Performance Management

# Performance management is the process of creating a work environment or setting in which

people are enabled to perform to the best of their abilities. Performance management is a
whole work system that begins when a job is defined as needed. It ends when an employee
leaves your organization.

Performance management is not an annual appraisal meeting. It is not preparing for that
appraisal meeting nor is it a self-evaluation. It's not a form nor is it a measuring tool although
many organizations may use tools and forms to track goals and improvements, they are not the
process of performance management.Performance management is a whole work system that begins
when a job is defined as needed. It ends when an employee leaves your organization.

Performance management defines your interaction with an employee at every step of the way in
between these major life cycle occurrences. Performance management makes every interaction
opportunity with an employee into a learning occasion.

# Components of a Performance Management System

The performance management system may contain all of these components, but it is the overall
system that matters, not the individual components. Many organizations have been able to
develop effective performance management systems without all of the following practices.

A performance management system includes the following actions:

 Develop clear job descriptions using an employee recruitment plan that identifies the
selection team.
 Recruit potential employees and select the most qualified to participate in interviews
onsite.
 Conduct interviews to narrow down your pool of candidates.
 Hold multiple additional meetings, as needed, to get to know your candidates' strengths,
weaknesses, and abilities to contribute what you need. Use potential employee testing and
assignments where they make sense for the position that you are filling.
 Select appropriate people using a comprehensive employee selection process to identify
the most qualified candidate who has the best cultural fit and job fit that you need.
 Offer your selected candidate the job and negotiate the terms and conditions of
employment including salary, benefits, paid time off, and other organizational perks.
 Welcome the new employee to your organization.
 Provide effective new employee orientation, assign a mentor, and integrate your new
employee into the organization and its culture.
 Negotiate requirements and accomplishment-based performance standards, outcomes,
and measures between the employee and his or her new manager.
 Provide ongoing education and training as needed.
 Provide on-going coaching and feedback.
 Conduct quarterly performance development planning discussions.
 Design effective compensation and recognition systems that reward people for their
ongoing contributions.

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  Provide promotional/career development opportunities including lateral moves, transfers,
and job shadowing for staff.
 Assist with exit interviews to understand WHY valued employees leave the organization.

# Philosophy of performance Managment

Performance management is a process intended to improve individual and organizational

performance. Employees and their manager mutually establish goals and expectations that are
specific, measurable, attainable and are linked to the goals of higher level management.

Some “experts” suggest performance appraisal, and its guiding system, performance
management should be scrapped, because “it doesn’t work”. Others suggest automating the
process, or continuing to use outmoded rating and ranking systems. None of that works, or at
least none of that actually contributes to IMPROVING employee performance. To help you
decide if we can help your organization, here is our point-by-point philosophy on Performance
Management and its components.

# Function and Purpose of performance managment

 If performance appraisals and overall performance management strategies don’t improve

both individual and organization performance and effectiveness, it’s all wasted effort —
overhead and cost. That’s the bottom line.
 Other purposes usually associated with performance management and employee reviews,
such as determining promotions, pay levels and raises and record keeping are
considerations, because they are realities of our workplaces, but they should never be the
primary focus.
 Performance management has amazing power to positively affect the organization, since
done properly, it improves employee engagement, focuses employees on what’s
important to accomplish, reduces micro management and time spent “fire-fighting” and
can be used to manage change and alter organizational culture.

# Benefits of Performance Managmenet

1. Employees are motivated to improve their performance

A performance management program is essential to promoting and improving employee

effectiveness. It involves a continuous process in which managers and staff work together to
plan, monitor and review goals and individual contributions to the agency.

A well implemented performance management program improves the performance of

individuals, teams, and the agency. Managers sets goals with employees, monitor their
performance, give regular feedback, and conduct performance reviews. Using regular feedback,
employees can better understand what skills they need to develop. Performance feedback also
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fulfills a basic human need to be recognized and valued, which leads to higher self-esteem and
motivation for optimal performance.

