In NHS, it is important the beds are free for emergency or sometimes too many patients come at once. Therefore NHS needs to set a target of keeping a patient for a certain time and then dismiss them.
Room occupancy: -
In hotel, it is always vital to have rooms available for customers. Many hotels are very busy at certain time such as Christmas, or summer. Therefore the hotel needs to make sure that all customers are served well.
Benchmarking: -
Benchmarking within a business contact involves identifying those organisations that are leaders in their field and then aiming to match their standards (the benchmarks).
Bench marking can be identified in many areas e.g.
- Personal – staff qualifications, skills and productivity (sales per employee at Tesco may be benchmarked by Sainsbury). Camelot used a CBR benchmark for absenteeism.
- Use of IT – the effectiveness and use of the customer database, the type of equipment, the use of loyalty cards to capture data by leading companies.
- Product quality – the added value offered, the features included as standard (e.g. airbag and CD player) by successful competitors.
Managing performance: -
The term performance management came into use in the 1980s. It refers to the practice of setting targets, measuring performance against these and taking action to rectify problems. This might include disciplinary changes to the work environment, the introduction of a reward system or staff development.
Performance appraisal: -
Appraisal is an on-going process that looks at how well an employee is doing their job. It involves monitoring employee performance against agreed targets and then setting further targets that might include training and career opportunities as well as performance.
The process will look at the employee as an individual, but will also ask how the employee helps the organisation to achieve its objectives.
Employee support: -
Mentoring: - Mentoring takes place as part of management development and succession (promotion) planning. It can be a way of helping to fast-track recruits with potential into senior management roles. It may also involve contact with members of other organisations who feel that they have experience and support to give. This may be a form of personal development for the mentor and good public relations for their employee.
Monitoring: - An organisation will constantly review the work of employees. Monitoring is an on-going process that may take a number of forms. There may be a check on the quality of work produced e.g. a visit by a mystery shopper. Regular meetings with reports on progress, a review of performance figures e.g. sales made, costs incurred, customer feedback, queries answered etc.
This information can be used to inform the appraisal. According to Mayo, employees should respond well to the attention that is being paid to them.
Buddying: - This involves pairing up inexperience employees so that they can support and learn from one another. This is similar to peer mentoring except that the ‘buddies’ will be of similar experience. It can be useful where employees are new to an organisation or job.
Occupational health: -
Large oragnisations such as rail companies and the Royal Mail have dedicated occupational health sections. Here medical staff with industry knowledge can advise on safe working practices.
- Staff training in the prevention and resolution of customer conflict – particularly important in the public services such as health, social security and transport.
- Employee counseling services, either in-house or with external providers.
- Recognition of workload issues, training and development programmes to enable employees to prepare for and adapt to change in the workplace.
Managing staff workload: -
Too much stress can become harmful, causing tension, sleeplessness, irritability and low confidence. The result can be absenteeism and an inability to face work. The courts are now taking this seriously.
Stress is not always the demon king it is made out to be. A certain amount of stress is necessary, even a beneficial, element in our lives. When the brain registers that a potentially stressful situation exists, people experience surge of adrenaline and this in turn can lead to an increase in performance.
Delegating authority and responsibility – to empower staff: -
The practice of delayering – cutting out layers of management to flatten the organisational structure – can lead to overworked managers delegating work (conferring responsibility) to those at a lower level. If this is seen as empowerment – putting the employee in control – then the job is enriched and the employee may be motivated by greater job satisfaction. On the other hand, delegation may be seen as giving as additional and unwelcome workload that has no reward.
Creating reward schemes: -
In an effective organisation, rewards are used well. Rewarding means recognising employees, individually and as members of groups, for their performance and acknowledging their contributions o the agency’s mission. Good performance is recognised without waiting for nominations for formal awards to be solicited. Workers engaged in manufacturing and selling has traditionally received incentives for reaching targets. However, as we have seen, in parts of the service sector performance is difficult to measures. The government attempts to introduce performance related pay into teaching, the police, the health service and the civil service.
Giving autonomy – letting staff uses their initiative: -
According to Herzberg, responsibility is a motivator. A job that affords an employee a degree of control and allows autonomy (independence or freedom) to make decisions should provide job satisfaction and result in better performance.
Sometimes staff may be given autonomy over a project alongside their dairy work – setting up a database or updating the website content for example.
Employee development – basing this on results of the targets setting: -
It is the role of HR managers to ensure that employees fulfill their potential. Staff development can take a number of forms.
Training: - On-the-job training is appropriate where an employee has the necessary skills, but not the exact knowledge require for a job. In this case, the work can be explained and demonstrated in the workplace. For example, a new casher will need to know how to work the till and procedures for accepting cheques. Training method includes following;
- Lectures, video demonstrations.
