Successful Performance Management: Effective Strategy, Best Practice and Key Skills

This comprehensive study by Dr Gerry McMahon, entitled Successful Performance Management:Effective Strategy, Best Practice and Key Skills, provides a very relevant and accessible guide for both employer and employee.

I would suggest that this book would be  really useful for anyone working in HR, or a departmental,  functional  or organisational head charged with implementing or overhauling the organisational performance management system. It would also be a great resource and refresher to dip into when preparing for a review.

Dr McMahon makes the case for the value of performance management systems. With the economic downturn affecting Ireland particularly negatively, ensuring organisations optimise employee performance is essential. The OECD criticised Irish managers for not taking performance management systems seriously, undertaking them as “little more than a paper exercise”.

The book then contextualises performance management systems. Principally, they are the preferred organisational approach for improving performance, agreeing pay bonuses, reviewing  performance and guiding the future development of individuals and teams. And, currently in Ireland, more than eight out of ten organisations use a formal performance management system.

McMahon contends that while performance management is an important and very relevant business system that impacts significantly organisational performance, the success of any system depends on how engaged and committed senior management are  to implementing the system. It is also important that all managers charged with performing performance management  reviews have the required people skills and complete the process (e.g. follow up with the reviewee after the meeting).

McMahon continues by detailing the varied performance management systems in place and what works well and what’s not so useful about each system. There are useful chapters on choosing the right performance management system that will fit your organisational culture and how to evaluate the system in place.

The book then provides a number of excellent resources: firstly, there’s a very useful “how-to” section for the reviewer  in the performance management system. There are practical, relevant tips and techniques on how to prepare for and undertake the review meeting and how to follow up post meeting. There’s also useful review scenarios that frequently arise and how to approach them. For the reviewee there’s a chapter on how to prepare for and get the most from the review.

A further chapter on dealing with underperformance through coaching, mentoring and the performance management system is an excellent refresher. Finally, the appendices provide suggestions of useful questions for the reviewer, a self-assessment form for the reviewee and a number of case studies of organisations and their performance management systems.