The performance-appraisal process should ensure that performance expectations are result/outcome oriented. HouseValues previously evaluated performance on ...

A former manager once described me like this: "at performance appraisal time she would get on her broom and beat us 'til they were done. ...

My performance appraisal is coming up and my immediate supervisor has provided limited feedback about my performance to date.

If the Americans have Management by Objectives (MBO), then the Japanese have Hoshin Kanri, except that I'd like to say it's definitely much better.

Is it appropriate to rate an employee less than satisfactory on an evaluation if you have never addressed any issues in that area? ?P.A.

This week, I did my third recent interview about performance management. I found myself raising all of the issues that influenced my philosophical direction with the topic of performance appraisals. Universally disliked by many managers who don't like sitting in numeric judgment annually over a staff person's work, performance appraisals are avoided. This causes the job of the Human Resources staff to become policing. I can think of a lot of better uses for my time. How about you?

According to a new study by Leadership IQ, 47 percent of high performers are actively looking for other jobs (they?re posting and submitting resumes, and even going on interviews). While it?s terrible that almost half of high performers are thinking about quitting, what?s perhaps even worse is that low performers want to stay. Only 18 percent of low-performing employees are actively seeking other jobs, and 25 percent of middle performers are actively looking around.

It?s the great mystery of business: how do successful businesspeople marshal their hopes, intentions and objectives and turn them into accomplishments? Brendan Calder has worked on the solution for 40 years. The Toronto-based entrepreneur and mortgage czar has built and sold several companies, from Canavest House to FirstLine Trust (now CIBC Mortgages Inc.), all of them managed according to his evolving philosophy of focusing on results. He has turned that experience into an MBA course at Toronto?s Rotman School of Management called Getting It Done.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has asked around 500 people to leave the company after the second annual appraisal it carries out, citing performance-related issues. By the end of the financial year, this number could go up to 600, company officials told ET. The employees who were asked to leave are mostly those with 2-3 years of experience and do not include trainees because they have less than a year?s experience.

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, India?s largest software services exporter, said on Tuesday about 500 of its staff had resigned after their performance was rated poorly. ?Those who cannot meet the performance requirements of our company are asked to look for another job commensurate with their abilities,? a spokesman for Mumbai-headquartered Tata Consultancy told Reuters. ?This (financial) year so far about 500 people have resigned voluntarily.? The company?s financial year runs from April to March.

School district offers ideas for continuous improvement PUBLIC EDUCATION OFTEN tries to emulate the successful methods of industry. However, the experience of a school district in California offers several lessons about achieving continuous improvement (CI) in the corporate world. The lessons for companies-and other schools- include listening to customers and involving those who have the greatest stake in the outcomes in the solution.

Early last year, Mr. Silver and his brother Mitch laid out a plan for "employee empowerment" at their marketing firm. They told staff they could make decisions on their own as long as they could answer "yes" to five questions: "Is it right for the customer? Is it right for our company? Is it ethical? Is it something for which you are willing to be accountable? Is it consistent with our company's basic beliefs?" But what started as a New Year's resolution took on a life of its own, transforming the company with annual revenue of $4.2 million into a different kind of workplace.

The annual job review is a fact of life, whether welcome or not. But you could get more out of it than you might expect. A study from human resources consulting firm Hewitt Associates found that performance-related bonuses are expected to average more than 12% in 2008 -- a record high -- compared with 3.8% for base salary bumps.

Salesforce.com is synonymous with the rise of on-demand software but there is a long queue of other firms wanting to do for their own fields what Salesforce has done for customer relationship management and sales force automation.

Financial prudence is the best way to celebrate getting extra cash, writes Abdul Milazi. As the festive season explodes into a flurry of year- end bonuses and myriad of irresistible temptations, we all want to get that one thing we?ve longed for all year long. That R2200 bottle of 30-year-old Glenfiddich or the 3l bottle of Mill�sime Exception 1999 Jeroboam champagne ? at R1800 a pop ? now seem more attainable than they were in January.

I have observed more than 50,000 leaders from around the world as they participated in a fascinating experiential exercise, in which I ask participants to play two roles. In one role, they provide "feedforward": They give another participant suggestions and as much as they can help with a specific issue. In the second role, they accept feedforward: They listen to suggestions from another participant and learn as much as they can.

Performance management helps to redirect efforts away from 'busyness' toward effectiveness. We all know that being busy is not the same as producing results. Training, strong commitment and hard work alone are not results, either. An employee may appear extremely busy, but not be contributing at all toward the set goals of the organisation. The mistaken supervisor may conclude the employee is very committed to the organisation and works very hard, thus, deserving a very high performance rating.

Recent media reports about performance bonuses for National Lotteries Board (NLB) staff are riddled with inaccuracies and need clarification, the board said on Thursday. In a statement, NLB spokesperson Sershan Naidoo emphasised he had never stated that Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa "had authorised the 42,4 percent performance bonus".

The Democratic Alliance lodged a complaint with the Public Services Commission on Monday over what it said were "unjustified" performance bonuses being paid to National Lotteries Board (NLB) officials. "Today, I lodged a complaint with the Public Service Commission over the unjustifiable increase in staff performance bonuses at the National Lotteries Board in the year that must rate as the most disastrous for the Lotto ever," DA spokesperson on Trade and Industry Pierre Rabie said in a statement.

If meetings with the boss about career development occur only once a year ? at annual review time ? it?s time to light a fire under that strategy. ?Meeting only once a year about someone?s future with the company forgoes the reality of good, open communication,? said Michael Jalbert, the president of MRINetwork, a Philadelphia-based search and recruitment organization.

