SLEEPING ON THE JOB: Firms that do not deal with underperformers ultimately pay the price

Sir Alan Sugar may be happy to jab his finger at hapless subordinates and bark: “You’re fired”, but most public-sector bosses back away from confrontation. In fact, a survey by the human-resources consultancy Chiumento and Personnel Today said the sector was plagued by a culture of poor performance and a reluctance to tackle it.

Almost all the 800 personnel managers surveyed admitted that poor performance was an issue in their organisations ? 40 per cent of those in the public sector said it created big problems, compared with 27 per cent in the private sector.

Government and education organisations are most badly affected, with 43 per cent and 42 per cent respectively reckoning that poor performance had a serious effect. Some 39 per cent of the managers surveyed believed their organisations were tolerant of poor performance, and the figure rose to 63 per cent among government managers.

Liz McGivern, director of talent management at Chiumento, said, “What emerged was that 90 per cent of government organisations had performance-management processes in place but appeared to be the worst at dealing with poor performance.”

The Tough Love report declares that current performance-management systems are a failure because they do too little to motivate employees. It also reveals that the public sector is less likely than the private to take the ultimate step when dealing with underperformers.

While 54 per cent of IT personnel managers reported dismissing employees for incompetence, government figures showed that a mere 19 per cent of its employees were “managed out”.

The bleak findings on performance are backed by a new survey of middle managers by the Hay Group consultancy, which found that 52 per cent of private and public organisations failed to cut out “dead wood” and the public sector was the most timid in tackling performance. More than 60 per cent of civil servants claim their organisation does not deal effectively with underperformers.

That the public sector ? which includes the voluntary sector in the Tough Love report ? should fare so poorly does not surprise Keith Partington, human-resources manager for nine years for a small charity.

The “cosy, family” culture that still pervades some charities means employees get away with underperformance, said Partington, while high-performing, and often younger, staff leave because they dislike the “fuzziness” of the voluntary organisation culture and the lack of management direction. Partington admitted he shared that frustration. “I’m up against it when I try to inject good human-resources thinking,” he said. “In charities, other people tend to plug the gaps left by underperformers. You get this attitude that a person has been around a long time, that they are loyal. They value people who share the same vision and vocation.

“In the voluntary sector, performance seems to be a dirty word,” said Partington. “But I think organisations that don’t care about performance management and don’t get more professional will ultimately flop. “There’s more competition in the sector now and employees expect more in the way of staff development. It’s not enough to leave things to well-meaning people in knitted cardigans.”

If the public sector is less rigorous when it comes to performance, Greg Martin, a head teacher from London, is one of the people who are bucking the trend. Martin has relied on a stringent performance-management system to drive up standards at the 900-pupil Durand Primary, one of the top five schools in the south London borough of Lambeth.

Each year Durand recruits between 15 and 20 new teachers, straight from college. About a quarter fail to make the grade by the end of their first year and the school refuses to recommend them for qualified teacher status.

New teachers are assigned a senior staff mentor who observes their lessons, offers advice and formally appraises their performance within the first three weeks of joining the school and then once a term. If there is cause for concern, lesson observations are stepped up and in extreme cases an underperforming teacher may be asked to leave.

“It is a strict, evidence-based process,” said Martin. “We take in lesson planning, look at marked books and observe class behaviour. We have a duty to develop new teachers, but we also have a duty of care to parents and children who cannot speak up for themselves.

“You wouldn’t tolerate a doctor who didn’t have his notes or an airline pilot who didn’t know where he was flying. So why should we put up with incompetent teachers?” So what would constitute serious cause for concern? Martin cited teachers who have turned up without preparing lessons after a drunken weekend, persistent lateness and individuals temperamentally unsuited to the classroom.

“It starts with a lack of planning,” he said. “The teacher cannot get through the lesson. He or she gets into a conflict situation with the class and then attempts to blame the children.”

Martin’s tough approach has caused friction with teaching unions and the local education authority ? conflicts he was able to avoid by turning Durand into a grant-maintained school.

He remains a staunch believer in rigorous performance management, and said the results of developing young teachers from scratch, before they have had the chance to develop lazy habits in other schools, speak for themselves.

“Teachers who come through the system are confident that they have had our full support and that their hard work has been recognised,” he said. “It’s a principle we apply to everyone who works in the school, including myself.”

The Tough Love report suggested that when poorly applied, performance management was a disaster. But Durand school shows that good performance management can raise standards and staff morale.

McGivern blames bad performance management on poorly trained middle managers who follow mechanistic processes. “It tends to be a bureaucratic, tick box approach,” she said. “One has to ask whether the issue is the result of the public sector failing to invest in training managers to address performance issues.”

She sees positive performance management as a compact between the employer and the employee. “It’s very much about having an adult-to-adult relationship. Performance management needs to be less process driven, less mechanistic, and more focused on people and relationships,” she said.