their own performance — Most performance measures lend themselves to self-tracking. Supervisors need not squander their time tediously tracking and documenting how each employee is performing. Employees who take responsibility for this task have the added benefit of ownership in their performance and a heightened sense of accountability for producing the expected results.
Appraising
- Have employees supply the information — In many jobs it is appropriate, and even desirable, to ask employees to fill in the data for their appraisals, especially if they have tracked their performance throughout the year. Employees can supply data concerning both results expectations (results achieved, performance against standards, etc.) and behavioral expectations (examples of actions they took, incidents they handled, etc.). Employees should supply the raw data but not provide performance ratings. The supervisor reviews the data and rates the appraisal.
- Be concise — Don't over-document.
- Position the appraisal discussion as "quality time" with employees — This is an opportunity to reflect on past performance and look ahead to how you and your employees might approach the upcoming year differently, based on what you've learned in the past year. Leverage the opportunity
Example of Streamlining a Goal
The biggest difficulty supervisors have when trying to streamline performance management is writing goals that are truly results expectations rather than descriptions of tasks. In this example, a goal is initially written as a detailed account of the steps the employee takes to achieve the goal.
Goal |
Results expectations |
Complete monthly agency timesheet report |
• Collects departmental timesheets by 5 PM on the last workday of each month.
• Calls department heads about missing timesheets & information missing from the timesheets by 11:00AM on the 1st working day of the new month.
• Inputs timesheet data on Excel spreadsheets.
• Prints and proofs monthly timesheet report. Zero misspelled words. Financial data must balance with departmental summaries.
• Delivers completed report to Director between 9 AM and 11 AM on the second working day of the new month. |
Below, the goal has been transformed from a series of tasks to a statement of expected results.
The steps do not need to be elaborated in the work plan. More than likely, the steps are already described in detail in a separate document, probably a standard operating procedures (SOP) manual or a training manual. Employees who need to review the process in detail should go to these sources.
To make the transformation, the supervisor asked the question: What are the expected results when these tasks are successfully completed? The most important results had to do with deadlines, completeness, and accuracy.
Goal |
Results expectations |
Monthly agency timesheet report |
• Report delivered to Director by 11:00 AM on 2nd workday of month
• Timesheets from all departments included in report
• Report contains zero errors — no misspelled words, financial data balance with departmental summaries |
