CEEME Community: METRO&E Performance Management

Hi, all –
Welcome to everyone and especially to all of the newcomers to this community of practice!

Two comments made on the CEEME site in the past month refer to performance management. How can you be sure that your staff – at all levels and in all functions – are collecting, reporting, analyzing and using data in a timely and effective manner? This is both a quality control function and a human resource discipline that can help you achieve and exceed your goals.

Let’s start out by asking: How do you feel when you are held to standards and you achieve or exceed them? Do you have a sense of accomplishment – a certain satisfaction? On the other hand, how do you feel when you don’t achieve the standards set for or with you? Does it bring changes in your behavior/productivity? Your team members can guess who on the team is making the most contribution to the success of the team and those who are not. How would you like to be perceived and how can you change a negative perception?

If you are the supervisor, how can you improve the M&E performance of your team – there is always something that can be improved? The first step is to ensure that the M&E functions that you expect your staff to complete are clearly outlined in their position descriptions. This way there is no doubt what they are responsible for and will be held accountable for accomplishing.

What might also be missing is a performance review process based on indicators and including some incentives for achieving results. This can be significantly more difficult depending on the human resources system in which you work. In some countries or in some sectors (government, CSO, academic, etc.) one or more of the following circumstances can apply:

• There is no formal review process prescribed.
• The standards for performance are vague and not tailored to the individual functions (especially for M&mi).
• Raises and other incentives do not reflect performance – neither more for staff members with good performance nor less for those with poor performance.
• Since there are many instances were data capture and reporting are done by staff members who are primarily responsible for other important tasks, such as service delivery, their supervisors may be more focused on assessing performance in the other areas and not in the area of M&mi.

While these are all big issues, many of them are challenges that you and your team can overcome. Please join us on the Forum and tell us what process your organization uses for M&E performance management and/or what approaches you suggest for overcoming these and other performance management challenges.

Let your voice be heard: Share your experiences in Forum discussion.