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Managers always keep thinking about motivating their team. The best way to do this to address emotional needs of employees! Asking one simple question by putting themselves in the shoes of the employees works nicely. The question is: “How do I want to feel while working?” This question alone creates the four pillars of satisfaction on job! They are:

- The employee needs to feel that he or she is a part of interacting group – COMMUNITY

- The employee must feel that he or she is heard, valued and appreciated – WORTH

- The employee must feel that he or she is being motivated and challenged in action – INSPIRATION

- They employee must feel that he or she developing and learning continuously – GROWTH

For an employee, there are two conflicting thoughts: need of fitting in and need of integration and standing out. These two aspects need to be addressed by the managers. It is very natural that if an employee feels to be left out or feels that he or she is not a part of the team, job satisfaction will never come and it is this peculiar insecurity which interferes with the performance of the employee. The managers need to make the employees feel that they are all part of a community, a community which is responsible for the growth and development of the organization. However, very often the managers simply ignore this motivational factor and try to push the employees for results. Results just don’t come on their own!

Yet another important thing is appreciation. When an employee is appreciated and when the leaders express their gratitude on a daily basis, motivation flows in because the employees feel that they are worth and that the company values them. Leaders who do not do this run at a risk of losing the attention and commitment of the team.

Increasing salary or giving performance bonus is not enough. They do motivate but that motivation is not long-lasting. An employee will love the work in two circumstances. First, he or she is an expert of the job and loves doing it and second, he or she is being appreciated for the efforts being put in for the job. This appreciation is the internal factor which negates the need of external factors like salary increment or performance bonus.

Employees must be inspired to do something or develop something, some project which will benefit the entire workflow every day, will benefit the organization as a whole and will develop confidence and knowledge. The inspiration must help the employees to motivate themselves.

Next comes the growth. If an employee doesn’t see the growth opportunities, there will be lack of motivation. But, growth will come through learning and development which is better done through workshops, trainings, personal coaching etc. In short, whatever is needed to enhance the skills of the employees so that the growth opportunities generated must be done! When an employee knows that the organization is investing in his or her personal development and that managers are supporting him/her before and after such training, the employee get motivation.

If the employees can be motivated to do work, performance boosts up and this is when performance management can be achieved completely!

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Managing business is not easy because it needs proper evaluation and unlike in the past when assembly lines was the nature of business and a simple count of units produced was a simple measure of productivity and performance, evaluation today has become more complex than ever before!

Performance appraisal in modern business is not easy because it needs alignment of the entire process and system with the goals and strategy of the whole organization. It is no longer just an administrative exercise.

Today while assessing the performance of an employee, there are several factors which are required to be considered. These factors can be summarized as follows:

- Competence of the employee with respect to the work at hand.

- The extent of effective application of the experience and skills of the employee.

- The potential of the employee to grasp new skills.

- Communication and the leadership skills of the employee.

These are only a few and there are more! This definitely is not an easy task.

No matter how difficult it is essential to perform a complete performance evaluation to ensure that the operations are effective and the goals are achieved and that every single piece of work that is being done is properly aligned with the strategies and goals of the company.

If the performance management is effective and thorough, the organization will definitely benefit from the same because the level of transparency is increased and this in turn increases the engagement of the employees.

With proper performance management, developing incentive plans become easy and this helps the achievers to make more money. This increases motivation and the top performers keep performing. This also helps the employees to mold their career better because they can understand what exactly they need to stay ahead in the company.

Yet another benefit is that you can easily create development programs and keep them aligned to the goals of the company. Programs can be area specific and they can be targeted towards the elimination of the deficiencies in any specific area and ensuring optimal performance.

It is true that performance management is really difficult and very demanding but the good thing is that there are several performance management software which just makes it easy with rich array of tools. These software do not only increase employee engagement but at the same time the administrative cost is reduced and the process of performance management is automated. These software can lead to significant ROI compared to the use of standard methods and they also ensure legal compliance because performance management becomes standardized.

As of today, there are several firms which offer solutions to performance management which integrate the following:

- Performance management.

- Compensation management.

- Goal alignment.

- Career development and,

- Succession planning.

These things cover the entire lifecycle of an employee. This gives a holistic view of the entire workforce and hence strategic decision making becomes easy. So, the essence is that you need to know the overall performance of your employees to ensure that the company is performing the way it should to achieve the goals.