A performance appraisal or review includes documentation of expected results, standards of performance, progress toward achieving of results, how well they were achieved, examples indicating achievement, suggestions to improve performance and how those suggestions can be followed are recommended. The performance appraisal is usually quite straightforward to carry out.

Organisational psychologists prepare a thorough management plan to accommodate the observed group dysfunctions and ensure that the organisational infrastructure is realigned before they put the prepared plan into operation There are various interventionist strategies used by modern psychologists to control and correct group dysfunctions or the problems of ?groh bandi?

In May the UK celebrated its second annual National Work from Home Day, an indication in itself of just how far UK Plc has come in accepting this as a valid and valuable way of working. According to the Labour Force Survey undertaken quarterly by the Office for National Statistics, over 3.4 million people, 12 per cent of the working population, regularly or permanently work from home. In the last 10 years, that figure has increased by a fifth. That means that more than half a million additional people now work from home.

A business is nothing more than an idea without people in place to take action and make the business happen. And how well a business runs is a direct reflection of its employees. Over time, a practice known as "Performance Management" has been put in place in most businesses to ensure that employees not only do the jobs they were hired to do, but do them well and are proud of the work they get done.

Vendors of performance management (PM) software for contact centers are finding that contact centers are eager to embrace these tools, provided vendors articulate a clear value proposition (including speedy ROI). This software segment, which has been clouded by uncertain marketing and competing definitions in the last few years, is poised to become a key part of the contact center?s default toolkit. In the process, its benefits will percolate out into the enterprise, but vendors will do well to remain focused on targeting contact centers, rather than going around the center to the rest of the enterprise first.

Is it possible to improve employee engagement and retention simply by focusing on what staff are good at? Karen Dempsey finds out. If the term 'positive psychology' conjures up images of happy-clappy people waving their arms in the air ecstatically, then think again. Boiled down to its basics, positive psychology means concentrating on people's strengths rather than their weaknesses - and it's a concept that is gaining traction in leadership circles.

Dear Senior Managers: This may seem out of the ordinary, but since you were kind enough to provide me with advice on my leadership at the beginning of the year, I am now going to provide you with some feedback as a group. Yes, this is a group performance appraisal. Unusual, yes; but needed and overdue. I want to thank you for your dedication and commitment to this organization. Through your efforts this firm has grown in size and stature. This has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated, but I want to thank you again for what you have done on behalf of the organization.

Companies implementing a Best-in-Class Employee Performance Management (EPM) solution experienced revenue and income growth rates greater than average, and had lower levels of employee turnover, according to a new report from Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS). The latest Human Capital Management (HCM) benchmark report from Aberdeen, titled "Enhancing Operational Results with Employee Performance Management," also found that companies do not need to use EPM solutions to be considered Best-in-Class, but companies using a technology solution significantly outperformed their peers and exceeded Best-in-Class performance. Companies using a technology solution were also three times more likely to be satisfied with their employee performance management process than those using a manual solution.

Q: I have to write performance appraisals for all 15 people who report to me, and it takes a huge amount of time. How I can get this done quickly? -- Isaiah R. A: You could make up a job behaviors checklist and just rate everyone from 1 to 5 on every item, then give them a total score at the end. And you can probably do each one in about 10 minutes.

Remember the Tom Cruise movie, where he's a sports agent, and the guy he's representing reminds him what's important. Well, in high growth markets, finding good resources is a constraint, and cutting a fixed paycheque isn't enough anymore. Looks like you are going to have to turn into Tom Cruise (not a bad option), and learn how to respond to employees' needs nowadays. They may not be as vocal as Tom's client, but the thoughts are the same. Loud and clear - "show me the money!"

New research of nearly 6,000 appraisals of employees who report to two bosses found that while the workers were rated as "outstanding performers" by one boss, the other boss didn't often agree with that assessment.

More than 55 percent of companies struggle when it comes to assessing employee performance, says a survey by learning and talent management software provider SumTotal� Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:SUMT). The findings of a global survey, distributed by SumTotal to more than 1,000 HR and training professionals around the globe, found that nearly half (47 percent) keep tabs on workforce performance with paper, computer spreadsheets or word-processing programs.

When Sue was called into a meeting with the VP Sales at XG Furniture, she was curious, but not concerned. She had been working in sales for four years, and had always received satisfactory, albeit generally perfunctory, performance reviews. But when she walked into his office and saw the Director of Human Resources, she had a sinking feeling that she was not there to receive a new assignment. In less than five minutes, Sue's world changed dramatically as she was told that she was being terminated. Too stunned to ask questions at the time, only later did Sue feel rising anger at the unexpected and brief discussion.

In most employee life cycles, the ?sweet spot? is the pinnacle, the top of the curve for an employee in terms of job satisfaction and productivity. It?s the spot you, as a manager, want for your employees ? it means you are also satisfied and that you?re getting excellent results.

A report by the auditor-general on the affairs of the Cape Town city council for the year ending June last year has highlighted a number of issues that reflect poorly on the former African National Congress administration in the city, including irregular expenditure in the supply chain management of the city.

Independent research carried out by the National Computing Centre has revealed that Performance Management in UK local authorities is fast maturing, but there is a need for more information sharing both locally and with central government to ensure that the overall effectiveness of Performance Management improves in the future.

The government is expected to review the appraisal rules for Indian bureaucrats following strong criticism that the system of evaluation is 'gender insensitive'. 'It has been brought to our notice that some of the points in the evaluation form were too intrusive. I think it is bad. We will submit a new form to the prime minister,' Minister of State for Personnel Suresh Pachouri told IANS here Wednesday.