2. Managers know their employee’s strengths and weaknesses

A performance management system can enable managers to better understand their employees’
skill sets and proficiency levels. Through improved employee observation, managers master
understanding of an individual’s strengths and weaknesses. The manager and the employee can
offer each other feedback and address concerns, creating a transparent work environment.
Managers can also get a sense of how to motivate employees, from leading by example to fair
allocation of work.

3. Employees are more engaged

A good performance management system leads to more employee engagement. If they are
satisfied with their performance management system, employees are more motivated and less
likely to leave the organization. Engaged employees are more involved, committed, passionate,
and empowered. These feelings lead to employees going the extra mile in supporting the
agency’s mission.

Also, engaged employees are more likely to make suggestions or improvements that lead to
innovation. For example, a performance appraisal review can result in a discussion where an
employee shares recommendations on how to reduce cost or speed up processes. All in all, when
employee engagement is a central part of company culture, employees are more committed to
their agency’s goals and values (minimizing employee misconduct) and more motivated to
contribute to its success.

4. Employees understand their job responsibilities

An effective HR system also gives staff a better understanding of their daily tasks, as well as
insights into behaviors and results needed to perform their job well. If an employee receives
constant and high-quality feedback, the employee well become more self-aware of their
behaviors and leads to more growth and development. Such systems empower HR team
members to be a resource for employees and managers in goal setting and progress tracking.
They also aid in creating and approving individual development plans, which can include:
training, helping employees learn role-supportive knowledge and improving skills in their
current roles.

5. Administrative actions are fair

Using an optimal HR system facilitates properly tracked documentation, employee development

and bidirectional communication. As a consequence, promotions, performance-based awards,
transfers and terminations are often more fair and appropriate than similar actions taken under
weak or nonexistent HR systems. Such systems, in the end, align strategic business goals with
employee performance, ensuring all staff members receive accurate and impartial performance
feedback.

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Ultimately, the benefits of a performance management program touch everyone involved in the
process. The right platform can help your HR team spend less time on paperwork and more time
on the “people work” critical to your agency.

# Some of the essential pre requisites without which performance management system will
not function effectively in an organization are:

 Should attract very high levels of participation from all the members concerned in an
organization. It should be a participative process.
 Top management support and commitment is very essential for building a sound
performance culture in an organization.
 Organizational vision, mission and goals should be clearly defined and understood by
all levels so that the efforts are directed towards the realization of the organizational
ambitions.
 Clear definition of the roles for performing a given job within the organizational
framework which emanates from the departmental and the organizational objectives. The
system should also be able to explain the linkages of a role with other roles.
 Open and transparent communication should prevail which will motivate the
employees for participating freely and delivering high performance. Communication is an
essential pre requisite for a performance management process as it clarifies the
expectations and enables the parties in understanding the desired behaviors or expected
results.
 Identification of major performance parameters and definition of key performance
indicators.
 Consistency and fairness in application.
 A commitment towards recognition of high performance. Rewards and recognitions
should be built within the framework of performance management framework.
 Proper organizational training should be provided to the staff members based on the
identification of training needs from periodic evaluation and review of performance. This
will motivate the employees for a superior performance.

# The Five Factor Model of Personality for selection and recruitment

Many researchers and practitioners have advocated for the use of the Five Factor Model of
Personality - also called Big 5 - for selection and recruitment (Goldstein, Pulakos, Passmore &
Semedo, 2017). The five factors are emotional stability, extraversion, openness to experience,
conscientiousness, and agreeableness (Costa & McCrae, 1992). An interest in whether
personality traits were related to work performance arose in the early 1990s through several
meta-analytic studies (Goldstein et al., 2017).

Conscientiousness is a modest predictor of job performance

One of the most influential of these studies was by Barrick and Mount (1991). Their meta-
analysis found a consistent relationship between conscientiousness and job performance across a

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variety of domains but little relationship between the other Big Five traits and job performance.
The correlations ranged from .04 for openness to experience to .22 for conscientiousness with
job performance (Barrick & Mount, 1991).

These correlations are relatively modest yet they provided a more optimistic view of the potential
of personality traits to predict job performance. Moreover, although these correlations are
modest, the magnitude of these results can still provide utility in personnel selection decisions
particularly if they are considered part of a wide array of selection methods where they are
shown to have incremental validity over and above other methods (Goldstein et al., 2017).