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With performance management and learning converging together, it becomes very easy to find out a talent is performing and how the talent can be improved for better performance. The integration of these two, i.e. performance and learning allows the organizations to actually understand the trends of the workforce and hence, identify the gaps in the organizations and work accordingly to ensure that the business needs are addressed.

The integration of the performance management and learning can benefit both the learning group and HR of the company. Let us find out how performance management can actually help to improve learning and training initiatives.

Production of a working development plan

It has been found that the organizations generally fail in adopting development plans which are independently managed by Learning Management System but with the integration of the performance management and learning, the development plan gets directly aligned with the goal of the organization and get linked to the overall strategy of the company. Employees will pick up the prescribed learning process when they can see how development is tied directly to their merit considerations and performance evaluation.

Improving the programs for leadership development

Leadership development is the most popular of all learning initiative. When succession planning as well as career come together with performance management, zeroing down on the job functions become easy and finding individuals in need of leadership development. This in turn deals with demographic shifts, increased specialization and increasing turnover of employees which are responsible for shortage of employees. Learning group of a company can actually systematically develop any critical talent of the company.

Increasing the visibility of the learning opportunities

Learning Management System is one of the many applications in the company which the employees are supposed to use. However, to make the employees login and use it is one real challenge. However, when performance management and the learning system are integrated together, it has been found that the total number of individuals signing up for the optional courses increases! To increase the Learning Management System use, tying up the mandatory processes to the salary is an effective measure. The employees who are aspiring will actually be spending more time with competency gaps and development plans and will spend more and more time with career development.

Training Should Be Aligned To Cover Organizational Needs

There are various organizations which decide to cut down the learning and development budget whenever recession shows up. The training group of a company can change this by proving that training programs have direct relation with the strategy of the organization. When performance management is integrated with learning and development, the competency gaps can be easily identified and the areas which need focus and strategic development can be nicely focused. This will nicely justify the need of talent development programs.

Thus, for any organization, performance management plays a significant role which can manifest the need of learning and talent development, which are directly linked to the strategies of the organization.

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Nowadays, a great significance is being given to Performance Management, as corporations incorporate them in their effective management strategies. However, a heap of folks notice this process a sophisticated one, largely because of the various choices that it offers – on the organization, a selected department/branch, a product or service, and on employees, among others.

So as to attenuate this confusion, the items below can offer you a general plan of what Performance Management is all about as well as the activities that are involved in this process.

What is Performance Management?

Performance management may be a process that provides each the manager and the worker (the person being supervised) the chance to determine the shared goals that relates to the overall goals of the corporate by trying into employee performance.

Why is it vital?

Performance Management establishes an define for workers and their performance managers to assess and to come to an agreement on sure concerns and aims that are in accordance with the general structure of the company. This permits each parties to possess clear objectives that will help them in their work and in their professional growth.

Who conducts Performance Management?

Performance Management is applied by those who oversee the performance of alternative individuals – work/team leaders, supervisors, managers, directors, or department chairs.

What are the processes concerned?

Below are the phases of the Performance Management process:

1. Coming up with

This section of Performance Management method includes establishing job descriptions and identifying the worker’s essential functions as well as defining the strategic arrange/s of the department or the corporate as a whole.

Job Description

A job description is used to advertise a vacant position, that usually specifies the following:

- The particular functions, tasks, and responsibilities of the position

- The number of time needed to act upon each perform

- The qualifications needed (skills, data and talents) to perform the task

- The physical and mental necessities of the position

- Salary range for the position

- To whom the position reports

Job descriptions ought to be disclosed to the employee once she is hired. Note, but, that job descriptions are listed using words that build it troublesome to live the employee’s performance. They’re in distinction with competencies, that list the skills required in performing such tasks and are described using terms which will be measured.

Strategic Plan

In result, a strategic set up tells you three things:

- Where the corporate is heading in the approaching year/s.

- How the company is going to urge there.

- How the company can understand if it is already there or not.

Included during a strategic plan are the following:

Mission statement – the first reason why your department (or company) exists.

Goals – associated with the mission statement, they confirm the results that will advance said statement/s.

Strategic initiatives – specifies definite steps that has to be taken to accomplish each goal. It’s a dynamic method, usually examined throughout periods such as one or 2 years.

2. Developing

This section of Performance Management process includes developing performance standards, which offers a scale that describes how a specific job ought to be performed in order to meet (or exceed) expectations. They are explained to newly employed employees and are later used to evaluate work performance.