- Case studies involving role pay or discussion.
- Simulations using software – engine drivers with Eurotunnel are given a simulation of the channel tunnel crossing.
Skill training: - Skills can be transferable or job specific (non-transferable)
Transferable skills, once learnt, may be applied in many different situations. The key skills of Application of Number, Communication and Information Technology are examples, Business letter-writing skills, business calculations; the use of standard business software (Microsoft) can be used in a variety of situations and industries – to request information, to apologies for a faulty product, to calculate percentage change, and so on.
Non-transferable skills are narrow skills that are job-specific and apply only to a particular situation. They often require specific knowledge of a firm’s procedures and processes, e.g. a person needs to learn how their particular business completes its invoices and files them. Another business may do this differently if he/she changed jobs he/she would need to learn the new system.
Promotion – judged on ability to meet targets: -
Promotion to higher level posts in the hierarchy will naturally increase responsibility and should also bring higher rewards. However, where an employee either lacks personal confidence or the necessary training or experience, responsibility can become a burden.
Managing Performance at Beechwood School: -
Beechwood School has always relied on the performance of the human resource. Performance management is about establishing a culture in which individuals and groups take responsibility for the continuous improvement of business processes and of their own skills, behavior and contributions. It is about sharing expectations. Head teachers can clarify what they expect individual and teams to do; likewise individuals and teams can communicate their expectations of how they should be managed and what they need to do their jobs. It follows that performance management is about interrelationships and about improving the quality of relationships - between head teachers and teachers, between head teachers and teams, between members of teams and so on, and is therefore a joint process. It is also about planning - defining expectations expressed as objectives and in business plans - and about measurement; the old dictum is 'If you can't measure it, you can't manage it'. It should apply to all employees, not just managers, and to teams as much as individuals. It is a continuous process, not a one-off event.
How the results from this target and goals setting can inform staff development.
During an appraisal system or individual performance review, a line manger can refer to the previous year’s targets and measure the extent to which they have been achieved. The employee can refer to the targets and offer explanations if he or she has fallen short. In a joint review of the year’s work, the manager and employee can agree staff development programmes that might assist. An employee needs the following needs for better organisation performance.
Better IT Skills: -
IT professions constitute a privileged research area for understanding the relationships between IT, Skills and work organisation. Not only there is a close relationship between technology and skills. IT skills are very crucial for any work place because firstly it is to dealing with computers and secondly it’s a new technology so work can be done faster than by pen and paper. In Beechwood School, every teacher is expected to have IT skills because they use these new tools such as smart boards and outlook emails as well students who are doing their BTECs requires help in their work, so if a teacher that has good IT skills compare to the one who hasn’t have any are less likely to be welcome at Beechwood School because of lack of their skills. Better IT skills help in better management performance. For example, setting goals, monitoring the teacher’s achievement of those goals that set by Beechwood School, sharing feedback with other teachers, evaluating the students and teachers performance, and rewarding performance or firing the teacher.
Performance management applies to organisations, too, and includes recurring activities to establish organisational goals, monitor progress toward the goals, and make adjustments to achieve those goals more effectively and efficiently. Those recurring activities are much of what leaders and managers inherently do in their organisations -- some do them far better than others.
Financial awareness: -
Finance is becoming an increasingly important part of the role of anyone with managerial duties. With every business decision there is an element for finance involved. Finance departments are realising in order to successful, it is crucial that managers throughout their organisations have a good understating of finance and some of the key techniques and practical tools used by accountants. In Beechwood School, since the budget is being given out by the government but it doesn’t mean that the teachers shouldn’t be aware of it. For example when the government give out budget for Media Studies department, the subject teacher(s) should know that how much money the government has given out and how they should use it in right place. The same apply for all organisations but it depends on the industry. If it is education sector then the teachers should know about finance but if it is hospital then the doctors should know more rather than the teachers.
Commercial Knowledge: -
All businesses have access to an extensive pool or knowledge – whether this is their understanding of customers’ needs and the business environment or the skills and experience of staff. In Beechwood School it is important for teacher to have knowledge about the sector because without knowledge they won’t be able to teach. Right teacher for the right subject is important as it won’t be suitable for an English teacher to teach Business studies or a Business studies teacher to teach English. Commercial knowledge also gives power and control to the subject teachers to make their own decisions in order to get a job properly done. This is likely to mean that the teacher or teachers are also responsible for monitoring their own performance. Since the teacher has this power, they are often motivated to work as hard as they can to achieve their targets and goals. The teachers cannot cheat in their targets and goals because it will depend on the student’s performance and results after their exams.
