Introduction
The thrust of this article is to describe the purposes and crucial elements of performance management in public organisations. The article will enumerate strategies that amplify performance management in government organizations and explain if these strategies could be applied in all public organisations.
Understanding Performance Management: A Discourse
Described as a world-renowned scholar, Michael Armstrong defines performance management as the continuous process of improving by setting up personal and team goals that are in tandem with those of the organisation, planning performance to accomplish the goals, receiving and evaluating progress, and also developing the potentials of people (Armstrong, 2022). As a constantly developing business management practice, performance management involves the use of effective communication between business owners, managers and their employees with the sole aim of ensuring that the strategic objective of the business is achieved. During its operation, it incorporates a good number of elements which help in the actualization of organizational goals. Some of these elements include planning, communication, evaluation, goal-setting, efficiency, accountability, accuracy and effective monitoring of tasks and responsibilities (Krishnan, 2013).
In another event, performance management involves the effective management of employee performance which is carried out through a constant process of strategic planning, implementing, measuring results in a bid to boost the capacity of a business organization to function effectively (Gherage & Hack, 2007); (Human Resources Management, n.d.). The fundamental aim or purpose of performance management is to help business organizations achieve excellent management and employee performance by motivating them to strive hard and work professionally individually and as a team, to build organizational processes and strategies that would propel high quality achievements as well as effective customer service and change management (Silva, Nuzum & Schaltegger, 2019).
In the context of public or government organization, performance management can be described as a management style adopted by public organizations in critically evaluating their progress, with the sole aim creating future plans. Involving the incorporation of performance sample tools like Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as well as reliance on available data, performance management singles itself out as yardstick or basis for measuring the services provided to the public.
Performance Management bears an undisputable value to the leaders of public organizations in many ways and by various means, especially as it serves as the basis of ascertaining the efficiency of organizational policies, selecting the proper metrics for ongoing evaluation, understanding how the ideologies and services rendered to the public affect the society at large and also to realign business plans and strategy with budgets when the need arises.
A practical example of what performance management is all about is well explained by Buckingham & Goodall (2015) in their discourse on “Reinventing Performance Management”. According to the authors, in the course of doing business, a lot of business firms such as Deloitte discovered that its pattern of evaluating employee performance, trainings, promotion and remuneration was not in tandem with its goals. As a result, it went in search for an operational pattern that will be more effective, time-saving, individualized and more focused on propelling optimal performance subsequently.
To Deloitte, this new pattern will feature speed, agility and persistent learning which would be supported by a very reliable way of collating performance data (Buckingham & Goodall, 2015). In short, given the nature of events that led to Deloitte’s discovery, it can be concluded that the firm was able to redesign its performance management system through effective performance management.
Strategies of performance management in public organizations
Fryer & Antony (2009) explained that a good public performance management strategy involves: benchmarking capabilities which help leaders of public organizations to ascertain their strengths and weaknesses in line with those is similar organizations, and across organizational KPI which helps in providing quality assessment on the services they provide to the public as against other’s (Mesubbah & Arusha, 2016). Additionally, Moynihan & Backgoard (2019) noted that in a bid to achieve quality employee performance and services in public firms, there is need for these firms to employ workers who are equipped with professional skillets and knowledge that can help discover work-related problems and also give insights on how to solve and Improve on them.
Given the fact that performance management in public organizations is usually met with a lot of challenges due to their multilayered nature, size and complexities, there is need to employ essential strategies that would help upscale their performance. These include: paying of attention change adoption and management, alignment of performance management with talent development, engaging government employees with transitioning planning, and connecting the public sector’s technology systems and culture (van Helden & Uddin, 2016).
The first strategy stresses the need to improve on an already existing performance management process in a public organization. This will involve some gradual improvements like maintaining effective communication, consultation and feedback system with managers and employees of the organization, selection of specific technology e.g. Totara perform will help the organization to achieve its needs, and experiment with different evaluating styles of performance results.