Performance standards are usually printed with the assistance of the employees who really perform the tasks or functions. There are a selection of benefits with this approach:

- The standards will be suitable to the wants of the work

- The standards will be applicable to actual work conditions

- The standards will be simply understood by the employee (and performance manager moreover)

- The standards can be acknowledged (and received) by the worker and the performance manager

Standards of performance are sometimes in the shape of ratings (one to 5, A to E) that are used by performance managers to rate the employee’s actual level of performance.

3. Monitoring

This part of the Performance Management process includes monitoring employee’s work performances and giving feedback concerning them.

As the basis of feedback, observations ought to be verifiable: they must involve noticeable and work-connected facts, events, behaviors, actions, statements, and results. Feedback of this type is termed behavioral feedback, and they assist workers improve and/or sustain good performance by precisely identifying the areas that the worker needs to enhance without judging his or her character or motives.

4. Rating

This phase includes conducting performance evaluations. This is the important facet of the Performance Management process, particularly because it’s important for performance managers to arrive at an unbiased assessment.

A performance appraisal type has the following options:

- Employee information

- Performance standards

- Rating scale

- Signatures

- Employee performance development recommendations

- Employee comments

- Employee’s Self-appraisal

Why conduct performance appraisals? It provides an chance to boost performance in the long run not only for workers, but for managers as well. Performance appraisals enable managers to acquire info from employees that will facilitate them create employee’s jobs more productive.

5. Development Coming up with

This part of the Performance Management method includes establishing plans for improved employee performance and development goals. This advances the general goal of the corporate and at the identical time will increase the quality of labor by employees by:

- Encouraging constant learning and professional growth.

- Serving to workers maintain the amount of performance that meets (and exceeds) expectations.

- Improving job - or career-connected skills and experience.

In closing, Performance Management may be a method that, when executed fairly and effectively, can improve the standard of the corporate’s workforce, raise standards, increase job satisfaction, and develop professionalism and experience that would benefit not only the staff but the complete organization as well.

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The ACCA is a global body for professional accountants and has been around for over 100 years. Its principal aim is to provide business relevant, qualifications such as the F5 paper on performance management and professional development. The organisation has a network of 83 offices worldwide and of its 140,000 members, 72% are based outside of the UK and 60% work in the corporate sector. In addition, 210,00 students registered for their exams online during the past twelve months.

From these, more than 196,000 sat exams in June, taking in total more than 384,000 papers. The results were published at the end of August and confirmed that just over 6,000 students had gone on to complete their final ACCA exams. In her response to the most recent set of results, ACCA executive director - learning and products, Calre Minchington state “In the challenging economic environment it is vital that ACCA maintains the technical excellence of its exams…We will continue to focus on ensuring students have the best possible resources to enable them to progress through ACCA’s internationally recognised exams”.

Minchington highlighted the focus on resources and support for students by further stating that “We are pleased to see that performance in the Fundamentals Paper F5, performance management continues to improve (with a pass rate of 57%) as a result of the package of support that we put in place for this paper….”. This particular paper is a good case in point, with the ACCA having taken special steps to provide F5 advice through a paper specific, microsite in order to boast exam performance.

Even though the ACCA website is crammed with industry news and information on the qualification, together with career advice and even recruitment services, the paper F5 has its own dedicated site. The microsite provides everything needed to be successful at the exam,, delivering a “one stop shop” learning experience. This ranges from an outline of the topic itself and each of the five parts of the syllabus to detailed subject explanations, self-test activities, examiner interviews and reports and articles on exam technique, it is totally comprehensive.

The ACCA’s recent paper entitled “In Pursuit of Sustainable Business” concludes, “the golden age for accountants is truly here….”. The commitment of the ACCA to learning and education is beyond doubt and professionals backed by an ACCA qualification will certainly be very well placed to make the best of this “golden age”.

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What’s the definition of an accountant? Some may say they are people who solve a problem you didn’t know you had in a way you don’t understand. In the same vein, it is often said that “accounting will prove anything, even the truth”. However, these somewhat negative comments belie the very real importance of accounting in general and performance management accounting in particular. The ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) believes value creation and business success are essential for the achievement of a sustainable economic recovery, but without the “language of business”, these are impossible goals.

The ACCA is a worldwide organisation for professional accountants, whose goal is to provide qualifications and development that is relevant for business. These seek to provide all the fundamental learning that supports management accountancy as well as the skills required for practice. The primary qualification is composed of fourteen examinations and papers. Performance management accounting, paper F5, of these, is probably most relevant and has its own microsite.