Too much conscientiousness and emotional stability hurts job performance

Recent research on the relationship between personality and job performance support the
relevance of personality traits for selection with two major conclusions. First, Le et al. (2011)
found that the relationship between emotional stablity and job performance is curvilinear and not
linear as widely assumed. As a consequence, it is not the maximum of emotional stablity that that
correlated with high job performance, but a midrange level ( Le et al. 2011).

In addition, Le et al. (2011) also found a mediating effect of job complexity on the relationship
of conscientiousness and emotional stability with job performance. High complexity jobs show a
higher threshold of both personality traits. In contrast, people that score high in
conscientiousness and emotional stability in a low complexity job, tend to have a lower job
perfomance.

Narrow personality traits are better in predicting job performance

One of the controversies over the use of personality to predict job performance is whether to use
broad measures of personality or narrower, more refined measures. Researchers have examined
those narrow facets that define the larger dimensions and compared their relationship with job
performance. In one study, Robert and colleagues focused on conscientiousness, which is a
consistent predictor of job performance.

They found that the broad construct of conscientiousness is comprised of six narrower factors
and that these factors were related to a range of different criteria and showed incremental validity
over the broad general dimension of conscientiousness with job performance (Roberts,
Chernyshenko, Stark & Goldberg, 2005).

In fact, research examining the relationship between personality and job performance tends to
support the use of narrow traits rather than the use of broad traits. The majority of research
shows that narrow traits outperform broad dimensions of personality (Rothstein & Goffin, 2006).
However, it is worth noting that Barrick and Mount (2003) have concluded that the issue of
whether to use broad or narrow personality traits depends on the context.

Based on the research, they state that there is a place for both types of focus because there is
validity for both broad or narrow personality traits on job performance under the appropriate
conditions. It is important for organizations to narrow down those personality traits that are the
best predictors of criteria under certain conditions. Organizations can utilize those personality
factors that are most relevant to their setting.

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Employee performance is directly related to business performance and success. But, most
managers and employers don’t give performance management the importance it deserves. If you
want to improve your bottom line and productivity, it’s time to give this aspect of organizational
development some serious thought!

# Challenges of performance Management

There are some common problems that business owners and leaders face when it comes to
performance management. Let’s look at these challenges and how you can overcome them:

 Challenge #1 – Setting Goals and Milestones

Without clearly defined goals, workers won’t know what they’re supposed to be working to
achieve.

Solution – Understand what you want for your business. Break that down into clear and specific
goals that can be reached by your team within a certain timeframe. Communicate these to your
employees, so they are aware of what they’re trying to accomplish and can plan how to make it
happen.

 Challenge #2 – Strategic Planning and Focus

Goal setting isn’t going to work if you don’t have a plan in place to help employees focus on
critical goals.

Solution – To be truly effective, your performance management process should be aligned with
company objectives. Design a strategic plan to help your team understand how their efforts
contribute to critical goals, and focus on prioritizing tasks that impact organizational progress the
most.

 Challenge #3 – Proper Evaluation and Feedback

Without balanced and timely feedback, you cannot manage your team’s performance effectively.

Solution – Annual reviews are not enough, since they only address recent issues and
accomplishments. You need to evaluate employee performance and provide feedback regularly.
This helps every member of your team remain motivated, take ownership of problems and make
improvements without delay.

 Challenge #4 – Regular Coaching and Training

Employee assessment and evaluation are ineffective if they aren’t supported with ongoing
training.

Solution – Plan and implement learning and development strategies that help employees grow
both individually and as a team. With the right mentorship, coaching and skill development

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programs, you can improve employee performance, engagement and productivity at the
workplace.

 Challenge #5 – Leadership and Management Support

If you aren’t helping employees solve their problems, they have no reason to help you solve
yours.

Solution – You can boost performance management processes tremendously by encouraging

leaders and managers to provide guidance, help and support to employees. This boosts morale
and loyalty at the workplace, increases employee retention and encourages your whole team to
work harder.

 Challenge #6 – Reward and Recognition Programs

Motivation and confidence cannot improve without appreciation for positive actions and
behaviors.

