The Results-Oriented Performance Culture system focuses on having a diverse, results-oriented, high-performing workforce, as well as a performance management system that effectively plans, monitors, develops, rates, and rewards employee performance.
What Does This Mean To You As A Senior Leader?
It is up to you to ensure that your staff understands what success looks like. To do so, you have to understand where you are now, where you need to be in the next year, and where you will be in the future. Your imperative is to have a clear vision and communicate the organizational goals and criteria for success. You will need to link your organization's goals with the agency goals, and cascade them throughout your organization.
Senior leaders can help build an agency's performance culture from the top down. Frequent communication and transparency around executive objectives and progress toward agency goals can serve as a foundation for a culture of open feedback. Leaders are also in a position to be role models for embracing continuous learning, work-life flexibility, and diversity initiatives.
Actions/Decisions For Senior Leaders
Review Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey trends to enhance employee engagement and develop action plans that address identified opportunity areas.
Establish a framework, identify progressive solutions, and set the example by projecting and encouraging engagement at all levels of the organization.
Empower managers to own program performance by delegating decisions and actions to appropriate levels within the organization.
Plan
- Start with a holistic view of the agency's performance culture. Each focus area contributes to the overall culture, and improvements or challenges in one focus area can impact the others. Senior leaders should have a high level perspective of where the workforce stands on engagement, performance management, work-life issues, diversity and inclusion, and labor management relationships.
- Plan for employee rewards. If available, ensure there is a budget for monetary performance awards and plan for how the awards will be allocated. However, rewarding outstanding performance should be a priority even in face of budgetary constraints. At a minimum, leadership needs to set aside time to identify and recognize top performers for their contributions.
- Use data-driven methods to identify specific priorities for improving the agency's performance culture. When the top priorities have been identified, leadership and operational employees should collaborate to design an action plan. The plan should identify specific goals and methods for completion, as well as identifying responsible parties for each item/initiative.
The following are a few examples of specific Performance Culture focus areas and the policy guidance that guides them:
Labor/Management Partnerships
In 2009, President Obama issued Executive Order 13522, "Creating Labor Management Forums to Improve Delivery of Government Services". This EO is an excellent source of information for establishing labor management forums within agencies, which can in turn drive the improvement of the delivery of products and services to the public, as well as cut costs and advance employee interests.
Work-Life
Recent legislative actions direct the Federal Government as an employer to promote various aspects of a Work-life portfolio. For example, the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly called the Affordable Care Act, are key legislative actions that include provisions for employer support of flexibility, well-being, health promotion and disease prevention. OPM's Government-wide and Performance Culture group maintains a number of resources to help senior leadership plan for a more robust Work-Life presence within agencies. Samples include:
- Telework.gov provides guidance and information for leadership, managers and employees.
- Work-Life.gov provides a wealth of information to help develop and improve your agency's Work-Life programs.
- Information on the OPM website detailing policies for various Work-Life programs, including provisions of the PPACA requiring employers to support nursing mothers return to work[j1]. OPM is a strong advocate for multiple Work-Life initiatives and maintains a Government-wide leadership position in supporting and maintaining Work-Life programs.
Diversity and Inclusion
Executive Order 13583 established a coordinated Diversity and Inclusion program in 2011. It also incorporates and supports existing policies, including the Equal Pay effort, and the Executive Orders on Asian American and Pacific Islanders, Hispanic Employment and Hiring People with Disabilities.
Implement
- Include performance management as a standing agenda item for your staff meetings. Addressing performance management regularly and stressing its importance as an ongoing and continuous activity will help ensure supervisors and managers are offering regular feedback and identifying developmental needs to drive improvement in employee performance.
- Continually communicate. The agency has a system and a process in place to facilitate the sharing of information and ideas with all employees. This includes soliciting employee feedback and encouraging direct involvement so all members of the organization are playing a role in successfully executing the mission.
- Motivate all levels of staff. Motivation is a valuable facet of implementation. Leadership should always seek to encourage employees, exposing them to new challenges while also engendering trust and confidence and providing opportunities to learn, succeed, and develop.
- Celebrate successes. The organization takes steps to recognize individual and team achievements, which contributes either to the achievement of specific organizational goals, or to the overall improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of the Federal workforce.
- Delegate down to the lowest level. Delegation of responsibility will allow employees at all levels to be more interested and engaged in their positions, which in turn makes them more likely to grow and become better and more productive members of the organization.