This covers concepts forming the bedrock of an innovative new wave of accountancy practice in business. For example, throughput accounting, highlights this move in direction. This approach casts light on how functions within an organisation are ever more interdependent and highlights what is a primary costing tool in performance management and decision making. In addition, the mechanics and execution of behavioural budgeting is taught. This modern way of budgeting is something of a departure from the traditional quantitative approach and provides an appreciation of how budgets can be used as objectives to motivate aspirational business performance.

The value of professional accountancy and its place at the head of the body corporate, is exemplified in research recently conducted by the ACCA and Mercer, a human resources consultancy, entitled ” Generation Y:Realising the Potential”. The survey, which is available on the ACCA website, sought to tap into the mindset of the youngest generation of accountancy professionals in the workforce. Amongst many other findings, the research confirmed that this echelon of goal orientated and clear sighted professionals “see(s) the accountancy qualification as a great step to a broader business career….”. Additionally, Chris Johnson, Mercer’s UK Head of Human Capital stated that “Value creation is key for organisations in the future. Increasingly human capital will be the primary source of competitive differentiation.”

It seems then, that after all, accountancy really is no joke

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Performance management is said to be a journey, because it is about much more than just implementing IT systems and performing a project. Performance management is as much about changes in culture and process as well.

Performance management is a four-step journey. The steps are:

- The requirement to automate processes, to drive out inefficiency and make better use of people’s time;

- The ability to drive best practices, like the use of a rolling forecast;

- To extend the use of performance management / It is very typical to start in one area of the organization, so its capability extends to other areas/;

- To advance performance management making it a self sustaining part of how you do business.

To implement performance management in your company and get started, can be very easy.

What most companies choose to do is start small and get some early wins. This way, the sooner you can get the benefits to people who will accrue, the more quickly you will get your buy-in, to do something on a larger scale.

One of the ways people get started is by adopting a predefined model, or a prebuilt solution, as a starting point for their solution. That allows people to get a better handle on the costs of that project and the amount of time it is going to take them.

Will performance management systems grow with your business?

Your performance management system will certainly support the growth of your business, whether that growth is in terms of scaling out across many users, or whether it is scaling up in terms of the volume of data you want to hold and analyze.

What many companies discover as well is that they can benefit. They get confident in the ability to deploy their solutions, by looking for a suit of prebuilt models, which demonstrates how you can connect different parts of the business. For instance: you might start in sales and see how a sales planning model could link into a set of integrated financial statements.

When will you see the benefits of using performance management?

The benefits of adopting a performance management system are often seen very early on.

In that first stage, where we start to talk about automation, people start to see benefits, particularly in terms of efficiency and in terms of how your staff is able to use their time better.

What should I do to extract the best from my performance management systems?

Companies often derive significant early benefits from the following steps:

The first step is to do so from automating - to drive out inefficiency in the company’s processes.

The second step is driving the adoption of best practices, like the use of rolling forecasts, but to really capture the value in the longer term.

The third step is extending the use of performance management in all facets of the organization. For instance, just outside the finance organization.

The fourth and final step is to advise the course of performance management, making it an integrated part of the culture within your organization.

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The unprecedented, worldwide economic downturn has led to debate about how business might drive the generation of a sustainable recovery. The ACCA, (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) is categoric in its view, that to enable the economic growth necessary, finance professionals will have to play a lead role. ACCA qualified professionals, versed in subjects such Performance Management Accounting, paper F5 of the organisations gold standard, accounting qualification, will be at the forefront of this vital process. The ACCA, founded in 1904, seeks to provide business relevant qualifications and training. These are recognised worldwide and seek to provide the student with not just the principal, background knowledge, but also, the skill to use it in the workplace.

Via its “Accountants For Business” campaign, the ACCA, aims to promote finance professionals as “true value creators across organisations”. The campaign’s key message is clear, that by utilising tried and tested business practice, accountants can be a force for moulding and helping business and rebooting economic growth. This is highlighted in the organisation’s new paper entitled “In Pursuit of Sustainable Business”. The paper, based upon extensive research of its large membership, draws a number of interesting conclusions about the current and future value of accounting. The research, in essence, shows that accountants are not the stereotyplical, grey suited, bean counters of old but are evermore involved in non-traditional activities, like problem solving, IT project management and strategic planning.