Remember Management by Objectives? Those of you born after 1970 might not be familiar with it - Here is the wikipedia definition: Management by Objectives (MBO) is a process of agreeing upon objectives within an organization so that management and employees buy in to the objectives and understand what they are. Peter Drucker first introduced it in 1954. It was very popular in the 1980 s, and then it seemed to step aside in the 1990 s to allow other new management techniques-of-the-month to take their place in the management de regueur.

In a typical performance appraisal, the boss interviews an employee and uses the ?sandwich technique.? This involves saying something nice to the person, then slipping in the knife and twisting a few times-the areas for improvement-and then telling him how important he is to the company before sending him back to the trenches. Like a dental cleaning or paying your utility bill, it is one of those periodic activities that needs to be done, but few look forward to doing.

A small business may be defined as a business with a small number of employees. The legal definition of "small" often varies by country and industry, but is generally under 100 employees. The common characteristic that sets them apart from large enterprises is that they posses less tangible properties.

Are you adopting some new systems to keep up with the rapid pace of change in your industry? Perhaps new accounting software or other management information systems? Or how about a new performance appraisal system, maybe in conjunction with a new compensation system? Maybe you?re looking at changing your organizational structure. These are all commendable efforts, and in many cases, you can even realize some improvement in your organization through their successful implementation. The real question to ask is, ?what are we trying to fix with these changes??

Employee performance appraisal is a critical issue for any organisation. While appraisals are a necessary part of the system, the truth remains that it is a process that often leaves both sides unhappy. The mismatch between expectations and delivery, combined with the formality of the process leads to dissatisfaction for the appraiser and the appraisee. There are even a few who question the effectiveness of a formal appraisal system, considering the many complications that arise. Constant feedback to the employee about his performance and expectations is more effective in meeting organisational and individual goals, instead of a day or two in a year to apprise him of the expectations.

Conventional wisdom says that there's no such thing as a perfect employee performance appraisal form. And with so many sorry examples of appraisal forms around, conventional wisdom might almost seem correct.

Every year around the end of January I notice my fellow humans acting weird. Tempers flare and lower backs get thrown out. Shoulders creep up necks, making otherwise well-adjusted colleagues resemble hulking trolls. People freak out. But it's not just the darkness or the wind chill or the news of murder and mayhem from British Columbia to Baghdad. It's more personal than that. January sucks because it's performance-appraisal month.

Like so many key strategic decisions, organisational design seems an exercise in balancing contradictions - market responsiveness versus scale efficiencies; geographic coherence versus global product lines; autonomy and accountability. Bart Vogel, President, Lucent Technologies Asia-Pacific, describes his approach.

Two easy ways for executive teams to attempt to raise profits is to lay off employees to cut costs or to lower prices to take away market share from their competitors. But these are merely short-term fixes. An organization cannot reduce its costs and prices to achieve long-term sustained prosperity.

Consultant Dick Grote has spent many years thinking about the systems companies use to let employees know whether they're measuring up. A leading authority and frequent speaker on the topic of performance management, he once told a gathering of 600 human resources vice presidents, "I have devoted my life to performance appraisal."

Recently, I went to a Business Objects conference, featuring ex-Forrester analyst Keith Gile, who joined the BI vendor in October as Senior Director, Strategic Marketing. Keith advised the audience to participate in some ?intelligent cost cutting? save 30% to 70% of your BI costs by standardisation?. Not many Business Objects customers I talked to were rushing out to buy more Business Objects licences to save money.

Any organization still seeking the one silver bullet that will revitalize its performance management (PM) system should forget about it, suggests a recent survey conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp, formerly the Human Resource Institute) in conjunction with HR.com.

There is no consensus as to what performance management is. Different IT research firms define it differently. Different consulting firms and software vendors describe it to fit their unique competencies rather than what their customers may require. Because my impression is that most of these organizations view performance management far too narrowly, such as only better budgeting and control, I think it is better to discuss what performance management does rather than have arcane debates about defining what it is.

MANAGERS dread them. Employees resent them. They only come around once a year, or if you're really unlucky, twice a year. I'm talking about performance appraisals, the human resources (HR) inspired process of formally assessing employees that cost organisations millions of dollars each year ? and does not work.

Business Performance Management Survey Reveals 60% of Finance Departments Have Not Adopted Best Practices Comprehensive Financial Management Survey from Adaptive Planning and BPM Partners Identifies Over-reliance Upon Spreadsheets and Limited Support for Key Processes

IN our normal lives, we know intuitively that people respond best to us if we appeal to their better instincts, whether to their desire to achieve or to a desire to be friendly or even to merely look good. Most people routinely try to establish some non-monetary basis to their relationships including that with the neighbourhood shopkeeper if only in an effort to ensure that they do not get cheated. Yet the same persons in an office situation often assume that people work only for money and material benefits.

"Data is the center of sales performance management," says Karen Steele, vice president of marketing at Xactly, an SaaS sales compensation software developer. "The only way to calculate commissions is by integrating data from throughout the corporation."

During my 35 years in the workplace, new management ideas have come and gone. Management by objectives (MBO), total quality management, transactional analysis, quality circles, management by wandering around, and self-managed teams are examples of "new" management approaches that have hit the workplace like a star gone super-nova, and then swiftly faded to invisibility.

