HR Leadership

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will do” – and the corollary: if everyone chooses their own priorities, it will be a matter of luck if any of those are congruent with the corporate goals.

But too many performance management systems have failed because they have been top-down, HR-driven, or have lacked any sense of ownership at all and become no more than a paper exercise unrelated to people’s real work.

This is a leadership task, to achieve buy-in to develop and to operate systems which actually help individuals to understand their priorities and to align these correctly. This requires three components: first - an absolute commitment from the top that this system will work. Second - a system designed to meet the needs of the organisation and the people using it.

And finally - effective line management leadership to make it happen. The HR role might be that of 'champion' - to push proper use of the system, but the 'ownership' needs to be with the people using ths system.

HR should also analyse training needs identified in the process and match the training provision to those.