Performance Management – Many Possibilities…and Implications Ian Cullwick, Queen's IRC Facilitator, 2017
Performance Management (PM) has become a core organizational strategy and management priority for many organizations. From Boards of Directors to front-line managers, PM can effectively be used to drive accountability, quality, productivity, competence, and rewards and recognition. Going beyond simply a tool to drive “appraisals” and incentive rewards, PM can be complex and not without risk but it can also drive a sophisticated quality and performance-based culture.
Performance management has also become both a strategic imperative and a challenge for many organizations in this data analytics day and age. As a core enabler of performance optimization and accountability, many executive and HR leaders view PM as a core management practice and a key ingredient to becoming a higher performance organization. As a result of various regulatory, methodological and technological developments over the past five years, however, PM has become a misunderstood topic that is confusing for many organizations, especially for those that do not recognize the interdependencies that cut across other management and human resources practices at the enterprise-wide, team and individual levels of performance.
Best practice performance management is clearly not a “one size fits all” endeavor. Rather, it needs to fundamentally reflect the unique contextual needs of one’s strategic direction, business model, workforce profile and leadership preferences. Best practice PM also needs to be thoughtfully configured, and in many cases, phased in and allowed to mature, otherwise, the policies and programs that it supports will collapse and be rendered ineffective – a management risk that could be quite damaging, ultimately constraining front-line performance and of key importance, customer satisfaction.
Participation or Pseudo-Participation? Change Agent Challenges in Implementing Organizational Change Kate Sikerbol, Queen's IRC Facilitator, 2016
Creating energy, engagement, and commitment to change initiatives is one of many challenges we face as change agents. Increasingly, organizations, managers, and change practitioners espouse a belief that involving people in the change initiative is important. Many of us would agree in principle with this philosophy: Participation is essential to successful change implementation. However, the practical dimension of how to actually accomplish employee participation in change initiatives poses a challenge to change implementers.
What do HR managers involved in a major change initiatives actually do to foster employee participation? Researchers Laurie Lewis and Travis Russ (2012) explored this question in an empirical study with 26 human resources managers. They investigated the actual practices that HR managers utilized to solicit and use employee input during major organizational change projects. The study identified four different approaches that are described below: open, political, restricted, and advisory.
Director's Note – August 2017 Paul Juniper, Queen's IRC Director
2017 continues to be a year of significant anniversaries. Queen’s University is celebrating its 175th, Canada its 150th and the IRC is marking 80 years of professional development programs for HR, LR and OD professionals. These milestones are important, as they provide a valuable opportunity to celebrate our achievements, but also reflect on how the world of work has dramatically changed over time.
Over the years, Queen’s IRC has continued to develop and refine training approaches for this rapidly shifting workplace. Our programs are developed and delivered by facilitators with real-world experience, who know how to build high-performance teams and cultivate healthy and productive union-management relationships.
But don’t just take our word for it. Once again, we’ve been named as the winner of the Labour Relations Training Providers category in HR Reporter’s 2017 Readers’ Choice Awards. Our participants tell us that they value our experiential approach to learning, providing them with the critical skills and tools they need to lead transformational change and employee development.
Why has Analytics Become Much More Important for HR Professionals?
Check out our new video! Queen’s IRC Facilitator Jim Harrison talks about why HR analytics and metrics have become more important in the past few years.
For an overview of our professional development training, from the perspective of our participants and speakers, please check out our Queen’s IRC Video.
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