Even if many organizations are still trying to get their figurative heads around performance management (PM), others?especially organizations in customer-centric industries?have long been doing PM. Far from shot-in-the-dark ad hoc querying or Excel-driven multidimensional analysis, these organizations are tapping full-fledged PM tools, including performance scorecards and dashboards.

In Part 1 of BPM 101: Vendor Selection, we looked at how to develop your requirements and identify the vendors to be included in the evaluation. In this article, we look at the remaining steps in selecting the ideal business performance management (BPM) solution for your company.

Employers in Barbados have been encouraged to relinquish to their staff some of the control they have over running their business. The advice comes from international best selling author, Dr. Stephen Covey as he addressed the National Initiative for Service Excellence's annual leadership seminar at the Hilton this morning.

Originally developed to make software development more reliable, the creator of the software capability maturity model (CMM) is extending it to human resource development. Indian companies have emerged as the leading implementors of this model.

Over the course of my life, I've been through so many sales training courses and management seminars that I can't count them all. But while they all blur together after a while, they were all valuable. What makes taking a course worthwhile is how they remind you of things you knew, but don't always fully appreciate. One of those is the importance of consistent performance management.

Every office has at least a few. Slackers. Loafers. Free riders. Whatever your label of choice, these underperformers are fairly easy to identify and are usually the ones who consistently duck out of big projects, particularly when the going gets tough.

Business schools tend to divide their curriculum between hard quantitative-oriented courses (such as operations management and finance) and soft behavioral courses (such as change management, ethics and leadership). The former relies on a run-by-the-numbers management approach. The latter recognizes that people and human behavior matter most. This separation of the curriculum is like chambers in a mansion.

In all the time that I handled the human resource (HR) functions for different organizations, I can conclude that Filipino managers continue to behave like our Asian counterparts. For one, we abhor telling the plain truth about the workers? performance, or we use the sandwich approach to soften the impact of a negative rating, and the affected person could save face. "You?re a good man, Pedro. I like your work attitude. I?m giving you an average rating for this year."

Most are experiencing the shortcomings of low participation rates, stemming primarily from line managers. When HR professionals discuss the appraisal process, a common question is "How can we make line managers understand how important the appraisal process is to their people?" To understand what is going on, we need to understand the primary desires of the stakeholders in the process.

THEY were responsible for the Scottish Parliament building fiasco. They admit they are not very good at getting a bang for the public's buck. But in an exercise worthy of North Korea, the Scottish Executive has reached a somewhat perverse conclusion: everyone is actually doing a brilliant job.

The issue of managing corporate performance needs to be embraced by the board and all staff members in order for it to be effective. The goal in this case is not to have a performance management system in place; the goal should be the value you expect to generate by adopting a system of managing performance. This is where we normally miss the mark; because we think we have introduced a performance management system and therefore things should work. It does not work like that: executives and the entire organisation need to demonstrate that they are really committed to performance management and measurement. Commitment starts by putting executives and the board through the same process of measuring and managing performance.

Despite years of pledges from politicians and administrators to make hospitals more accountable, patients can't find information ranging from death rates to medical mistakes to outbreaks of superbug infections. Ontario's hospitals aren't compelled to publicly report statistics as they remain outside the provincial freedom of information act.

For example, shortly after John Sculley joined Apple Computer he attended a management meeting at Pajaro Dunes, California, where Apple had many retreats. While Sculley tried to focus on strategic issues, he had relatively little success in controlling the discussion. The traditional operating procedure for this group was for members to say whatever was on their minds, regardless of its factual base or relevance to the particular agenda item. As a result, it was difficult to accomplish the goals of such meetings in an effective manner.

As managing partner of Wichita's biggest advertising agency, Sam Williams knows something about trying to keep good workers. His is a business in which competitors are constantly on the lookout to lure high-performing employees away from his company, Sullivan, Higdon & Sink. And keeping those employees at the agency is always at the top of Williams' mind. "As competitive as the environment is getting for people, you have to be aware of this all the time and know it's not something that you can wait for tomorrow to deal with," Williams said.

Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C., announced that it has completed the analysis of a 3-month study into Contact Center Workforce Management Practices sponsored by Aspect, Witness Systems and Pipkins, Inc. The research was performed in partnership with Mike Trotter- Purdue University, Dr. Jodie Monger? President, Customer Relationship Metrics, and Scott Davis ? Principal, Customer Cubed, LLC.

Change and growth are intrinsic to the application of software tools for business performance management. In growing organizations, solving today's problems will lead to additional challenges down the road. Choose tools and approaches that can accommodate the quickly changing nature of business challenges.

Performance Management Survey Indicated Growth of Driver Based Planning B-EYE-Network - Boulder,CO,USA The 2006 BPM Pulse Survey of 500 business and IT professionals provided interesting insights into perceptions and plans for business performance management.

Executive Pay Docked Up to 15% for Poor Performance MyTown Bay of Plenty - Bay of Plenty,New Zealand

HOW do businesses provide women with more access to the corporate ladder? Catalyst, a US research and advisory firm working in this area, has a step-by-step guide for businesses to follow.Catalyst's most recent study, co-sponsored by DuPont and recruitment specialists Heidrick & Struggles, shows that average growth in the percentage of corporate officer positions held by women inFortune 500 companies has gone backwards over the past three years. According to Catalyst's projections, it would take 40 years before women can achieve any sort of parity with men.

With business spread around the world and changing constantly, those who plan and execute performance strategies need the latest information as soon as it becomes available. Advances in technology helped create these conditions, and new developments can assist businesspeople in dealing with them. In particular, three related technologies - scorecards, dashboards and performance alerts - establish meaningful contexts that enable users to analyze, measure, share and act on information quickly.

