As much of Britain slogged back to work in the snow last week, how many of us were labouring under the burden of the New Year’s resolution? Whether it’s to shed the Christmas pounds, give up smoking or start a whole new life, is a dreary day in January really the time to make a start?
And for how many does that list of resolutions include “get a new job”? Well quite a few probably given the response to the CIPD Employee outlook survey last quarter when a quarter of employees said they were looking for a new job.
But is that search motivated by a real desire for a new challenge or new horizons or to escape from the same old problems, the manager who never listens, the requests for training that keep getting turned down, the promises of promotion that never materialise? Worse, the talent that goes unrecognised and the potential that remains untapped.
So given that new jobs are still pretty scarce, even if the snow is now bigger news than the latest redundancy figures, are most of these resolutions set up for a fall?
Maybe the answer is that employers ought to be setting a few resolutions of their own. To make the best of the talent available to them, to make sure they get the best return possible for their investment in development and to make sure people are motivated to innovate and help their organisation perform its way out of the recession rather than saving their energy for the job search.
David MacLeod in his recent review of employee engagement wrote:
“..at its core is a blindingly obvious but nevertheless often overlooked truth. If it is how the workforce performs that determines to a large extent whether companies or organisations succeed, then whether or not the workforce is positively encouraged to perform at its best should be a prime consideration for every leader and manager, and be placed at the heart of business strategy.”
So maybe the resolution for 2010 should be to put this into practice before the jobs market picks up and the talent starts walking to pastures where their contribution will be better recognised.
Dear Angela
I work for the University of Wales Institute Cardiff (UWIC) in Human Resources and have recently completed my PhD which was entitled “Towards a Framework for Performance Management in a Higher Education Institution”.
This was a piece of action research which was carried out within the organisation to help address funding body requirements that Welsh Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s) - in a similar fashion to English and Scottish HEIs - take action to tackle poor performance through the development of their HR strategies.
The research explored the views of managers at three different levels, in relation to their management of performance and culminated in the development of a Practical Model and Framework for the Effective Management of Performance in a HEI.
I am of course interested in progressing this research in some way - particularly as employee engagement/performance management (MacLeod) seems to be such a topical area! Although the model I developed was primarily intended for the HE sector, it is in essence a practical common sense business/performance management model (developed from research across the board) which can easily be adapted to suit any sector or business.
I have a short report which summarises the research and illustrates the performance management framework and model which I would be very happy to share with you if you think it might be something that the CIPD could utilise?
I look forward to hearing from you
Yours sincerely, Allison O’Reilly, FCIPD – Aoreilly@uwic.ac.uk
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