What you need to know about performance management

Employers with full-time, part-time, casual or fixed-term employees.

Why is it important?

• To ensure employees have clear targets and perform to agreed standards, both in terms of what is expected and how the results are achieved.
• Ensuring employees understand what is expected of them and deliver to agreed targets will enhance their contribution to your business, helping you to achieve your business targets. It is also more likely to result in higher productivity and motivation through increased job satisfaction.
• Managing performance in a fair and clearly defined manner can also help avoid problems later if an employee important to ensure is not meeting agreed standards.

What you need to do

Performance management is an ongoing process, with a formal review at agreed intervals during the year. The degree of formality will vary depending on your workplace, but it’s important to ensure employees clearly understand what is expected of them. This is best done through regular discussion about their performance.

There are four main steps involved:

1. planning
2. monitoring and coaching
3. reviewing performance
4. managing outcomes of performance review, either:

• managing poor performance, or
• rewarding and recognising good performance

This brochure provides checklists of the key tasks involved with each step. The Employment Relations Act 2000 requires employers to act in good faith and follow fair and reasonable processes.

This brochure cannot be viewed as a definitive set of rules. However, it provides a guide to good practice behaviour in performance management that will help you establish strong employment relationships.

More information on performance management can be found in An Employer’s Guide to Employment Relationships.

You can contact the Department of Labour with specific queries on 0800 20 90 20 or visit their website www.dol.govt.nz.