Performance management
Contents
Definition
Performance management (PM) includes activities which ensure that goals are consistently being met in an effective and efficient manner. Performance management can focus on the performance of an organization, a department, employee, or even the processes to build a product of service, as well as many other areas. PM is also known as a process by which organizations align their resources, systems and employees to strategic objectives and priorities.
Purpose & benefits
To help monitor the operations/processes/activities of the organisation in order to ascertain the degree to which it is meeting it's goals and objectives.
Performance management is an important part of ensuring the technology is aligned with the business needs. Understanding what the business needs to measure helps to identify the data that needs to be collected as part of the technology. In fact, that the technology must be able to collect data and report on it in order to meet business needs and objectives is itself a requirement.
Description
In some literature performance management is defined as the process of establishing performance expectations with employees, designing interventions and programs to improve performance and monitoring the success of interventions and programs. It is a comprehensive process that involves various activities and programs designed to improve performance. (Source: Saks, A. and Haccoun, R., (2010), Manging performance through training and development, 5th ed. Toronto: Nelson Education Ltd.)
Performance management is comprised of a set of performance indicators, metrics, key performance indicators, or key success factors. These terms can be used interchangeably.
Performance management can be used to determine the success of the KM program/activities; metrics should be carefully chosen and monitored, keeping in mind that "what gets measured gets done", which can lead to undesirable outcomes and behaviours.
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