Performance Management Not Just About Productivity

In today’s rapidly changing business landscape, where companies worldwide are constantly looking for new and innovative ways to create, develop and maintain a competitive edge whilst combating against the seemingly endless challenges of their external environments (Nicole, 2008). Employers are increasingly becoming aware that in order to survive and ultimately succeed in their endeavours, a greater emphasis is required to ensure the human capital available to their firms is protected, productive and performing.

Performance management includes activities that ensure that goals are consistently being met in an effective and efficient manner (Wikipedia). Performance management can focus on the performance of an organisation, a department, employee, or even the processes to build a product or service, as well as many other areas. In this report, we looked at the case of the performance management of WIS NZ’s telephone account manager. In 2007, WIS NZ started forming their management of telephone account managers, which was managed by its self with a simple system.

The productivity probably was not as good as expected, but everyone seemed to be happy about the results. In 2009, WIS NZ outsourced its telephone account management to Salesforce. Salesforce started managing WIS NZ’s telephone account managers and recruiting new member to expand the team. Not long after Salesforce took over the manager, the productivity and sales increased but started to have high staff turn over. Through management structure, motivation and engagement, we found that there were a few barriers that stopped Salesforce to carry out good practice of performance management.

At the end, we recommend that Salesforce should implement some new strategies , such as sorting out employment complex, giving more personal attention, and etc, to finally make these problems to go away. Introduction An organization needs to influence satisfiers through performance management – the “measuring, monitoring and enhancing the performance of staff” – using a range of human resources management (HRM) tools such as: job descriptions, supervision, performance appraisals, continuous education, rewards and career development (Dieleman et al. , 2006).

Regardless of the size of the firm, performance management is a critical issue. From a New Zealand business perspective, this is further compounded by trends such as the aging workforce, skills shortages, increased access to information, acceptance and perception of social networking, the advances in communication technology, the volatility of the New Zealand dollar, amongst others. In this report, we will look at WIS NZ, the largest and leading industrial distribution company. WIS NZ currently experienced a change on management and performance management of telephone account manager team.

We will analyse the difference of previous and current performance managements, and give some recommendations, in relation to its disadvantages. Performance Management Wesfarmers background Wesfarmers Industrial and Safety NZ Limited (WIS NZ) is New Zealand’s largest and leading industrial distribution company. The company operates through seven independent businesses: NZ Safety, Blackwoods Paykels/Protector Safety, Packaging House, Expresspak, PHL Medical, Safety Source and APC Techsafe.

In 2007, WIS NZ has all telephone account managers, NZ Safety, Blackwoods Paykels/Protector Safety and Packaging House, working at same premises and being managed by different team leaders. There are three teams with fourteen members and three team leaders in total. In 2009, WIS NZ outsourced the entire operation to Salesforce. Any WIS NZ employees will remain the employment under WIS NZ, but managed by Salesforce. Any further required crew will be recruited by Salesforce and become Salesforce’s staff.

WIS NZ staff averagely have served the company for over five years, and more than half left within six month since Salesforce took over the management. The team expanded to twenty five members and more than 60% are Salesforce employees now. WIS NZ performance management Fourteen telephone account managers were managed by Telephone Sales Manager. At the time, there were two simple main performance indications, contacts per day and sales per month, used to measure the performance of Telephone Account Managers. The KPIS cover many areas, including sales, projects, engagement, contribution, communication, relationships, complaints, and etc.

Incentives were based on sales of quarter and year. Staff could get 10% of exceeding amount of target as the quarterly bonus, and 20% of exceeding amount of target as the yearly bounces. Employees were knee, also encouraged by company and bonus structure, to build up a long-term relationship with customers. Telephone Account Managers usually seek medium-long term projects to grow customers in a term of one to two years, or even longer. Staff saw themselves as account managers, instead of salesperson, who usually acted as a health and safety expert to give professional advices to help customers select proper products.

Telephone Sales Manager conducted a bio-annual performance review to discuss the performance of the employees, give advices on how to improve, identify the needs and interest of the employee and help achieve them. Managers also tailored their coaching or “favours” to employees’ personal interests and needs. Salesforce performance management In 2009, since Salesforce took over the operation, Salesforce brought along their own performance management system, incentive structure and performance review.

Instead of simple contacts and sales, a more complex structure of indicates was introduced, sale of categories of products, conversation rate, monthly sale, growth, and etc. Instead of bi-annual performance review, Salesforce conducts monthly review and one on one meeting fortnightly. Also the new bonus now is monthly, and based on the growth of same month in previous year instead of setting up a target. The incentive is much higher, but hard to achieve. Staff will get up to $1,000 per month if he or she achieves 20% margin growth.

A lot new territories created and started developing, and a lot of new staff employed and trained. Currently, only one third of team is still under the employment of WIS NZ. Salesforce also brought their CRM system(Customer Relationship Management software), which dramatically increases the effectiveness and efficiency, also is easy for managers to measure performance of staff. Unfortunately, staff retention dropped dramatically. Many new crew left in six months, some did not even last three month. Recruiting and training become a regular task, customer service become inconsistent.