Solution – Lack of appreciation and recognition can demoralize your team, leading to poor
employee performance. Make sure you have well-planned processes in place for rewarding and
promoting accomplishments, actions and behaviors that have an impact on your business
success.

# Quick path to learning more about performance management and performance

development planning.

You can implement this system in your organization with great success.

 Performance Appraisals Don't Work tells you why you want to move away from the
traditional appraisal system.
 Performance Management Glossary Entry provides a basic definition of performance
management.
 Performance Management Is Not an Annual Appraisal provides the components of a
performance management system.
 Performance Management Process Checklist gives you the components of the
performance management process.
 Performance Development Planning provides the steps for preparing and implementing
performance development planning.
 Performance Development Planning Form is used to write out specific goals and
measurements, to be updated quarterly.
 Goal Setting: Beyond Traditional SMART Goals discusses goal setting.

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  Tips to Help Managers Improve Performance Appraisals provides concrete suggestions
about how those of you who have to manage in a traditional performance appraisal
culture can make them better—for both you and the employee.
 Common Problems With Performance Appraisals identifies the most common reasons
why appraisals are not effective.
 Phrases for Approaching Performance Reviews and Difficult Conversations shares tips
about successfully holding a comfortable appraisal meeting.

# Managers cite employee performance appraisal as the task they dislike the most, second only to
firing an employee. This dislike is understandable given that the process of performance
appraisal—as traditionally practiced—is fundamentally flawed. The process is hurtful and
demeaning, and both managers and employees avoid these conversations.

In fact, according to Chris Westfall, author or publisher of eight books about management:

Poor communication—and even avoiding communicating altogether—is a serious

problem in organizations. A 2016 Harris Poll reveals that a stunning 69% of
managers aren’t comfortable talking to employees for any reason at all. Worse still,
one in five business leaders feels uneasy delivering the company line or even
recognizing employee achievements.

Traditional performance appraisal is incompatible with the mission-oriented, participative work

environments favored by forward-thinking organizations today. It is an old-fashioned,
paternalistic, top-down, autocratic mode of management that treats employees as possessions of
the company.

#The Traditional Performance Appraisal Process

In the conventional performance appraisal or review process, the manager annually writes their
opinions on the performance of a reporting staff member on a document supplied by the HR
department. In some organizations, the staff member is asked to fill out a self-review to share
with the supervisor.

Most of the time, the appraisal reflects what the manager can remember about the employee.
Memory is usually of only the most recent events. Almost always, the appraisal is based on
opinions. Real performance measurement takes time and follow-up to do it well.

The documents in use in many organizations also ask the supervisor to make judgments based on
concepts and words such as excellent performance, exhibits enthusiasm, and achievement-
oriented.

Many managers are uncomfortable in the role of judge. So uncomfortable, in fact, that
performance appraisals are often months overdue. The HR professional who manages the
appraisal system finds their most important roles are to develop the form and maintain an

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employee official file, notify supervisors of due dates, and then remind them if the review is long
overdue.

Despite the fact that annual raises are often tied to the performance evaluation, managers avoid
doing them as long as possible. This results in an unmotivated employee who feels their manager
doesn't care about them enough to facilitate their annual raise.

# Why Employee Performance Appraisal Is Painful

The manager may be uncomfortable in the judgment seat. They know they may have to justify
their opinions with specific examples when the staff member asks.

They may lack skill in providing feedback and often provoke a defensive response from the
employee, who may justifiably feel they are under attack. Consequently, managers avoid giving
honest feedback which defeats the purpose of the performance appraisal.

In turn, the staff member whose performance is under review often becomes defensive.
Whenever their performance is rated as less than the best, or less than the level at which they
personally perceive their contribution, the manager is viewed as punitive.

Disagreements Create Greater Conflict

Disagreement about contribution and performance ratings can create a conflict-ridden situation
that festers for months. Most managers avoid conflict that will undermine workplace harmony.
In today's team-oriented work environment, it is also difficult to ask people who work as
colleagues, and sometimes even friends, to take on the role of judge and defendant.