The second strategy discusses the need to devise a central monitoring system that keeps check on employee performance, organisational goals, and align learning to performance data. It is believed that this will help discover and narrow important administrative gaps, facilitate critical management plans, and create an employee – friendly performance management model. In the same vein, the third strategy presents a solution on issues bordering on the challenges governments face in the employment and retaining of employees, most especially those from the millennial age. The essence of this is to blend career advancement to keep employees and succession in order to avoid creating skill gaps. What this means is that governments should ensure that they create and approve a mentorship culture and cooperation between high ranking employees approaching their retirement age and junior employees enrolling into the public sector (van Helden & Uddin, 2016).
Research shows that public organizations are faced with so many challenges, one of which is lack of connection and integration between organizational culture and technology systems. It is in a bid to improve upon this process that the fourth strategy proposes the need for public organizations to develop a single agency that features different learning management systems, processes and cooperative platforms. This will help create critical employee performance goals, enhance effective report to stakeholders in the public organizations, encourage employees to effectively engage in knowledge sharing that would maximize their performance (van Helden & Uddin, 2016).
Application of Performance Management Strategies
On the applicability of performance management strategies to all public organizations, it is my opinion that these strategies cannot be applicable to all public organizations as a result of the following reasons.
External Influence. Given the nature of public organizations and their pattern of ownership, it is certain that the use of a strategy has a higher percent chance of being influenced by the political decisions of the government. In other words, political actors in government can easily interfere in the employment, sack and promotion of employees as well as the manufacturing investment strategies designed by different public organizations. As such, it will be difficult for one strategy to be used for all public organizations. However, truth be told, no one size-fits-all strategy works in performance management (van Helden & Uddin, 2016).
Given the different cultural practices in most developing countries of the world, s great deal of difficulties have been experienced in the course of executing one performance management strategy for all public organizations. It is no doubt that a lot of societies in the world today are being guided by certain sociocultural values as they have different understanding of time, attitude and the environment at large (Uadiale et al., 2019). The difference in these understanding include the use of strategies in public organizations such that employees’ attitude to work, attentiveness, time management, punctuality and regularity, deadlines and organizational objectives vary. As such, in order to this challenge, public organizations organize trainings (which receive different reactions that determine other strategies to apply) for their employees.
Again, it is important to note that no one software perform better for all public organizations because they have different vision and missions. So, while some may choose Prima logik and 15Five, others may prefer Lattrice (Behnke, 2023).
Conclusion
This essay carefully examined performance management and the strategies involved in performance management in public organizations. It also highlighted the purposes of performance management in public organizations and also argued that performance management strategies cannot be one-size-fits all for public organizations.
References
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Behnke, K. (2023). Ten Best Performance Management Software of 2023 for continuous feedback. https://people managing people.com/tools/best-performance-management-software/
Buckingham, M. & Goodall, A. (2015). Reinventing Performance Management. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2015/04/Reinventing-performance-management.
Fryer, K. & Antony, J. (2009). Performance Management in the public sector. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 22 (6), 478 – 498.
Human Resource Management Practice. (n.d.). Managing Performance. https://nscpo/feksby.ac.id/ebook/files.
Krishnan, S. K. (2013). Seven Elements of Effective Performance Management. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237778624_elements_of_effective_performance_management.
Mesabbah, M. & Arisha, A. (2016). Performance Management of the public healthcare services in Ireland: A Review. International Journal of Healthcare Quality Assurance, 29 (2), 209 – 235.
Moynihan, D. P. & Backgoard, M. (2019). Tackling the performance regime paradox: A problem-solving approach engages professional goal-based learning. Public Administration Review, 9999 (9999), 1 – 11.
Silva, S., Nuzum, A. & Schaltegger, S. (2019). Stakeholder Expectations on Sustainability Performance Measurement and Assessment. A Systematic Literature Review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 217, 204 – 215
Uadiale, O., Adhikari, P. & Guven-Uslu, P. (2019). Constraints on the applicability performance management systems framework. 19th workshop on Accounting and Finance in Emerging Economies. https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/Id/eprint/71986.
van Helden, J. & Uddin, S. (2016). Public Sector Management Accounting in Emerging Economies: A Literature Review. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 41, 34 – 62.
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Photo Credit – https://www.forbes.com/sites/igorbosilkovski/2020/05/07/meet-the-nigerian-entrepreneurs-who-just-raised-10-million-to-transform-africas-healthcare/?sh=1115460453bd
