Much has been written on the subject of Performance Management. In my opinion, Performance Management is about getting a group of people to unite and create a great experience for customers. However, much as I dislike the word ‘process’ – there has to be a Performance Management process, or set of behaviours, in place.
The first piece of the jigsaw is to set a standard. Many businesses have standards that are set by a team of managers, many of whom may never have done the jobs that they are setting the standards for, or if they have, it was so long ago that they have forgotten what’s possible and what isn’t. It is probably a worse scenario to have standards that are unachievable than it is to have no standards at all. That is why I advocate standards being agreed with the people who are supposed to maintain them before they are implemented. Many companies don’t do that. For example, in the hotel industry: There would be no point in setting a standard that every guest should be checked in within 1.5 minutes of walking in to the hotel if there was only ever one person working on reception. Setting a standard like this would lead to unhappy employees, and dissatisfied customers.
Much better, in my opinion, to involve the front line people in setting the standards, as people are much more likely to feel ‘involved’ in something that they have been part of from the outset.
This also applies to internal customer service. How would it work, for example, if a service level agreement for an I.T. support department was drawn up and agreed without consulting the I.T. engineers who had to adhere to it? What sort of culture would that lead to?
So, the first step in a Performance Management ‘process’ is to set the standard, with the involvement of those who have to maintain it. More soon!