Over the past 4 weeks we have looked at the "key themes" for driving sustainable organisational performance identified in the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) report "Sustainable Organisation Performance: What Really Makes the Difference." This week we will look at the 5th of the 8 themes: is "Assessment and Evaluation."
Although perhaps self-explanatory the report defines this as "The processes that occur at different organisational levels to gather qualitative and quantitative information, to assess the impact of actions and inform decision making." People can be engaged at different levels and with various aspects of the organisation or the work and their engagement can be transactional or emotional in nature." So how does this shape the future?
Perhaps this is obvious if you consider William James' statement that "The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated." Yet the report expands its meaning by more mundane issues like:-
- Context affects how organisations assess their performance;
- It is important to strike appropriate balance between collecting qualitative and quantitative data;
- Too much, or the wrong emphasis on metrics, can impede productivity;
- Capturing and analysing information is the first step in assessing and evaluating performance, but acting on the data collected is critical;
- Making data readily available to managers ensures more informed decision-making;
- Managers need to have the right skills to make sense of and interpret the data;
- As well as using the data to evaluate past performance, it is important to draw insight from it to inform future activity. In other words predictive capabilities are also needed.
Once again there is an awful lot of the "what" and very little of the "how". And much of that seems to be obvious or should be to any half-decent manager. When you look at it from an HR or people perspective it seems there is little to suggest any radical shift away from the idea of people being a resource that needs to be managed. Once again it seems to be rooted in the discredited philosophy of command-and-control management, and to perpetuate the ideal of a manager who is responsible for his subordinates' output. Given that employee engagement is an increasing problem this certainly does not seem to be shaping a future that is likely to be any better.
By accounting for people as assets instead of costs and enabling a new model of employee ownership the Zealise solution genuinely offers a new paradigm for assessing and evaluating people. It will do more to shape a different future than anything spelled out here. Even if it is not the complete answer it provides a catalyst that will engender a different way of thinking and thus, ultimately, different behaviour.