Performance management

sharpy2010

I can't help but think that when a company says they are going to 'performance manage' an employee, what I hear is "we are going to give you a disciplinary, but we'll call it a performance management, as you haven't really done anything wrong and we wouldn't legally be able to call it a disciplinary - this is out underhand way of giving you a (semi)legal telling off"

And no, I haven't had one, I just think this is yet another dirty trick that companies use to flout the law. No question really, other than do you agree or disagree?!

Emmzi

I disagree.

Performance management covers both good and poor performance.

The company is entitled to set standards or what they want done and to measure against it. Otherwise how do they know that they ar egetting what they are paying for?

If a company wants rid of an employee there are much faster ways and it is naive to think of PM as a way of expiditing exit.

GavB79

Performance management is good practice.
ALL staff in my organisation have an annual performance management review, to discuss the past year, set targets for the next one etc. It influences pay rises, training courses, things like that.
If you were the ONLY person having performance management, I might feel differently.

blossomhill_2

Disagree - have been managed this way and managed my own staff under the same system for decades and never used it as a way of criticising someone or been criticised myself.

Any issues are discussed during the course of our work, privately, as a matter of course when they arise, as with any good management.

No need to treat with suspicion

Meepster

Emmzi wrote: »

I disagree.

Performance management covers both good and poor performance.

The company is entitled to set standards or what they want done and to measure against it. Otherwise how do they know that they ar egetting what they are paying for?

If a company wants rid of an employee there are much faster ways and it is naive to think of PM as a way of expiditing exit.

Agree 100%

Back in my retail management days, if I was looking at PM'ing someone out of the business, it'd take around 6 months to a year to have all bases covered.

Whereas if I REALLY wanted to get rid of someone, I could achieve it within a matter of weeks.

PM's were more a way of telling someone I wanted them there, but they needed to buck their ideas up, NOT that I wanted them out...

zzzLazyDaisy

I also disagree.

Performance management is time consuming and not a particularly pleasant task for the manager, especially if the employee concerned is feeling resentful about it.

But it is a often a very fair way to treat employees who are under-performing (for these purposes I am assuming this is what OP is referring to...) because it give the employee the opportunity to understand where they are not meeting the required standards, and to improve. It also gives them the opportunity to ask for additional training where appropriate.

If the employee still fails to meet the required standards, the employer will then have to go through the company's formal warning procedures anyway, before the employee can be dismissed.

So if it is an underhand way of dealing with an employee, it would be a very pointless exercise, on several levels!

Sambucus_Nigra

Manage them up or manage them out.

Mara69

I have yearly Performance Assessment Reviews and monthly one to one sessions with my manager. They are always very positive; I get lots of praise and get to voice my opinion on how things are going etc. So I disagree with the OP.

agrinnall

I think some posts in this thread show a misunderstanding of what Performance Management is (at least as I understand the OP to mean). It is not the same thing as performance appraisal, and it is not something that every employee gets. Normally it is used when an employee has been underperforming (often found through the performance appraisal process) with the aim of giving the employee an opportunity to bring their performance up to an acceptable standard by setting short term objectives and closely monitoring progress towards and achievement of those objectives. As zzzLD says it is not an easy thing for a manager to do, and in my experience is rarely (but occasionally) done with the aim of getting rid of the employee.

Emmzi

then the OP is using the wrong terminology.

agrinnall

Emmzi wrote: »

then the OP is using the wrong terminology.

I don't agree, I think the OP is using the right terminology, but unless they come back and clarify we'll never know.

PS I should say that I don't agree with the interpretation has given on why Performance Management is used but I think that what is being described is what I know as Performance Management.