Challenging Performance Management

Your Bank...Your Performance???

Exercise 1: Role Play Exercise - Background

The purpose of this role play exercise is to develop reps’ understanding of Performance Management and to help them represent their members more effectively when they have a grievance over their ratings, or are facing corrective - even disciplinary - action. It is also aimed at encouraging reps to think how activity at workplace level around Performance Management can be part of the organising agenda – recruiting non-members, increasing membership and developing new reps. This is not an academic exercise. The lessons are meant to applied in practice so that when reps return to their workplaces they will be able to challenge managerial practice over Performance Management.

For many years YourBank has had a Performance Appraisal system, whereby staff have been subject to annual review. The ratings individual workers achieved were related to individual pay awards – the higher the performance rating the greater the pay award. The rationale for PRP was always contested by the union on the grounds that it ‘individualised’ staff, divided them from each other, especially when the bank’s profits came from collective effort.

Individual pay was no substitute for effective and transparent collective bargaining and collective pay awards. Further, individual pay was frequently unfair. Ratings were often a poor reflection of ‘actual’ performance, the system encouraged favouritism (‘blue eyed boys and girls’) and even discriminatory practices. Unfair appraisals and awards led to many grievances and claims of unfairness.

The ‘New’ Performance Management

In recent years YourBank has extended and tightened its Performance Management procedures. Instead of being just an annual review and appraisal, Performance Management has become continuous, operating throughout the year. As a result, there is intense supervision, monitoring and evaluation of individual performance against targets.

Staff face not just an annual review (still related to pay awards) but an mid-term review every six months. Reviews are not so much about looking back and ‘rewarding’ past performance, but are designed to be forward looking, to ensure that individual staff are ‘aligned’ with the future strategic objectives of the bank. Team leaders spend ever increasing amounts of their time and resource monitoring performance, completing reviews and dealing with cases of performance improvement. Each year increasing numbers of staff are put on a PIP – a Performance Improvement Plan –though most of those affected believe they are performing just as effectively as ever and the teams they are members of have been hitting their overall targets.

Although tougher Performance Management predated the crisis of September 2008 and the bank’s collapse staff have experienced a greater tightening of the screw since then as it pays off its emergency loans, restructures operations and re-engineers processes, whilst continuing to push through redundancies. YourBank has become obsessed with the need to pay a dividend to shareholders. Driving to reduce costs and improve operating efficiencies, lean working has become the latest management imperative. Managers, especially line managers, are encouraged to strip out inefficient or ‘wasteful’ processes and, in turn, seek out ‘lean champions’ from the staff who will drive continuous improvement. Managers argue that ‘creative stress’ is a good thing, stimulating workers to produce optimum results. Over the past years management has used two slogans to reinforce its message, ‘Doing More with Less’ and ‘Work Smarter not Harder’.

The Exercise

The locus is a customer-facing section of the bank. There are ten roles as follows:-

Team Leader – Ms. Metric

HR Officer – Mr. Gradgrind

Union Rep. and Customer Service Advisor – Rosa

H&S Rep and Customer Service Advisor – Sylvia

Senior Customer Service Advisor – Helen

Customer Service Advisor – Charlene

Customer Service Advisor – Siobhan

Customer Service Advisor – Natalie

You will each be allocated a role. You will be given a profile and your recent experience of Performance Management will be detailed. If you are in a CSA you are in a team of 8 (9 including the team leader) and you will have just been notified of your rating for the current year. There are five possible ratings that staff can receive as follows:

1 Unacceptable

‘Performance throughout the year has been significantly and consistently below am acceptable standard’

2 Does not meet expectations

‘One or more of the key objectives have not been met’.

3 Meets expectations

‘Fully achieved key objectives’.

4 Exceeds expectations

‘All objectives fully achieved and some have been exceeded throughout the year’

5 Exceptional

‘All objectives have been exceeded throughout the year’.

YourBank claims that it does not use forced distribution - or the ‘Bell curve’ - when it assesses performance and allocates scores. It insists that the scores that employees receive are a genuine reflection of their performance.

Criteria

The Performance Management scores are a combination of so-called ‘objective’ measurables, including quantitative metrics (how many transactions, customers served, sales, and qualitative scores (customer satisfaction) and behaviours, attitudes and appearance.

Union Meeting

Discontent amongst the staff has followed the awarding of the ratings. A number of staff have approached the Unite rep and asked her to call a meeting to discuss the PM ratings. The union rep has been concerned at the way things have been going for some time with PM. Last year there were several cases at the site where staff have been exited out of the organisation. Some had been dismissed on grounds of capability after only 12 weeks of being put on a PIP.

The first stage of the exercise is the workplace union meeting at which the staff raise their concerns, the union reps respond and the strongest case possible is developed to take to management. What general arguments should be used? What specific arguments on behalf of individual workers can be identified and advanced? What resources can you draw upon?

Meeting with Management

The second stage of the exercise has the Team Leader and the HR Adviser meet with the rep and the H&S rep. The union side present their case and management respond. What difficulties do the union reps meet? How can these be countered?

Exercise 2: Performance Management Checklist

Draw up a one-page guidance sheet on Performance Management for members and non-members. This can be in the form of a ‘dos’ and ‘don’t’ checklist, what to do if... etc. Think through what advice you should give. How can you reach non-members?

The evidence shows that being proactive and taking action early at workplace level is the most effective way to prevent abuses, unfair treatment and serious consequences for workers at a later stage.