Even a cursory glance at the F5 paper, Performance Management Accounting, provides a valuable insight into just how qualified finance professionals can play such a vital role in corporate life. The Syllabus contains such practical subjects as specialist management and cost techniques, budgeting, decision-making, standard costing and variance analysis, as well as, performance measurement and control. However, this is not a dry, academic study of the theory but the means to enable the professional to actively manage and create value for the business. The ACCA, not surprisingly, supplies all the normal, support and resources needed to achieve the qualification.  And in the case of the F5 paper, the organisation even provides a subject specific microsite, a “one stop shop” for everything needed for learning and exam success.

“In Pursuit of Sustainable Business” heralds the news that “the golden age for accountants is truly here…”. Indisputably, ACCA qualified finance professionals will be very well positioned to enjoy it!

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Over the last 10 years Chief Financial Officers have been looking at how to develop the finance function in order to better support the business. As the corporate environment has become ever more complex, so has the role of the finance department with the need to deliver ever greater analysis and insight. This, when combined with the continuing need to attend to the core activities of cost efficiency for example, using performance management techniques, has seen finance departments multitasking for quite some time.

The ACCA, (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) in its Accountants For Business Report aims to work out how finance functions are engaged and what separates the competent from the world class. With regard to the latter, it determined that people working in finance divided their time as follows: 6% on management reporting, 19% on strategy and planning, 20% on budgeting and forecasting, 25% on performance improvement and finally 30% on business analysis.

In its article, “Collaborative Working: Relationships Matter In Finance” the ACCA purports that world class finance functions can support the business because their “internal reputation is very strong”. However, it is the quality of the people that it concludes is the key factor. The report contends that “If the skills, knowledge and capabilities of finance people are leveraged in the right way, the finance function becomes a valued partner to the business”.”

It is the provision of these crucial skills, knowledge and capabilities that are at the heart of the ACCA mission. One of the topic areas of the principal qualification is paper F5, performance management. It deals with both the theory and application of many of those concepts highlighted by the Report and on which accounting professionals divide their time. The syllabus is distilled into five main parts which reflect almost exactly the key functional areas within a finance department. They are, specialist cost and management accounting techniques, such as backflush accounting, decision-making, budgeting, standard costing and variance analysis and,Performance measurement and control.

The finance function is without doubt of vital importance to a business. In fact, the Report suggests that it, along with the CFO, are “…the guardians of the corporate brand, and the major interface between key stakeholders and the business”. However, as we already know, it is in fact the “finance people” who make a great finance function. Those professionals qualified via the ACCA are just that type of “finance people”.

Tags: Backflush Accounting, performance management, variance analysis
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The unprecedented, worldwide economic downturn has led to debate about how business might drive the generation of a sustainable recovery. The ACCA, (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) is categoric in its view, that to enable the economic growth necessary, finance professionals will have to play a lead role. ACCA qualified professionals, versed in subjects such Performance Management Accounting, paper F5 of the organisations gold standard, accounting qualification, will be at the forefront of this vital process. The ACCA, founded in 1904, seeks to provide business relevant qualifications and training. These are recognised worldwide and seek to provide the student with not just the principal, background knowledge, but also, the skill to use it in the workplace.

Via its “Accountants For Business” campaign, the ACCA, aims to promote finance professionals as “true value creators across organisations”. The campaign’s key message is clear, that by utilising tried and tested business practice, accountants can be a force for moulding and helping business and rebooting economic growth. This is highlighted in the organisation’s new paper entitled “In Pursuit of Sustainable Business”. The paper, based upon extensive research of its large membership, draws a number of interesting conclusions about the current and future value of accounting. The research, in essence, shows that accountants are not the stereotyplical, grey suited, bean counters of old but are evermore involved in non-traditional activities, like problem solving, IT project management and strategic planning.

Even a cursory glance at the F5 paper, Performance Management Accounting, provides a valuable insight into just how qualified finance professionals can play such a vital role in corporate life. The Syllabus contains such practical subjects as specialist management and cost techniques, budgeting, decision-making, standard costing and variance analysis, as well as, performance measurement and control. However, this is not a dry, academic study of the theory but the means to enable the professional to actively manage and create value for the business. The ACCA, not surprisingly, supplies all the normal, support and resources needed to achieve the qualification.  And in the case of the F5 paper, the organisation even provides a subject specific microsite, a “one stop shop” for everything needed for learning and exam success.

“In Pursuit of Sustainable Business” heralds the news that “the golden age for accountants is truly here…”. Indisputably, ACCA qualified finance professionals will be very well positioned to enjoy it!

Tags: performance management, performance measurement, variance analysis
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