On Fall and Spring weekends, we often see eight-person shells racing up the Charles River separating Boston and Cambridge. Although each shell contains strong, highly motivated athletes, the key to their success is that they row in synchronism. Imagine a shell populated by eight highly conditioned and trained rowers, but with each rower having a different idea about how to achieve success: how many strokes per minute were optimal and which course the shell should follow, given wind direction and speed, water current, and a curvy course with multiple bridge underpasses. For eight exceptional rowers to devise and attempt to implement independent tactics would be disastrous. Rowing at different speeds and in different directions could cause the shell to travel in circles and perhaps capsize. The winning crew invariably rows in beautiful synchronism; each rower strokes powerfully but consistently with all the others, guided by a coxswain, who has responsibility for pacing and steering the course of action.

The assessment of benefits has been the traditional challenge for HR. "We deal with people and we all agree that you can't measure those issues", was stated by an HR Generalist asking for a two-person head count increase at a board meeting of a major blue chip organization; to which the HR Director said, "If that is the case, you will not be able to measure the impact of a reduction. If you cannot produce a robust justification for your request by next week, we will take two people off your headcount". A quantified justification was produced within a few days; our ability to measure factors is directly proportional to our desire to do it!

When 55-year-old Nancy Johnson started as a front desk clerk at the Germain City Hotel in the early 1970s in St. Cloud, Minn., she couldn't name one female hotel general manager in the area. Not one. "Most hotels were male dominated in every senior position," said Johnson, now an executive vice president at Carlson Hotels Worldwide in Minneapolis.

The balanced scorecard first came to the attention of managers at the beginning of the 1990s with the publication of the Harvard Business Review article "The balanced scorecard," January/February 1993, by David Norton, co-founder of the consulting company, Renaissance Solutions, and Robert Kaplan, the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at Harvard Business School.

Recent research by Ventana Research shows that most contact center managers labor under severe cost constraints. This burden makes it very difficult to meet a corporate mandate to improve customer satisfaction. Since agents represent approximately 70 percent of the cost of running a center, managers constantly must struggle to match the volume of customer calls with the smallest possible number of available agents. Yet most of the causes of calls lie outside their control. We believe the only way to maintain a balance between containing costs and satisfying customers is to conduct root-cause analyses to understand the origins of calls, communicate the results to operational management and then provide incentives to change practices so that many of the drivers of calls are eliminated.

This original research looks at the latest trends in Performance Management in the UK; the drivers for change across industry sectors; the prerequisites for successfully implementing new ways of working; the critical success factors for better performance.

At this point in time, a sizeable number of companies have moved forward with a core business performance management (BPM) initiative. Most of them have had a reasonable degree of success, as determined by the BPM Pulse survey and anecdotal evidence. That success is breeding further adoption of core performance management, and we are seeing the next round of companies (both big and small) looking to get started. Those that have completed the core are now embarking on the path to ?What?s next.?

How do you change the way a company does business? Corporate culture as well as customary practices often get in the way. Irene Tham examines out how some Asian companies embrace change.

Since the 1890s, there have been, arguably, only a few major management breakthroughs, along with several minor ones. What will be the next big advancement in management that can differentiate leading organizations from the also-rans that lag behind them? I suggest one possibility at the conclusion of this article.

BI is an integral part of performance management. You're pulling data from underlying transaction systems into knowledge stores and then making sense of it. The executive information systems that we all dreamed about in the past are actually coming alive now that the technology is available. Companies are able to drive global and cross-enterprise performance through a single vehicle, using tools around BI for reporting and dashboard presentations to the right stakeholders at the right time ... You really can't separate good performance management, good reporting and good BI.

In the first stage, Drucker is concerned with the nature of economic society and the new world emerging out of the old order in the first half of the twentieth century. The End of Economic Man discusses the rise of totalitarianism and some possible responses to it by the free world. The Future of Industrial Man takes the theme forward, arguing that an industrial society and a free society are not incompatible.

Another police memorandum leaked to the Manawatu Standard reveals that police not issuing "the required level" of traffic tickets have been threatened with action that "may affect their annual pay increments". The memo, written by Levin Senior Sergeant Kris Burbery in January last year, includes tables indicating how many tickets each officer has issued per hour spent of traffic enforcement.

Most of the data we see indicates a continuing demand for pre-built business performance management (BPM) applications, as opposed to in-house development of customized BPM applications. You would expect to hear that observation from the application vendors, but it?s backed up by our clients and again by our annual BPM Pulse survey.

Most well-executed business performance management (BPM) initiatives start with confirming that the business requirements are clearly defined on paper. Parallel to defining requirements, project leaders need to assure that the end-user experience is high on the priority list. Delivering a positive user experience requires selection of a technology platform that aligns with business needs, not the other way around.

Most people working for a living think they should be earning more money--or at least would like to make more. Federal employees are no exception to this human condition. Some of the most common comments submitted by readers are to the effect that they feel underpaid and that they would be making more if they worked in the private sector.

As organizations embrace the full vision of performance management - not just the narrow financial definition of better budgeting, planning and control - they frequently ask, "Where should we start?" Some may be eager to begin with a balanced scorecard, others by measuring channel and customer profitability. Still others want to take it to the limit by redesigning their core business processes.

In August last year, Bearing 21, an established South African business analysis and consulting firm, was commissioned by the iron-ore division of Assmang to design and implement a scorecard process for the miner and its five departments.

