Successful Performance Management: Effective Strategy, Best Practice and Key Skills (revised and updated 2016 edition)

Performance management or appraisal systems are the main approach used by employers for improving organisational performance, determining pay bonuses and for reviewing, planning and developing the performance and potential of individuals and teams at work. In Ireland, more than eight out of ten organisations use a formal system of performance management.

In this comprehensive study, Gerry McMahon makes the case for the value of performance management, describes in detail the many different formal systems in use, assesses the advantages and disadvantages of each, and provides both an employer and employee perspective.

With an international recession forcing employers to make the most of their lot, the issue of employee performance has come under the spotlight again. With Ireland suffering more than most from the economic downturn, it is a concern that only last year the OECD chided Irish managers for not taking such systems seriously and using them as "little more than a paper exercise". Successful Performance Management calls into question the OECD's assertion, arguing that such systems have much merit and are integral to organisational success.