Work Out Performance Management (Notes And Worked Examples)

When dis­cussing per­for­mance man­age­ment, many peo­ple imme­di­ate­ly think of the annu­al per­for­mance review process. But the per­for­mance appraisal is only one com­po­nent of what is con­sid­ered to be per­for­mance man­age­ment. One of the best def­i­n­i­tions of per­for­mance man­age­ment is pro­vid­ed by Michael Arm­strong in his Hand­book of Per­for­mance Man­age­ment, which care­ful­ly and plain­ly lays out the Arm­strong per­for­mance man­age­ment cycle:

​“Per­for­mance man­age­ment is the con­tin­u­ous process of improv­ing per­for­mance by set­ting indi­vid­ual and team goals which are aligned to the strate­gic goals of the organ­i­sa­tion, plan­ning per­for­mance to achieve the goals, review­ing and assess­ing progress, and devel­op­ing the knowl­edge, skills and abil­i­ties of peo­ple.”

A key point here is that per­for­mance man­age­ment is a con­tin­u­ous process — not a once-a-year activ­i­ty. Qual­i­ty per­for­mance man­age­ment should, there­fore, bring togeth­er a num­ber of dif­fer­ent, inte­grat­ed activ­i­ties to form an ongo­ing​”per­for­mance man­age­ment cycle”, as shown below.