Strategic initiatives are the currency of strategic management. They are the programs and projects undertaken to transform "business as usual" to capture new markets or exploit productivity gains. Strategic initiatives demand corporate funding and boardroom visibility. Most corporations maintain a portfolio of strategic initiatives, or calculated bets on the future, that they actively manage in an attempt to control their destiny.

Performance management functionality ranks as the highest priority for HR system enhancements, according to a survey of 318 human resources professionals sponsored by Lawson Software. Performance Management, which includes talent management, ranked ahead of payroll, time and attendance, benefits administration, online recruiting and regulatory compliance.

Made for Measure: Understanding Local Public Productivity, a collection of essays published by the New Local Government Network, argues that improving productivity in local services should be integral to modern service delivery. However the publication warns against a ?one size fits all? method of measuring productivity, arguing that the outlet of some local services is difficult to measure conclusively.

Business Process Management (BPM) technology is still in its infancy. However, it is becoming apparent that BPM is bifurcating, becoming on one hand an application development platform serving IT and - with increasing support from and integration with business intelligence (BI) - on the other a performance management dashboard serving lines of business. Ventana Research recommends that organizations develop a three-year architectural blueprint for how they will use BPM. Without such a blueprint, they run the risk of replicating the dilemma of a decade ago, when various client/server fourth-generation language (4GL) tools infiltrated departmental systems and created incompatibilities throughout the enterprise.

PM is certainly ubiquitous these days, what with corporate PM, business PM, process PM, operational PM, organizational PM, customer PM, HR PM, call center PM and other varieties that I probably haven't seen. I think we need a "scorecard" just to track the different dialects.

One of the reasons performance appraisal systems don?t work, according to one pair of experts, is that everyone thinks they are an excellent performer. When an appraisal tells them otherwise, they immediately feel devalued, according to employment lawyer Tom Coens and business consultant Mary Jenkins, authors of Abolishing Performance Appraisals (writing on Winston J. Brill & Associates? website, Coens and Jenkins say supervisors realise this and, therefore, most are not keen to conduct appraisals.

Business performance management is a costly investment in a mission-critical system. The process of choosing the system and vendor ahould be carefully undertaken to ensure the correct selection is made.

In 1973, a book appeared that would define the conversation about the American workplace for the next generation. Work in America was an unlikely hit, the report of a task force commissioned by Elliot L. Richardson, President Nixon's secretary of health, education, and welfare. It was a rather academic assessment, rooted in research papers and scientific surveys. But the findings were explosive: They described "the alienation and disenchantment of blue-collar workers," "the search by women for a new identity," and "the quest of the aged for a respected and useful social role."

Of all the rituals of working life, the annual torture session of the performance appraisal stands out as the most useless and time-consuming.

Time and again, I keep on bumping into line managers, and their equally inquisitive counterparts from the labor union who complain against their performance management policies that are copied almost mindlessly, if not entirely from other companies, resulting to mix ups and foul ups to its implementation.

Colin Shand from the National Performance Management Framework talks to eGov monitor on the framework programme and how it can assist local authorities in providing more effective and efficient services.

How many people in your organization love the annual budgeting process? Probably none. The mere mention of the word "budget" raises eyebrows and evokes cynicism. It should. That's because the agonizing annual budget process may include:

When it's goal-setting time and the pressure is on, how high should you set the bar? Set it too high to impress the boss and you are bound to fall short -- gaining a reputation of over promising and under delivering. Set it too low, and you risk remaining caught in the same old grind, career advisers say.

Performance management is one of the fastest-growing areas for HR and learning and development departments. However, it is still a work in progress, and processes vary widely, with most organizations taking a somewhat piecemeal approach.

Scorecards, also called strategy, performance or balanced scorecards, are now ubiquitous. Scorecards are a primary means of translating strategy into action. They define, through measurement, the intent and purpose of strategic objectives and provide clarity to managers, staff and external observers on the meaning of performance for an organization.

One in five employees have never had a performance appraisal and half of workers believe their last performance review was completely ineffective, research from Crone Corkill and FSS recruitment consultancies showed.

More pregnant women filed complaints about discrimination at work last year. They join a growing number of workers who turned to the National Trades Union Congress, or NTUC. Aggrieved employees managed to recover S$100,000 from their work-related claims.

Today?s topic is all related to employee performance management. I know what I?m talking about here being a Human Resource (HR) practitioner since 1981, moments after a career shift at Eastern Telecoms. That was also the time when cable and telex was fashionable that my interest suddenly shifted to knowing how to separate the fool?s chaff from the people?s grain.

Extracts from Tony Blair's letters setting out his priorities to four cabinet ministers

Trends such as the need to be more customer-centric or the move toward outsourcing. Instead, many people told me about seeing a sharp escalation in the tendency of businesses to hold managers and employees much more accountable for results.

THE WB Country Director Christine I Wallich seems to have irritated some people in our country by expressing herself in favour of introduction of performance indicators in public finance management at a recent function in Dhaka.

An exclusive Business 21 Publishing survey of 120 HR executives suggests that managers at less than one company in five are happy with their company?s performance evaluation system. That?s a shocking statistic, given that performance and productivity experts believe that feedback is absolutely essential to getting results.

Annual reviews, or any performance appraisal, can be painful and nerve wracking for both the supervisor and employee. But, they don't have to be. They can be valuable tools for both parties and the company as a whole.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia is taking a tougher line on underperforming information technology (IT) staff while investing more heavily in star performers, according to one of the CBA's chief information officers.

Humans are inherently risk averse. Supporting a business decision, however small or seemingly insignificant, involves both professional and personal risks.