Further compromising the situation, with salary increases frequently tied to the numerical rating
or ranking, the manager knows they are limiting the staff member's increase if they rate their
performance less than outstanding. No wonder managers waffle.

Building a Better System

If the employee appraisal approach taken is the traditional one it is harmful to performance
development, damages workplace trust, undermines workplace harmony, and fails to encourage
personal best performance.

Furthermore, it underutilizes the talents of HR professionals and managers and forever limits
their ability to contribute to true performance improvement within your organization.

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A performance management system starts with how a position is defined and ends when you
have determined why an excellent employee left your organization for another opportunity.

Within such a system, feedback to each staff member occurs regularly. Individual performance
objectives are measurable and based on prioritized goals that support the accomplishment of the
overall goals of the total organization. The vibrancy and performance of your organization are
ensured because you focus on developmental plans and opportunities for each staff member.

Performance Feedback

In a performance management system, feedback remains integral to a successful practice. The

feedback, however, is a discussion. Both the employee and their manager have an equivalent
opportunity to bring information to the dialogue.

Feedback is often obtained from peers, direct reporting staff, and customers to enhance mutual
understanding of an individual’s contribution and developmental needs—commonly known as
360-degree feedback.

The developmental plan establishes the organization’s commitment to helping each person
continue to expand their knowledge and skills. This is the foundation upon which a continuously
improving organization builds.

The HR Challenge

Leading the adoption and implementation of a performance management system is a wonderful

opportunity for the HR professional. It challenges your creativity, improves your ability to
influence, allows you to foster real change in your organization, and it sure beats the heck out of
nagging.

# The 5 Goals of Employee Performance Evaluation

Are you interested in why organizations do employee performance evaluations? It's both an
evaluative process and a communication tool. Done traditionally, employee performance
evaluation is universally disliked by supervisors, managers, and employees.

The managers hate employee reviews because they don't like to sit in judgment about an
employee's work. They know that if the performance evaluation is less than stellar, they risk
alienating the employee. At the same time, employees hate performance evaluations because
they dislike being judged. They tend to take suggestions for performance improvement
personally and negatively.

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Performance management, on the other hand, provides the advantages organizations seek in
doing performance evaluation. But, performance management, participated effectively and with
the appropriate mindset, accomplishes the same goals, and more. Performance management also
supplies additional advantages to both the manager and the employee.

The question on the table now is why organizations would want to ask employees to participate
in either employee performance evaluation or a performance management system. Good reasons
exist for advocating the basic concept of performance evaluation. There are few fans of the
traditional process.

Where Employee Performance Evaluation Fits

In some form, most organizations have an overall plan for business success. The employee
performance evaluation process, including goal setting, performance measurement, regular
performance feedback, self-evaluation, employee recognition, and documentation of employee
progress, ensures this success.

The process, done with care and understanding, helps employees see how their jobs and expected
contributions fit within the bigger picture of their organization.

The more effective evaluation processes accomplish these goals and have additional benefits.
Documented performance evaluations are communication tools that ensure the supervisor and
their reporting staff members are clear about the requirements of each employee’s job.

The evaluation also communicates the desired outcomes or outputs needed for each employee’s
job and defines how they will be measured.

Goals of Employee Performance Evaluation

These are the five goals of an effective employee evaluation process.

1. The employee and the supervisor are clear about the employee’s goals, required outcomes or
outputs, and how the success of the contributions will be assessed. Your goal in employee
evaluation is to motivate a high level of quality and quantity in the work that the employee
produces.

2. The goals of the best employee performance evaluations also include employee development
and organizational improvement. The employee performance evaluation helps employees
accomplish both personal development and organizational goals. The act of writing down the
goals takes the employee one step closer to accomplishing them.

Since goals, deliverables, and measurements are negotiated in an effective employee

performance evaluation, the employee and the supervisor are committed to achieving them. The
written personal development goals are a commitment from the organization to assist the
employee to grow in their career.

3. Employee performance evaluation provides legal, ethical, and visible evidence that employees
were actively involved in understanding the requirements of their jobs and their performance.

