Performance Management Systems

The professional literature on HR management is replete with different models, methods and procedures for designing and implementing performance management systems. This is an almost certain indicator that performance management is far from easy. As most of our clients realize, the real challenge of performance management is not designing a process, it is implementing a performance management system so that it achieves the intended outcomes.

Our approach to performance management systems begins with obtaining an understanding of what the client perceives to be working well with the current system and what needs to be improved. We find in many cases that the intended outcomes are not clearly understood by employees. Most frequently, this is due to a flawed or inadequate communications strategy, and a lack of understanding by employees regarding what is really expected of them.

In most of the cases we have dealt with, our solutions have resulted in a simplification of the overall performance management process. We make a concerted effort to ensure that the performance management process and support materials are as user-friendly as possible. We work hard on finding ways to make the process maximally efficient, and ensuring that the time managers spend following the performance management process is time they see as well spent. We want employees and managers to be focused on those activities and behaviours that yield valued organizational outcomes rather than as a process of filling out forms and going through the motions of performance review sessions. Our solutions are driven by the notions that feedback should occur on a regular basis, and that it shoul