Over the last 12 months, the major business performance management (BPM) vendors have been busy adding functionality to complete their product suites. While they develop or acquire any missing core components, these vendors are pushing the business performance management envelope in new directions to further differentiate themselves.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is moving more cautiously before using employees' performance reviews as a basis for pay decisions, the agency's executive director said Tuesday. Diego Ruiz told a House subcommittee that the SEC is putting a fresh face on its controversial personnel system, and vowed to implement a completely new performance management system as a first step. "This will allow the commission to focus all of its efforts on effectively implementing all aspects of the new system before relying on it to provide performance information to support pay decisions," he testified.

Civilian U.S. government employees who are not represented by a union could put a little extra cash in their pockets once Marine Corps Bases Japan switches to a new personnel management system Feb. 17. The new system, called the National Security Personnel System, is designed to better reward civilian workers for their hard work while accomplishing their unit's mission, according to the Navy's human resources Web site, https://www.donhr.navy.mil/NSPS/.

New agency pay-for-performance initiatives are highly vulnerable to bias and need extra evaluation and money to succeed, several witnesses told a House subcommittee on Tuesday. Human capital experts and union representatives pointed to pay systems at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Internal Revenue Service to make their case before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce.

The Office of Management and Budget has wasted no time in gearing up its latest effort to improve agency program performance. Agency heads are to submit to OMB by Dec. 14 the names of the individuals they have appointed as performance improvement officers.

The Bush White House published another executive order on Nov. 13, this time to institutionalize the administration?s controversial performance appraisal system for government programs. Following on the heels of a September memorandum exerting more political control over risk assessments, the executive order is the latest in what is expected to be a series of White House power grabs through administrative means.

GOVERNMENT'S PRODUCTIVITY COUNCIL is advocating "a more holistic approach to performance management" in the public sector. Senior economist with the council, Olivia Chase, made this observation recently during an interview, noting that such an approach would help to improve public sector performance and overall productivity.

When it comes to enhancing employees' job performance, federal managers should take a comprehensive approach and not rely solely on annual evaluations, a new IBM Center for the Business of Government report recommended. With the private and public sectors renewing their emphasis on performance management, federal agencies should take broad steps to better coach employees, the report's authors, Howard Risher and Charles Fay, concluded. Risher is a consultant; Fay is a professor and chairman of the Human Resource Management Department at Rutgers University's School of Management and Labor Relations.

The General Schedule is outdated and needs to be overhauled or replaced, according to a new survey of human resources executives. Most of the 55 chief human capital officers (CHCOs), deputy CHCOs and other human resources executives surveyed said the time has come for a more flexible, performance-based system, according to a report released Thursday by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that promotes public service as a career option for Americans. The 55 respondents represent 95 percent of the federal HR executive community.

It?s shaping up to be a busy summer at the Homeland Security Department as officials plan to push forward with personnel-management improvements that they hope will bring DHS? human resources system into the 21st century.

Some 97 percent of employees under the Defense Department?s new performance-based pay system received more than the equivalent of the January 2007 General Schedule raise in additional pay and bonuses.

The Securities and Exchange Commission will overhaul its employee-review procedures this year after an internal audit found flaws in how its enforcement division evaluates performance, particularly for new hires. A report by the SEC's inspector general dated Feb. 8 and released by the SEC on Tuesday found some performance reviews "were not completed or were completed late," and that supervisors didn't always retain documents, with missing files for more than a dozen current or former employees.

The Office of Personnel Management plans to release a tool for assessing Senior Executive Service performance-appraisal systems by the end of this year. The SES tool will build on the OPM Performance Appraisal Assessment Tool (PAAT) that agencies currently use to assess General Schedule personnel evaluation systems, OPM said....

Bill Phillips, a quiet 60-year-old NASA contract engineer, slipped past security at Johnson Space Center in Houston 10 days ago carrying a snub-nosed .38-calibre revolver and a printout of his most recent job performance review in a duffel bag. Mr. Phillips stormed into his supervisor's office and, according to police, told him: "You're the guy who's going to get me fired." He then shot his supervisor to death and took a co-worker hostage. After a three-hour standoff, he killed himself.

Controversy continues swirling around pay-for-performance in government. A bill (introduced by a Democrat) in the House seeks to derail the Department of Homeland Security?s plans to expand such practices. Ironically, another bill in the Senate (introduced by a Republican) looks to expand merit-based pay.

Chief Human Capital Officer Marta Brito Perez likes to go to the front lines of the Homeland Security Department from time to time. Usually, she comes back with new ideas and a better appreciation of the challenges faced by the department?s 180,000 employees, but sometimes she just confuses her acquaintances.

A recent Stephen Barr article in the Washington Post discussed the results of the most recent government-wide survey on human resources management conducted by the Office of Personnel Management. The article reported that on one of the statements ? ?Pay raises depend on how well employees perform their jobs,? only 22 percent agreed with the statement, while 45 percent disagreed, and the rest were either neutral or gave another response.

A new plan for performance- and merit-based pay increases for city officials and senior employees was approved by the Common Council on Tuesday night.

National Security Personnel System has been called the biggest change in Federal Civil Service in 50 years, and it begins here Sunday. All non-bargaining Federal Civil Service employees will convert to NSPS, which will change the grade structure and employment processes and will most directly affect employees with a new merit-based annual performance appraisal. A critical first milestone in beginning the new appraisal process is defining each employee's job objectives--a process which not only entails involvement by both supervisors and employees but must be completed in just 33 days--by Feb. 20, 2007.

