Performance management process design & implementation

In order to drive improved business performance through greater individual accountability, Australia Post needed to make significant enhancements to its current performance management framework and related processes. In particular, the organisation was looking to inject greater rigour, transparency and consistency into KPI setting, improve the consistency and effectiveness of performance conversations between managers and staff and to better align performance and reward.

Curve Group were engaged to play a key role in the design and phased implementation of a new enterprise-wide performance management framework and supporting processes. This involved establishing a national project team comprising members of the People & Culture (P&C) community to provide ongoing design input and execution support across five streams of work – ‘Capability’, ‘System’, ‘Process’, ‘Governance & Change Management’ and ‘Communications’.

To generate ownership and buy-in for the changes, Curve Group worked in close partnership with the internal Learning & Development team to design and rollout a series of capability building programs to up-skill business leaders, line managers and members of the P&C community (including the HR Centres of Excellence and embedded HR Business Partners) to effectively implement the new performance management process.

This was supported through the design of a communications plan and ongoing communications materials to ensure the business received timely and appropriate messaging regarding the initiative, reinforced through the selection of a group of “change champions” to provide “on the ground” implementation support. These change champions helped to ensure that the new performance management process was successfully integrated both within specific business units and across the enterprise overall.

Lastly, Curve Group provided targeted design, coordination and implementation support with goal setting and goal cascade sessions, performance scorecard completion, mid and end of year performance reviews and performance calibration sessions.

Several performance cycles down the track, Australia Post  has seen significant improvements across the areas they were seeking to shift including

• A significant increase in performance conversations, with more than 75% of people having more than 4 performance conversations/year
• High levels of acceptance and adherence to the new process
• Improved goal setting and cascade process
• A shift in the performance “curve” moving towards a normal distribution, given the introduction of performance calibration based on goals achieved and behavioural evidence
• Engagement results indicate an 8% increase in the focus area of “performance management” since the last say2action survey.