- Reward employees. Providing employees and teams a tangible incentive is a crucial aspect of building a Performance Culture. It is equally important to communicate the impact that employee actions can have on the broader, organizational scale. Senior leaders have a responsibility to draw a clear connection between performance expectations and the agency mission.
- Stay focused on the link between performance expectations and outcomes. Ensuring that this connection is communicated and understood across the organization will enable all employees to focus their efforts on those activities that are most important to mission accomplishment.
- Stay informed about Work-Life issues. Fully engage in assessments of how Work-Life is used and how it is serving the agency. Benchmark your own practices against those of other agencies and stay informed about new Work-Life and any related policies. Engage in strategic assessment of how Work-Life programs can be incorporated into agency plans to support mission and strategy. Given their strategic importance, senior leaders should participate in the development of Work-Life offerings and programs to ensure that they support strategic goals in the manner anticipated.
The following are some focus area-specific approaches to consider for implementation:
Labor/Management Partnerships
The National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations was created by EO 13522 and regularly issues guidance and recommendations on labor/management relations and agency forums.
Work-Life
Experts in OPM's Government-wide Work-Life Performance Culture advocate following best practices for implementing or advancing any Work-Life program.
- Make a strong business case. Demonstrate how wellness, EAP, telework, dependent care or other programs will support agency mission and strategy. Incorporate Work-Life measures among indicators of success for the agency.
- Identify and engage stakeholders' key to the success of the Work-Life program (e.g., managers, employees). Understand the needs of stakeholders fully and address those in the planning of Work-Life programs.
- Conduct action planning for any Work-Life program initiative. Establish program goals aligned with agency strategy, identify necessary resources and ensure their availability, and identify timeframes and responsible parties for carrying out the Work-Life program implementation.
- Pilot programs in smaller groups prior to making them available to all employees. Engage in ongoing evaluation of the pilot to make certain any potential problems are identified and addressed prior to rolling out the new and/or improved program.
- Ensure that the competencies necessary to make the program a success exist in the agency. Provide interactive training for prospective employee participants and managers.
- Evaluate on an ongoing basis to establish goal achievement and to identify any potential problems early enough to address them.
Diversity and Inclusion
Coordinate outreach and recruiting efforts through the agency's Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
Evaluate
There are also a variety of resources available to assess the effectiveness of the efforts put into place to develop, improve and sustain a high performance culture within an organization. For example:
Labor/Management Partnerships
The National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations regularly disseminates guidance and recommendations for agency implementation and evaluation. The results of agency forums (and other labor/management initiatives) are tracked and compiled into regular reports.
Work-Life
- Recognizing that the success of Work-Life programs hinges on evaluation, OPM provides ongoing training and guidance to agencies on goal setting and evaluation of Work-Life programs.
- Agencies are encouraged to use the results of evaluation to promote and improve programs, through development of business cases and calculations of return on investment for implemented programs. Evaluations of Work-Life programs are important to facilitate intra- and interagency learning about best practices for program implementation and to support the accountability
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What Is Available To Help Facilitate Leadership In The Completion Of These Activities And Decisions?
There are a variety of items available to help facilitate leadership in the completion of decisions and activities relating to Performance Culture.
Agency Mission
The agency mission statement serves as the conduit for all activities within a given organization. All strategic plans, annual performance plans, human capital plans, and individual performance plans, to name a few, should all link directly back to the mission of the agency. Agency mission and vision statements are available on their respective websites.
Agency Strategic Plan
An agency's Strategic Plan should provide the context for decisions about performance goals, priorities, and budget planning, and should provide the framework for the detail provided in agency annual plans and reports. An agency's strategic plan is available on its website.
Performance Management Plan, System and Policies
Performance management is the systematic process by which an agency involves its employees, as individuals and members of a group, in improving organizational effectiveness in the accomplishment of agency mission and goals. Employee performance management includes:
- Planning work and setting expectations
- Continually monitoring performance
- Developing the capacity to perform
- Periodically rating performance in a summary fashion
Rewarding good performance.
Awards Policies and Plans
Agencies have the authority to provide awards to employees in a variety of forms, including monetary awards, special act awards, performance awards, and granting time-off subject to the availability of funding.
Individual Development Plans (IDPs)
The IDP helps identify employee's career development goals and the means for achieving them. Typically, the employee will complete an IDP on an annual basis and can include training (free or fee based), online learning (through an online learning management system), development opportunities and assignments, mentoring, reading and attending conferences and college courses.
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