A small component in the Defense Department is touting a new performance management tool for its senior executives and is hoping to spread it department-wide.

The Pentagon is beginning to release information on the nuts and bolts of its new performance management plan, a variation of which may become familiar to all federal employees if the Bush administration has its way.

Performance-based? has become the prefix for almost every possible form of evaluation, from people to information systems. The Defense and Homeland Security departments are rolling out new performance management systems ? the National Security Personnel System and MAXHR, respectively ? but if past is prologue, anyone who works in government is asking this question: Is measurement the new mission of government? Performance management often sounds like the right approach to leaders in government, and there have been some worthwhile attempts. The Defense Civilian Acquisition Workforce Personnel Demonstration Project established in 1999, while viewed as labor intensive, helped managers address two of their biggest challenges in ways that the General Schedule system would have never allowed: Rewarding superstars and identifying non-performers ? some mistakenly assigned in the first place ? and helping them find new career paths.

Department of Defense employees already in the National Security Personnel System now have an online tool to facilitate the System?s performance management process. According to the NSPS Web site, the Performance Appraisal Application provides an online venue for supervisors and employees to ?discuss performance, document areas of growth and share ideas regarding job objectives and work plans.?

The Bush administration?s focus on improving agency performance through the use of management score cards and a program rating tool has earned kudos from many public-sector management experts. But Beryl Radin, a professor of public administration at American University, is not one who lavishes praise. In her new book, ?Challenging the Performance Movement,? Radin is especially critical of how the Office of Management and Budget has implemented performance management.

Air Force Col. Lynne Baldrighi was anxious. More than 180 civilian senior Air Force executives were converting from a three-level performance evaluation system to a more rigorous five-level system, and Baldrighi was overseeing the switch.

Most senior executives are earning larger salaries and bigger bonuses under the performance-based pay system that took effect two years ago, new data shows. When the new performance-based pay system took effect at the beginning of 2004, the average executive earned $142,000 ? about $3,600 below the Level 3 pay cap. The average salary increased to $147,100 at the beginning of 2005 and $151,000 at the beginning of this year, exceeding the Level 3 pay cap by nearly $2,000.

Another 66,500 civilian employees will convert to the Defense Department?s new pay and personnel system between October and January. They join 11,000 employees who made the jump in April, the first of 650,000 employees the Pentagon plans eventually to move to its National Security Personnel System.

What are the job goals? Are milestones being met? What kind of feedback are employees getting on their work? Managers will need to track new data, and more of it, under the National Security Personnel System (NSPS), the Defense Department?s new pay-for-performance system.

Pay-for-performance may soon be coming to the federal sector. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, has introduced the Federal Workforce Performance Appraisal and Management Act of 2006. The bill would replace the General Schedule with a system that links employee pay with performance.

Less than one in four civil servants think poor performance is dealt with effectively in their department, according to survey data published for the first time by the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr). The survey of senior civil servants was obtained by ippr following a Freedom of Information request and paints a damning picture of frustration with performance management in Whitehall.

Maintaining momentum toward a government wide shift to pay for performance, the Office of Personnel Management said Monday 25 federal agencies now are completing small test runs for improved performance management systems.

In a move that seems likely to reinvigorate debate over how best to overhaul the civil service, a key senator announced yesterday that he will introduce a bill to tighten up the government's performance-appraisal system and deny pay raises to federal employees rated as less than successful.

The Defense Department plans to proceed with the April rollout of its controversial personnel system for a small group of nonunion employees, despite a judge?s ruling enjoining parts of the reform plan.

Ensuring that staff members and supervisors communicate about workplace goals requires more than a once-a-year evaluation, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said in an e-mail message to deans, directors, top-level administrators, and staff earlier this month.

A popular prime minister declares that closing the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians is one of his most important goals. He backs up this ambition by setting benchmarks for improving the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders over the next decade.

It's coming to that time of year again. And everyone hates it. Employees detest performance appraisals because they are totally useless and achieve zip, managers loathe giving them because they're usually ill-prepared for it and besides, they have heaps of other things to do.

There can be no question about the value and influence of an AFL coach, but the training he gets before being appointed to the job is scarce, to say the least. For all of the qualities and results attained by some of our truly great coaches, I am sure they would all agree they learned more "on the job" than they did about the job before their appointment. People crave the role of AFL coach without understanding all that it entails. In most senior executive positions, there are stringent criteria that need to be met before becoming a candidate. In coaching, this is not the case. Most coaches are appointed after a decade or more playing the game and a few years assisting a senior coach who is also feeling his way. A high profile and perhaps a little help from the inside are then the main criteria for appointment.

AUSTRALIA'S workplaces are on the edge of a giant divide. Although a study has found that three-quarters of workers are likely to leave their bosses within two years, 90 per cent of employers surveyed believe that up to 80 per cent of their workers will stay put. The study found that 74 per cent of employees aimed to be off as soon as possible or when the right opportunity came along. Furthermore, 62 per cent believed their career path required them to leave.

The purpose of having "practice platforms" in a small business setting is to create a common language, a shared approach for corporate team building and a clear performance management process that builds leadership skill development and management capability throughout the business.

I ALWAYS enjoy Paddy Gourley's articles. He has a knack of identifying emperors who wear no clothes, particularly among the modern leaders of industrial-relations reform (sic) in the APS. Nonetheless, there was good reason for changing the public service IR system in the 1980s and 1990s and, notwithstanding Gourley's truths (Public Sector Informant, June 2006), a return to the past is unlikely to help now. It is time, however, for a little stocktaking.