Performance Management

Performance Management (PM) is more than the end of year appraisal. It’s about translating goals into results. Performance Management focuses not only on individual employees, but also on teams, programs, processes, and the organization as a whole. Effective PM helps USDA raise individual performance, foster ongoing employee and supervisor development, and increase overall organizational effectiveness.

Performance management is not just concerned only with following regulatory requirements to appraise and rate performance. Assigning ratings of record is only one part of the overall process, which includes:

PLANNING work and setting expectations
continually MONITORING performance
DEVELOPING the capacity to perform
periodically RATING performance in a summary fashion
REWARDING good performance

Employees must be aware of what they need to do to perform their jobs successfully. These expectations for employee performance are established in employee performance plans. Employee performance plans are all the written, or otherwise recorded, performance elements that set forth expected performance. A plan must include all critical elements and their performance standards.

Performance elements tell employees what they have to do, and standards tell them how well they must do it. Developing elements and standards that are understandable, measurable, attainable, fair, and challenging is vital to the effectiveness of the performance appraisal process.

Department Regulation