Managing Performance At Halifax Plc

Question 1: Managing performance at Halifax plc

The email from the District Manager John West to the Customer Marketing Area Manager, Alan Clarke:

Dear Alan,

I am writing to you regarding the branch 5446 which is led by Frank Innes and not performing well over the last years. I intend to give you an overview on the issues and problems, assess the reasons for it and give you my opinion on how we could solve the problem. Just to be clear on this I would like to state that in my opinion Frank has the ability to manage branch 5446 and lead it towards a successful part of my district. It just needs some adaptations to bring him on the right way. To structure my report I process accordingly to our 'Theory Z' from the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and then make my assessment and give recommendations on every aspect.

A) The Problems we are facing at branch 5446

1. The brand manager Frank Innes

Frank has been working in the company for 18 years. Since he overtook branch 5446 three years ago he got his appraisals on a regular basis without improving the performance of the branch or reaching the targeted performance level. Recently, I found Frank on reception on a Saturday. In my opinion, the most problematic issue is that Frank is not aware of the difficulties of branch 5446 which do not arise from the bad circumstances only but from the people working in the branch including himself. Frank does not use the information he gets from the BSC and does not share the outcome with the staff. When I asked him about the reasons he told me that there was no time to talk about performance and that everybody was doing his? best. Furthermore, you can see that he is not identifying himself and the other employees as a team by always blaming the branch instead of thinking about his and his employee's attitudes.

2. The Staff development perspective

This issue is about people. If you have a look at the people working in branch 5446 you realise that you do not really have a team there. Out of the 20 people you have 8 part and 12 full time workers who Frank has to manage.

His ideal support would be his assistant manager who works full time but is still recovering from a heart attack and therefore is not able to work under any pressure and is not really a great help. You have two part time counter managers who have to support the management and look after the daily operations at the cashdesks. The first one who is working the first half of the week is underperforming, administrative driven and spends most of her time in the office. The second one who is working the second and much more busier half of the week has to compensate the bad performance of her counterpart. This contrast in management style leads to conflicting messages regarding customer services. There are three full time employees from closed down branches of Halifax. Even if they are well trained on their job they still are not integrated in the team at branch 5446.

Only 7 out of 20 responded to the staff questionnaire. If you have a closer look at the BSC you realise that they judge especially 'communication' and 'teamwork' poorly and the rest was not rated much higher.

Regarding the 'Customer focus program' and the 'Performance management and personal development' process you can not really see any effect on branch 5446 as it just do not happen in branch 5446.

My suggestions:

If you think about the human resource practises every manager has to fulfil the tasks of the whole HR process (Fenton-O'Creevy, 2003, p.11). First, the human resource flow has to be managed. Frank is responsible for the integration of the three new employees. As they are well trained it should be enough to focus on some social effort to integrate them in their new branch. Secondly, you have to think about the performance management. It is important that every employee is controlled, monitored and motivated by his supervisor and feels equally treated. I will get back to this in the section 'Internal process perspective'. Thirdly, the work design is an important task the manager has to implement and to control. Frank has to find his supervision and management style and use it. By doing this he has to influence his counter managers towards his management style. Maybe in the beginning he can use a more control-based work system and as things improve he can change to a more commitment-based work system (Fenton-O'Creevy, 2003, p.14). This leads to the fourth step 'employee involvement'. As you can see people are hardly involved in the decisions in branch 5446. As the survey shows if people take the effort to fill in the questionnaire they all show their dissatisfaction with the branch. Frank has to change this system and make it possible for all employees to influence and respond to management decisions.

Frank has to reach a situation where his employees are committed to the branch and increase their effort to 'go the extra mile'. This sort of commitment is called affective commitment (Fenton-O'Creevy (2), 2003, p.22).

If you compare our 'Performance management and personal development' process with the performance management cycle (Storey, 2003, p. 14) you can see that our system follows the scientific doctrine and the three constituent elements: setting and agreeing objectives, performance review and measuring performance. Our system is in place but Frank has to use it.

3. Internal process perspective

This perspective focuses on operations. Unfortunately, you can not really find an operation system in branch 5446 where inputs get transferred to outputs including a feedback loop (Blackmon (1), 2003, p.14). Operation is managed on a day to day basis without having a clear view on a strategy. These problems are measured in the BSC where you can see that controllable management expenditure is well over limit (140% - 150%) due to spending on overtime. The outlet key controls are far under threshold as well identifying the lack of operational management.

My suggestions:

The role of the operation manager includes designing, managing and improving the operations system. Therefore, Frank has to think about his operation system. Some suggestions for improvement