Performance Management: January is the time to consider your setting’s approach

We will all soon be stopping for a break over Christmas and one of things I inevitably end up doing over the Christmas break is to think about my business. I suspect you are the same.

Thinking about the performance of our team can often be part of that thinking. January is an excellent time of the year to think about how your team are performing and what support could be beneficial to certain team members to enhance their performance in the year ahead.

Support can take the form of training programmes, refresher training and coaching. It might mean a change of room, commencement of a qualification, formal action in the form of capability. It could be they need to be referred to occupational health to understand what assistance they need due to a health condition. Performance management is a range of options, not a one size fits all approach.

Perhaps you have team members who:

1. Don’t know from you that you have concerns over their performance. If that’s the case, why don’t they know? If you sense that they are underperforming and you have not shared that with them, have you been very fair to that employee or to yourself?
2. Know they are underperforming and you are hesitant as to what direction to take with the employee in order to address the performance concerns.
3. Have a plan for their performance but it is not being effectively managed.
4. Are currently within performance management but the performance isn’t improving and other options now need to be considered.

January is a great time to sit down with your senior team and scope out who we need to be supporting with their performance in the year ahead and what that may look like. It’s also a good time to think about your training budget, what the priorities will be and your succession plans.

Perhaps you need assistance to use Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) which are an informal approach to performance management but that can be very powerful. If so do let us know and we can share a template with you.