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The accompanying goal setting, performance feedback, and documentation ensure that
employees understand their required outputs. The goal of employee performance evaluation is to
create accurate appraisal documentation to protect both the employee and the employer.

In the event that an employee is not succeeding or improving their job performance, the
performance evaluation documentation can be used to develop a Performance Improvement Plan
(PIP).

This plan provides more detailed goals with more frequent feedback to an employee who is
struggling to perform. The goal of a PIP is the improvement of the employee's performance, but
non-performance can lead to disciplinary action up to and including employment termination.

4. In many organizations, numeric rankings are used to compare an employee’s performance

with the performance of other employees. Numeric ratings are frequent components of these
systems, too.

No matter how fair and non-discriminatory these ratings are made to appear through the endless
establishment of criteria for rating, and they boil down to the manager’s opinion of an
employee’s performance. This is why numeric components in an employee performance
evaluation process are not recommended.

5. The employee performance evaluation provides evidence of non-discriminatory promotion,

pay, and recognition processes. This is an important consideration in training managers to
perform consistent, regular, non-discriminatory employee performance evaluations. You want to
ensure equitable measurement of an employee's contribution to the accomplishment of work,

The documentation of success and failure to achieve goals is a critical component of the
employee performance evaluation process.

While employee performance evaluation systems take many forms from organization to
organization, these are the components that organizations are most likely to include. Some are
more effective than others.

But the goals for the employee performance evaluation system, or the appraisal process, or the
performance management process are similar. The differences appear in the approach and the
details. And, that can make all of the difference in how the performance evaluation system is
perceived by and carried out by employees.

# Effective performance management requires:

 Identifying tasks and accountabilities

 Defining competencies necessary to be successful in a position
 Ensuring that team members have the required competencies
 Having in place a system to develop competencies
 Providing timely feedback on how effectively the team members are applying their
respective competencies to
 accomplish their tasks and achieve the goals
 Rewarding and motivating effective performance

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  In the event that performance does not meet established requirements, the manager must
understand the
 corrective processes and methods that can help improve employee performance.

# Some of the major challenges in managing performance could be as follows:

1.Wrong Design

The performance management system and tools must fit with the specific needs of the
organization. It cannot be a duplication of a system designed and implemented in another
organization, even an organization in the same industry or the same business group. Intense
consultation with various stakeholders and users of the system is necessary. User trust is an
absolute necessity for the success of the system. The design should be tried out on a pilot basis
before it is rolled out to the organization as a whole. All documents and forms must be in place.
The system should be fair and equitable. Performance management should be viewed as a
continuous process and not an activity conducted once or twice a year. The design should also
include mechanisms for rewarding performance and handling poor performers.

2. Absence of Integration

The performance management system has to be integrated with the strategic planning and human
resource management systems as well as with the organizational culture, structure and all other
major organizational systems and processes.

3. Lack of Leadership Commitment

Leadership commitment and support is a must for smooth implementation of the system. Leaders
must drive the process and make performance management an integral part of the management
of the company. Leaders contribute not only in setting the strategic direction and performance
measures but also in monitoring and reviewing performance across the organization. They also
reinforce the performance cycle by recognizing and rewarding performance.

4. Ignoring Change Management in System Implementation

Strategic management of change is a vital part of implementing the system. Driven by the top
management, it involves careful management of resistance. Communication would be a major
intervention and a key tool in managing the change. Implementation milestones and schedules
must be followed. Proper documents must be in place.

5.Incompetence
Competence to use the performance management system is necessary to ensure smooth
implementation of the system. Some of the major skills would include:

 Defining strategic objectives, performance indicators, core competencies and

performance contracts
 Defining performance measures that correspond to the KPIs

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  Giving and taking feedback, conducting appraisal interviews, and active listening
 Performance coaching

The focus would be on designing and implementing training and development interventions that
would help in developing the competence of various job holders. Special emphasis would be on
building the behavioral dimensions of performance.

# 15 Principles of Performance Management

 Be honest and open – good performance management relies on a good relationship.

