Performance Management Techniques

10 Performance Management Techniques

Here are 10 techniques which will immediately help you to manage better performance:

1. Be honest and open – good performance management relies on a good relationship.
2. Keep it simple – keep the emphasis on development and performance, and keep the paper work and process simple.
3. Keep in touch – use mini-reviews to build towards a performance review.
4. Make goals interesting, challenging and engaging – this is what really motivates people to achieve.
5. Pull together – align individual’s goals with team and organizational goals.
6. Build on strengths more than correcting weaknesses – nobody is good at everything.
7. Let people know how they are doing – give regular, timely feedback, either motivational, formative, or both.
8. Be an example – so, set the standard by example. To motivate others be motivated yourself, it’s infectious! Strive to be a better manager.
9. Motivate, motivate, motivate – the missing element from most performance management processes? People will only achieve superior performance if they want to.
10. Get the right tools for the job – make sure that the resources are in place to help you run the process, and to enable people to demonstrate performance improvement.

Resources

The last of these techniques is one of the key aspects of out P.E.R.F.O.R.M. model. For performance based management to work, resources need to be allocated and managed in order to support employees in their work. There will clearly be costs associated with this aspect, but knowing how to motivate employees is not enough. We must be prepared to resource it.

Resources can come in many forms, and it helps to be creative (or resourceful) in the kind of resources you might use. For example, consider:

• Organizational resources – it’s all too easy for staff to be de-motivated if they do not have the resources to actually do their job. Make sure you allocate physical resources to support work. Don’t forget that time is also a resource, so ensure workload allocation addresses deadline issues.
• Development resources – resourcing an employee’s development will involve freeing up time, and providing either in-house or external programmes.
• People resources – any support that is needed from peers, colleagues, managers, mentors, family, friends and reference groups.
• Personal resources – an individual’s own resources, their own expertise, values and determination to achieve.

Resourceful People

No discussion of performance management techniques would be complete without considering the link between resources and individual performance. This is a fundamental aspect of performance based management, and one that rarely happens in practice. When an individual’s performance delivers results for the organisation, it can be due to a combination of two factors.

Firstly, because the resources have been allocated appropriately. Secondly, because people have made up for resource shortfalls, by hard work, initiative or ingenuity.

Arguably, the greatest resource you have at your disposal, is the resourcefulness of people. Tapping into this resourcefulness can often help you find creative ways to overcome resource constraints. As Lord Rutherford, the father of modern nuclear physics, commented:

“We haven’t got the money, so we’ve got to think.”

Resources are usually in short supply, so it’s essential that resource use is linked to performance. Too often, particularly with training and development budgets, the resources required are not clearly linked to performance. We’ll be discussing specific ways to do this in future pages on performance management techniques.