Teamwork skills, management skills, etc: -
Teamwork has become an important part of the working culture and many businesses now look at teamwork skills when evaluating a person for employment. Most companies realise that teamwork is important because either the product is sufficiently complex that it requires a team with multiple skills to produce and/or a better product will result when a team approach is taken. In Beechwood School teamwork is very important because teamwork goes beyond individual accomplishments. The most effective teamwork is produced when all the teachers put their efforts in one thing and successfully achieve that. Most commonly these happen in meetings or other events such as multicultural evenings. Therefore it is important that students learn to function in a team environment so that they will have team working skills when they enter the workfare. Also students must learn best from tasks that involve doing tasks and involve social interactions. Management skills in Beechwood School are highly recommended. Any teacher with experience is able to manage day-to-day activities if senior teacher is not available. Management skills cannot be easily gained unless a teacher has had an experience in that particular field.
Why measuring performance is important?
Labour represents a significant investment for an organisation. Employment costs often account for a high proportion of total business costs, particularly in service industries.
- Are a motivator for employees
- Provide a focus for appraising staff
- Enable managers to identify weakness
- Provide a practical basis for remedial actions and staff development
- Give specific criteria for managers to judge performance
Motivation: -
In an effective organisation, assignments and projects are monitored continually. Monitoring well means consistently measuring performance and providing ongoing feedback to employees and work groups on their progress toward reaching their goals.
Regulatory requirements for monitoring performance include conducting progress reviews with employees where their performance is compared against their elements and standards. Ongoing monitoring provides the opportunity to check how well employees are meeting predetermined standards and to make changes to unrealistic or problematic standards. And by monitoring continually, unacceptable performance can be identified at any time during the appraisal period and assistance provided to address such performance rather than wait until the end of the period when summary rating levels are assigned.
Firms may advertise for ‘self starters’ – people who will drive themselves forward. Where work is more mundane, employers may need to understand how changes to the job, the culture of the organisation or the reward system may encourage employees to improve their performance. Managers might be looking for better quality products, more efficient products, less absenteeism, lower staff turnover. Motivations help the manager to know how they have been improving in their business with the employees.
However, it’s also important to remember that employees are not solely motivated by money or other financial incentives. There is another article contained in this section entitled ‘Ways To Reward Employees’ which will give you more information about the various different types of employee motivation schemes you may wish to introduce.
Motivation is important because it gives a roadmap for the future and it may increase job satisfaction. Employees are happier if they know how they are doing. If they know they are doing a good job, and that's acknowledged, they will generally continue to do a good job, and may well strive to do more. If managers don't give people feedback, and they aren't doing a good job, the managers can't expect them to be either satisfied or productive.
Motivational strategies can help improve employee performance, reduce the chances of low employee morale, encourage teamwork and in still a positive attitude during challenging times. Employees with a high level of motivation typically work harder and can overcome common workplace challenges with ease; this helps the organization reach its objectives and improve operations overall.
Aims and Objectives: -
It is very important to have an aims because it provide a focus for the business, to see what they are trying to aim for, an aim highlights key areas of development and achievement. Objectives are more specific than aims they are broken down so that they are easier to achieve. An objective is a sub goal. It is a short-term, step within a period of time that is moving toward achieving a long-term goal.
Appraisal systems in any organisation should be designed to motivate and encourage employees to give their best performance. The targets that are set by employer and employee should strike a balance between what is needed for the business and what the employee needs. An employee may feel they would like to attend a particular course in the coming appraisal period, but if it does not meet a business need the manager may need to persuade them to undertake different training.
Aims and objectives help in improves employee engagement because everyone understands how they are directly contributing to the organisations high level goals. If people who care think an employee care they are more likely to buy; or because employee wants future generations live healthy. The bigger a business grows the more money it makes. Diversity makes it less likely to be outclassed in one specific area by a competitor. Also bigger companies create more jobs for employees which helps the economy.
Aims and objectives help managers to judge the performance. Therefore it is important that aims and objectives are measure accurately. Aims and objectives enable managers to identify weakness.
Conclusion: -
Monitoring performance means measuring performance and providing feedback to employees. Agency appraisal programs are required to provide ongoing appraisal, which includes, but is not limited to, conducting one or more progress reviews during each appraisal period. In addition to a once– or twice–a–year progress review, which is sometimes a formal part of the appraisal process, supervisors and employees are encouraged to discuss performance informally and often.
Determining how to monitor performance is an important step in developing performance plans. You may have worked through the previous six steps of the process presented in this handbook, developed what you thought were great elements and standards, and then found that monitoring performance on an element is impossible, or too costly, or too time-consuming. If this happens, think through other specific measures that indicate performance—measures that are as specific as possible.
Therefore measuring performance is important to motivate the employees, provide a focus for appraising staff, and Enable managers to identify weakness, provide a practical basis for remedial actions and staff development, and Give specific criteria for managers to judge performance
