If you study the business pages of any newspaper, you will read about the ‘performance of an organisation’. You might read about an organisation that has performed better than expected, or an organisation that has experienced a downturn in performance. This is likely to refer to the profits that an organisation has achieved, or the sales that have been made.

There will be a number of reasons for the perceived success or failure in performance. For example, an organisation might be operating in a market that has been contracting or where external factors such as the global financial crisis might have affected the performance. However, there is one factor that will definitely have had an impact on the performance of the organisation – its people.

If the people in the organisation are not motivated, and have not been working as hard as they can, then it is almost inevitable that the performance of the overall organisation will have suffered. It is certainly true that an organisation can do little about a global financial crisis, such as the one which started in 2008, but it is also true that the organisation can take steps to ensure that the employees are performing effectively.
In this module, we are focusing on performance. We are going to start by understanding performance management, and the ‘performance management cycle’. We are going to look at the process that we follow to measure employee performance, focusing specifically on the appraisal process. We will then look at objective setting, and how it can be successfully achieved.

Moving on from this, we will take some time to think about how under-performing employees should be managed. We will consider the process of managing capability, and also consider the role of disciplinary warnings.

We will then think about rewarding performance, looking at a number of different approaches to reward strengths and consider weaknesses. We will also ponder on the issue of motivation, and discuss whether the different approaches to reward really lead to higher performance.

Finally, we will return to the idea of performance management as a cycle, with the belief that it is a never-ending process. Hence, we will think about the importance of personal development plans.