A Rough Guide to Performance Management

A Rough Guide to Performance Management

The only purpose of Performance Management is to deliver better quality services to local people.

Performance Management requires us to:

1. Prioritise and set clear objectives (what we intend to do for local people) and communicate these to the public and our workforce
2. Track and communicate whether or not they are being achieved
3. Take action to ensure that we are continuously improving and that objectives are being met in line with expectations.

Additionally, achieving better quality services is dependent on:

our workforce being motivated to identify practical ways of improving how we do things.

And….

the way that our employees operate together & with our partners.

So, the sum total of how our workforce operates is crucial in making performance management effective. The right culture is therefore necessary.

Toward a performance culture – ‘The Stairway to Heaven’

Which part of the stairway is familiar to you?

1. Prioritising, Setting and Communicating Objectives:

A key step toward achieving excellence is to establish an integrated way of communicating and implementing objectives throughout the Council – so all of our plans must contain clear objectives and they must be joined - up. (See separate Rough Guide to the Council Plan).

Ownership and accountability is also essential to ensure that individual officers who are best placed to ensure delivery of objectives have real ownership for doing so.

This can be described best by introducing the concept of the ‘Golden Thread’.

As employees of the Council, we should all recognise the contribution that we are making, as individuals or as team players, toward achieving what we set out to achieve for the people of Cumbria.

We should be able to connect the ‘Golden Thread’ from the Council Plan objectives, through Service and Team Plan objectives to our own individual objectives.

In this way, we should have a clear ‘line of sight’ through the following pyramid.

The Golden Thread

2. Tracking and communicating whether or not they are being achieved

Once objectives have been set and are communicated to stakeholders, and everyone involved in meeting them has had a chance to discuss them, good practice includes routinely providing evidence to show that we are achieving our objectives and that our services are continuously improving – so we must use standards, targets & performance measures that will tell us whether we are delivering better quality services.

The table below describes the links between objectives, standards, performance measures & targets that we use to show how we are improving.

2 fictional examples…..

Using performance measures, standards and targets, to identify achievements and areas for improvement should, over time, become everyone’s day job!

This will allow us to ensure we always provide the best service we can for the people of Cumbria.

The Council’s key objectives, priorities for improvement, performance measures and targets are published in the Council’s ‘Annual Review & Best Value Performance Plan’.

In here you will find performance measures and targets related to your area of work. Some are set locally by the Council and some are set by national Government.

3. Taking action to ensure that we are continuously improving and that objectives are being met in line with expectations.

Performance review is necessary to ensure that continuously improving performance is being delivered in line with our expectations.

Where performance is not up to expectation, we must take action in response to actual performance to make results better than they would otherwise be.

Our performance is actively managed by themed Performance Groups that are made up of Elected Members and Officers. There is a Performance Group for each theme of the Council Planand each Directorate leads a Performance Group.

At least quarterly, each Thematic Performance Group tracks whether our objectives are being met using standards, targets & performance measures. Where performance is not on target, then corrective action would be agreed and taken by the Performance Group to get performance back on track.

The Council has also established a Corporate Performance Group (CPG) to oversee the Council’s performance. Principally, the role and purpose of the CPG is to manage the Council’s Improvement Delivery Plan (part of the Council Plan) and ensure each Performance Group is carrying out it’s role of actively managing performance.

Thematic Performance Groups routinely monitor and manage performance against objectives in our plans using both existing national performance measures and local performance measures designed by individual Directorates to track whether we are improving over time.

To support the Performance Groups and CPG in their respective roles, the Council has acquired a Performance Management System called ‘Performanceplus’(P+).

In short, P+ is a single Council wide database for storing and reporting performance and risk information in a consistent way using common standards across the Council. It provides a system of performance ‘alerts’ that enable Members and Officers to focus effort and resources on those areas requiring greatest attention.

Often, the use of performance measures will lead us to conclude that services need to be improved or successes and achievements shared with everyone involved.

The use of performance measures will indicate success and achievement but may also indicate deficiencies in services for a range of reasons eg:

• Quality & satisfaction with Services Delivered.
• Cost of Services compared with Budget.
• Efficiency of services.

Often, this would indicate that a review of a service is likely to identify areas for improvement and better quality services for local people.

So, your ideas for improvement are always welcomed!

Key Documents:

Performance Management Framework available at

Annual Best Value Performance Plan available at

Annual Performance Summary available at

Service Review Toolkit available at

A Guide to Performance Measures and Targets available at

Useful External Websites:

for information on Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA), an assessment & inspection programme carried out by the audit commission to assess overall performance of Councils.

for information on ‘Performance Breakthoughs: Improving performance in public sector organisations’.

for the Managers’ guide to performance management.

for the Performance Management, Measurement and Information (PMMI) website

Additional Information:

For further general information on Performance Management, including the Council’s approach to Performance Management and/or new Government initiatives please contact:

The Performance Team,

Policy and Performance Unit,

Strategy & Performance Directorate,

The Courts,

Carlisle.

Wendy Daley – Performance Officer

e-mail:

tel: 01226 60(6095)

Hazel Waiting – Performance Officer

e-mail:

tel: 01228 60(7489)

Duncan Mc Queen – Performance Manager

e-mail:

tel: 01228 60(6293)

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