 Keep it simple – keep the emphasis on development and performance, and keep the
paper work and process simple.
 Keep in touch – use mini-reviews to build towards a performance review.
 Make goals interesting, challenging and engaging – this is what really motivates
people to achieve.
 Pull together – align individual’s goals with team and organizational goals.
 Build on strengths more than correcting weaknesses – nobody is good at everything.
 Get the mix right – focus on complementary skills within your team.
 People like to perform! – believe it or not but people like to work, achieve, be praised,
and know that their contributions are valued.
 Give praise – recognise and acknowledge good performance as soon as it happens.
 Let people know how they are doing – give regular, timely feedback, either
motivational, formative, or both.
 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.
 They perform, you perform – remember, as a manager your performance depends on
your team, when they perform well, it’s easier for you to perform well.
 Be an example – so, set the standard by example. To motivate others be motivated
yourself, it’s infectious! Strive to be a better manager.
 Motivate, motivate, motivate – the missing element from most performance
management processes? People will only achieve superior performance if they want to.

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  Use PERFORM to outperform – The PERFORM model has been designed to help you
create the conditions that will motivate people to superior performance.

How to motivate employees to PERFORM

The PERFORM Model

Regardless of how performance management processes are designed in your organization, or of

the culture within which they’re embedded, how you interpret and use performance management
techniques is up to you.

What is most important is the need to manage the factors that contribute to employee motivation,
and to create the conditions for people to perform and realise their potential.

Our tool to help you develop these management skills is the Apex PERFORM model. It stands
for:

 P – Potential – foster a positive attitude towards developing potential in your people

 E – Expertise – abilities, experience and attitudes needed to perform a job
 R – Results – for individuals, for their teams, and for their organisations
 F – Focus – on worthwhile, challenging, personal goals that relate to wider objectives
 O – Opportunities – to achieve, advance and grow
 R – Resources – needed in order to support people and to help them perform
 M – Motivation – making work interesting and challenging

When considering this model, it’s important to remember that all of the factors are
interdependent. For example, the absence of proper job training will affect a person’s expertise.
This will probably affect their motivation, and quite likely their opportunity to progress.
Conversely, the absence of opportunity to develop may have a negative impact on their
motivation, and thus their desire to learn or apply themselves.

Potential

Learning how to motivate employees begins with helping people to reach their potential. If we
are to find ways to raise performance up to the next level, then we need to find ways to convert
potential into performance. “Employees Appraisal: Realizing Potential” is the first article in our
series for a good reason. Motivating employees to perform must begin with helping them to
realize their potential.

Expertise

“Employee Performance Review: Making Expertise Count” is the second article in our series and
stresses the importance of putting someone’s expertise to work, where it can contribute the most.
By expertise we mean the skills, knowledge and behaviour that people must possesses, or need to
possess, in order to do their job.

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Results

Our third arcticle in the PERFORM series is: “Benefits of Employee Training: Seeing the
Results”. Here we ask: how do you realize the benefits of the training and support you’ve
provided to improve someone’s performance? If performance is about contribution, then support
must be linked to results. There needs to be clarity about what results you want to achieve, and
an assessment of what results are actually achieved.

Focus

Performance needs focus. It’s one thing to do something well, but it’s equally important to
ensure it’s the right things that are done well. Individual performances, whilst possibly being
good in themselves, can be counter-productive if they don’t contribute to the wider goals of the
team and organization. Controlling this requires good planning and good management. We give
some tips on how to do both in: “Performance Management Plan: Be Focused”.

Opportunities

Without opportunities, a performance management plan will only ever be just just that: a plan.
Knowing how to motivate employees is not enough. That knowledge must be combined with a
willingness to give people opportunities to perform. We discuss this crucial element of our
PERFORM model in our article: Employee Training Development.

Resources

Performanced based management is about more than ambition, words or ideas. To encourage
employees to perform you need to support them with the right resources. These resources must
then be allocated and managed in order to ensure they are most effectively used. Having
provided opportunities for people to perform, next it’s crucial to understand the importance of
resourcing performance based management.

Motivation

Knowing how to motivate employees is a complex business and there are numerous pages on
this site designed to help. Employee Motivation Techniques has been especially written to relate
to the PERFORM model. In this article we explore some fundamental principles of motivation
but also ask some more challenging questions.

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