City of Lakeland Implements Performance Management
Software on City-Wide Basis

 
Location Lakeland, FL
Company Size: 1,870 Employees
Service: Municipal government agency providing city services to central Florida population of 80,000. Lakeland's electric department is dealing with utility industry deregulation issues.
Contact: Jane Gschwender, Training Coordinator

Located between Tampa and Orlando, the City of Lakeland (population 80,000) employs nearly 2,000 people. Five years ago, in response to the pending deregulation of utility services, the City's Electric & Water Department recognized the need to improve efficiency, including employee performance.

"In an era when government agencies are increasingly expected to achieve the levels of efficiency and effectiveness traditionally associated with the private sector, Performance Now helps us to make the best use of our human resources."

Training Officer Ed Hacker brought together a group of managers and supervisors across city departments to examine the city's performance appraisal process. Their goal was to establish a new system that could help all supervisors more effectively give feedback - and help lead Electric & Water into the new age of deregulation and competition.

PREVIOUS SYSTEM LACKED PERFORMANCE STANDARDS

The group's first task was to identify obstacles to effective performance. Topping the group's list were (1) a lack of performance standards, (2) rater biases and inconsistency, and (3) a lack of understanding or agreement among supervisors and managers about the performance appraisal process.

With a clear vision of where they needed to improve, the group began searching for a better system. After comparing a number of software systems, Administaff's Performance Now Enterprise Edition emerged as the superior candidate. "One of the most appealing features of Performance Now was its goal setting function," Hacker says. "We wanted to be able to tie individual goals to the goals of the organization - to align the work of employees with our overall mission."

Another feature that appealed to the group was the narrative statements that support the ratings the manager selects. Too many managers had been giving employees higher ratings than their actual performance indicated - and when poorly performing employees are told they're performing adequately, there's little incentive for them to improve.

"With Performance Now," Hacker explains, "managers are forced to be more realistic. For each rating level, there's a sentence you can read, so the managers can ask themselves if the statement really fits the particular individual's performance."

MANAGING PERFORMANCE IN A RAPIDLY CHANGING WORKPLACE

By 1998, three departments in the City of Lakeland were successfully using Performance Now, and interest began to grow among managers in other departments. Jane Gschwender, who managers training and organizational development for the City, conducted a human resource needs assessment that surveyed all City department heads, including the Chief of Police and Fire Chief.

The survey confirmed a hot issue among the City's management - employee performance in a rapidly changing workplace. What should good performance look like in city government today? Management wanted to set consistent standards for acceptable performance. They also wanted to improve the quality of feedback, and develop more opportunities for performance improvement.

To help meet the identified needs, the City of Lakeland decided to implement Performance Now on a city-wide basis. And by integrating Administaff's three public sector competency modules into their system (for fire departments, law enforcement, and local government), the City can ensure that all employees are evaluated on criteria that is relevant to the work they perform.

PERFORMANCE NOW IMPROVES QUALITY OF FEEDBACK

Based on the results of the three pilot departments, Gschwender expects improvement in a number of city-wide performance management problems, especially in the quality of the written portions of performance appraisals. "Many supervisors would only write a word or two in the 'Comments' section of the evaluation," says Gschwender, "while others wrote comments that contained errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar. With Performance Now, you're more likely to come out with language that is clear, correct, and easy to understand."

"Employees have commented over and over that the feedback they get through their Performance Now evaluations is the best feedback they've ever gotten."

The City has already seen improvement in the tendency of managers to overrate employee performance. "But even though ratings come out lower in some instances," Gschwender explains, "the employees have commented over and over that the feedback they get through their Performance Now evaluations is the best feedback they've ever gotten."

One of the challenges Gschwender faces is the lack of computer literacy among some of the City's supervisors. "When you have people who are digging ditches and laying pipes all day, they may not be using a computer as part of their job." A short-term solution may be to have support staff assist the supervisors who are unfamiliar with computers. "I'm hoping that even those supervisors who don't use a computer now will eventually be logging on at least once a day. At that time, they could use the day-to-day performance management features of the program, such as setting goals and making entries in the employee log."

Ultimately, Gschwender expects that the benefits Performance Now provides - clear, consistent performance standards; increased communication; and a smoother performance management process - will make a positive impact on employee performance throughout the City. Says Gschwender, "In an era when government agencies are increasingly expected to achieve the levels of efficiency and effectiveness traditionally associated with the private sector, Performance Now helps us to make the best use of our human resources."

 
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