Management Meeting, Essay Example

Performance measures are necessary to keep track of the goals and objectives that the management sets for the various divisions. Without performance measures, it is difficult to assess how well or how badly a division is doing and hence there needs to be some sort of measures to determine the efficiency of the various departments. For instance, if manufacturing is set a target of say X number of units produced per month, at the end of the month, it is easy to assess whether the manufacturing department has met the target or not. If the target is not met, appropriate measures can be taken to improve the performance.

Setting performance measures is half the job done. The other part consists in assigning responsibility for meeting the targets to the different managers and supervisors. For instance, if the manufacturing department has not met the goal of producing the targeted number of units, then the supervisor or the manager in charge of the same can be asked to ramp up the production and his or her performance bonus and salary linked to the target. This would ensure that measures to improve the performance are taken seriously by the people who have been tasked with the purpose.

As mentioned above, the targets for the manufacturing department could be the number of units manufactured per month, the number of defective units found, the ratio of the number of units produced per employee, the ratio of the number of units produced per work hour (units produced divided by total number of hours worked). Similarly for the purchasing department, it can be the amount of dollars saved per number of units purchased, the percentage of savings per the total cost of purchase etc.

The managers of supervisors should react to adverse results by making the supervisors accountable for the metrics and linking their pay and perks along with promotion prospects to the metrics. In this way, the managers can ensure that the supervisors take their job seriously and in case of adverse results, demote the supervisors or even fire them from their jobs so that a clear message is sent to the staff.