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Measure Meant

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So - How do you measure your Service Performance?

Written by Ray Sawyer-James

Best Practice Article Published in Property People 8th May 2003 (p7)

Supporting People requires providers to establish clear performance indicators (PI’s) in order to demonstrate that contract requirements are being fulfilled.  Increasingly, organisations are setting up frameworks in order to measure their overall performance and PI’s as to how well the agreed service is being delivered and also to identify if progress to future goals is being maintained.  However, we often measure far too much and get far too little in the way of results because we are not clear from the outset about exactly what it is we are looking to achieve or need to define.

Performance Management

An effective system that can draw out accurate and relevant information linked to PI’s can be used as a principal driver in the transformation into service-led, customer-facing organisations.  Feedback from relevant data makes learning possible and stimulates innovation and creativity to provide better services to the customer.  The result is a more open and honest management style focused on direction and outcome, and a more active participation by all staff because they have the information, tools and techniques that enable success.

Where are you today?

Performance implies achievement, so unless you can measure how you are getting on you will never know if you are doing well enough.  Management implies a process through which you can act to make something happen.  Do the things you measure allow you to:

	Define how good your business is?
	Provide information to set objectives / stretch goals?
	Accurately show progress / probability of success?
	Identify root causes of barriers?
	Focus the organisation on improvement needs?
	Drive behaviour and actions towards objectives?
	Align work with value?
	Involve everyone?
	Identify exactly what are you measuring?

Achievement is not a financial matter alone.  A journey is not measured purely by speed but also by safety, timeliness, comfort and fuel efficiency.  Good management looks for a multi-dimensional view of the health and success of its organisation and sets up a coherent framework of performance indicators.

Strategic alignment

In modern performance management a crucial factor is the realisation that the principal responsibility of every manager is that they must seek improvement constantly.  Overseeing business as usual is not acceptable because the world around is moving ahead.  Business as usual means business in decline.

Managing performance means managing towards the change you are agreed on and have deployed, ensuring that you are still on course and that your strategies are succeeding.  The key to this lies in determining what you can measure that will point to achievement with your strategies and in focussing action so that it delivers the measurable outcomes expected from the strategies.

Process maturity

Much can be measured, but unless the organisation structures its measures around the maturity of its key processes and management systems and can demonstrate sufficient cultural readiness to use results properly then the effects can be divisive - "damned lies and statistics" will get in the way of judgement.

SHN has developed a structured model to monitor and identify the organisation's level of progress towards set PI’s and the results can be used as evidence for the Supporting People KPI & SPI’s.  SHN can also advise on appropriate methods as to how this model can be deployed within your organisation in such a way that everyone is prepared to take ownership of it.