“The truth about Performance Management” … as revealed by a SAS survey report

Written by Aurel Brudan on June 11, 2010. Posted in Articles, Organisational performance

According with a 2007 SAS report on performance management issues, alignment is the most important benefit of performance management efforts. The report was based on survey data gathered online from 1143 respondents from cross-industry organizations across the globe (SAS, 2007). The report presents a detailed picture over the use of performance management tools, frameworks, systems and practices in the worldwide organizations.

Among the most important findings that were outlined from the survey (SAS, 2007) are:

• Performance Management practices have spread over most of the organizational functional areas. According the SAS survey findings, the operations function is most likely to drive the effort followed closely by the finance and human resources departments.

• Even though most of the performance management practices are multi-departmental, only a third of them are aligned across all departments.

• Most companies are looking for performance management initiatives that could boost their competitiveness.

• Cultural resistance, the human factor, is the primary factor to achieving performance management success.

• Organizations have problems in integrating multiple systems employed to solve problems across their structure.

• Companies who are following a sequential approach to integrating performance management practices across all organizational levels are the most likely to succeed.

• Technology plays an important role in the performance management success.

• The more a company is mature in the use of information, the more successful will be in nurturing successful performance management practices.

Additionally, a table with the most significant performance management findings from the survey can be visualized below:

Although the SAS report presents a comprehensive picture of the use of performance management practices across organizations, other surveys available for the larger public might present different results. Each study uses different research tools and attributes different rigor in data collection and interpretation. A compendium of such statistics on performance management practices can be found in the smartKPIs.com Performance Architect update 20/2020.

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