Missing Performance indicators and targets

You know that feeling when you have missed your performance indicators and targets! Regular employee reviews add to the pressure. And all that box filling and ticking! You are late putting the latest changes to your business plan, and a performance improvement plan that just adds to work load.  Your boss also wants to know the reasons why your numbers were down for the last quarter.

It’s getting harder each time. The last management review removed three more your colleagues.  And you inherited two extra reports to go with the other six in your team. The performance indicators and targets that had been set for the new guys become added to yours.  You also naturally inherit the outstanding objectives those that did not survive the last jobs cull.

Everyone seems to be trying really hard, but according to the latest guidance from HR you need to score three of the team as underperforming. This means that missing out on bonus! Guess what, you will have to fill in a detailed performance improvement plan and show how they have missed their performance indicators and targets. You will also be monitoring all this on a monthly basis.

If you fail to do this then the boss will put you on a performance improvement plan because you failed to deliver your performance indicators and targets! So, you are drowning in paperwork; well maybe a lie, as some of it is paperless. A new online web portal has been introduced to update performance metrics each week. Living the dream!

Focusing on the wrong performance indicators

You get the picture! Honestly, spending more time staring at the computer screen updating forms and scorecards than actually trying to be your team’s leaders is a challenge we all face. The story goes on..

End of year reviews of performance indicators and targets are all based on the revised competency framework, revised again this year by HR. Everything needs to link to the business plan targets for the team. Your targets are linked to the team and to the boss, and so on.  It’s a maze. How does anyone really understand what it all means?  The online guidance and video blogs don’t help much with explaining what we need to know.  You just need someone to talk to in person, but the HR team now operate out of a contact centre 400 miles away.

So, the game at the end of the year is to come up with smart words to show how what we ended up achieving looks as it fits with the original plan. I am sure that you have become pretty skilled at making things look ok. In truth what actually gets done and what we put into the plans are very different. As long as the right boxes are filled in and you can come up with a sensible reason why you missed the target you can usually get away with it. What a way to run a business!

Playing the game to achieve a performance target

I sometimes wonder whether everyone is up to the same trick? Is the MD also spinning the numbers with the board? They must be! As long as the board is happy then we live to breathe another day.

As for this year’s business plan, well everyone else seems to be rolling forward last years ideas and adding a bit at the margin on performance indicators and targets. You have to do it to survive, but it feels like cloud cuckoo land to me, does it to you? It feels more and more like a losing streak when betting on the horses. A few colleagues have let all this get to them and it has started to impact their home lives. Causing friction and impacting relationships within a family unit. There is no psychological safety in a workplace that ha seen a dramatic change in culture. 

A culture of presenteeism means that people have to be seen to be at work crunching the numbers. You may have colleagues who are off with stress, and you might wonder if some will ever come back. You might find this factsheet helpful Performance indicators and targets

Performance Targets and behaviour

IIt has happened to me too! I have had to sit down with one of my reports and talk to them about their performance improvement plan for the month. These conversations are never easy are they.  It was a difficult conversation,  because they were very good at the job and brought in great results; in fact they were ahead of target. The problem was that they were ahead on the wrong target! Madness I know!

Let me explain a bit further – the powers that be had decided that we needed to review ten clients a day, and this was the target that we were measured on.  Well, my colleague has only been hitting around five a day for the last three months, so things are not looking too good for them. The problem was that they has actually converted more reviews into new business than any other member of the team, but the other team members regular hit their target for reviews. How can I explain that one as poor performance?

The business needed new business to survive, but the target was the number of completed reviews.

Leaders did not realize the implications for the business.  Ironically, their bonuses were affected by the outcome of reviews.

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