Staff

Involving staff

Professional conduct

Managing individual performance

Staff supervision

Equipping staff to perform well

Responding to good performance

Dealing with poor performance

Involving staff

Engaging staff in all aspects of performance management is crucial to the development of a performance culture in social services. Social services need to ensure that when they commission services from external providers there are arrangements and systems in place to ensure ownership of performance issues on the ground. There are a number of ways in which councils should engage staff to promote a greater understanding about what the council wishes to achieve in terms of the quality of the services provided, and how staff can contribute.

• Engage staff through formal and informal processes to help shape the priorities for improvement. This can be through formal arrangements such as Joint Consultative Committees with Trades Unions who can represent the views of staff, or through less formal mechanisms such as employee surveys
  
• Engage staff in the development and monitoring of quality standards for their service
  
• Ensure effective internal communication with staff that allows staff to make an input into important decisions in social services. This might include internal newssheets, intranet-based communications and 'comment boards', and team meetings
  
• Providing staff with concise information about overall performance in their service or team in a way that encourages improvement and comparison with others. Comprehensive performance management arrangements can be developed at team level, and staff should be engaged in the design and content - Read More - Surrey County Council - Performance Management at Team Level
  
• Ensure service plans at team level are clear about priorities for development and improvement, and include stretching but achievable targets, with regular reports about achievement of those targets
  
• Ensure that staff are provided with information about complaints and compliments, and engaged in the resolution of complaints as a matter of course, not just when an individual member of staff is the subject of a complaint
  
• Ensure that there is an effective staff appraisal system in place, which also leads to the identification of training and development needs of staff - Read More
  

Professional conduct

The General Social Care Council has produced a code of practice which sets out 'Standards of Professional Conduct' relating to all social care staff who have direct contact with service users. The standards are focused on what users might expect of staff. They lay down not only the standards expected of employees, but also those that employees should expect of their employers. These standards relate to all social care staff whether employed by councils or in the independent and voluntary sectors. The standards should be made available to all employees from the time they commence their employment as social care workers - Read More

Managing individual performance

Arrangements need to be in place to appraise staff performance against key objectives and targets. The essential ingredients of an effective staff appraisal system are:

• Clear and attainable goals and targets within service plans which are capable of being translated into objectives and targets for individual members of staff
  
• Job profiles that identify the key competencies required to undertake the role. These should be both generic (such as competencies related to the promotion of diversity and equalities) and specific to the job - Read More - Lewisham Borough Council - Corporate Performance Evaluation System
  
• A balance between managerial and professional competencies which ensures the delivery of results within a framework of sound professional judgement

EXHIBIT 10 Striking a balance between managerial and professional competencies

Source: Joint Reviews

• There should be a self-assessment element which encourages staff to monitor and assess their own progress against their personal objectives and targets
  
• There should be appraisal interviews which are scheduled to take place within an agreed timeframe. This should include a formal annual appraisal meeting between the manager and member of staff, and an agreed number of interim appraisal interviews during the year
  
• The scheme should be well documented to record the decisions of the appraisal interviews, which are signed off by both the manager and member of staff
  
• Guidance notes on the operation of the scheme should be provided for both managers and staff
  
• There should be an appeals process which allows members of staff to have an appraisal by a more senior manager in the light of any disagreements between the member of staff and immediate line manager
  
• The scheme should include the identification of training and development needs that must be addressed in order to meet the competency requirements of the job or to allow the member of staff to undertake new roles in the future. This should feed into the development of the annual training and development plan. Staff should be kept informed of the outcome of that process concerning when and how their training and development needs will be met - Read More
  

Staff supervision

All staff working in personal social services should receive regular supervision of their work by their line manager. This should include administrative support staff as well as frontline practitioners.

Equipping staff to perform well

Good performance management and the development of a performance culture are best achieved with skilled and competent staff at all levels of the organisation, and in other organisations providing care services. Too frequently however, the expectations of staff are not made clear, nor do staff have the skills and knowledge to help them deliver, and know that they are delivering, good quality services. Staff can also suffer from unreasonable caseloads and poor support services.

The following need to be in place to ensure that staff are effective:

• Job specifications that are precise about the accountabilities of individual members of staff to deliver services to specified quality standards and to achieve targets. Generalised statements about 'being responsible for the performance of XX service' are not sufficiently clear. The actual role that staff are expected to play and the outcomes required should be clearly specified
  
• The competencies expected of postholders to enable them to perform the tasks should be outlined in job specifications. The roles and associated competencies of different staff groups in managing performance need to be clear and complementary. For example, managers have specific responsibilities to ensure that they manage performance within their service, while support staff (for example those people responsible for management information, data collection, handling complaints, supporting any performance management system) have to ensure that their activities provide appropriate support to managers. Managers have rights as well as responsibilities in this respect. For example, they are entitled to expect that accurate and timely information is provided for performance monitoring purposes
  
• A training programme that ensures all staff are equipped to perform their designated roles. An effective approach to training will require councils to undertake a comprehensive analysis of current and future need, decide on the level of investment to be made, and prioritise this investment to target the most important needs. Councils also need to ensure that in their contract pricing, allowance is made to enable service providers to adequately train their staff. There are a number of important issues to address in the development of an appropriate training and development strategy and associated training plan. Read More - See Good Practice Example Surrey County Council, Practice Development Centre and Good Practice Example Portsmouth City Council, Staff Development Portfolio
  
• An effective workload management system needs to be in place which provides a weighting to reflect the complexity of the cases being dealt with by staff. This ensures that staff have the time to undertake all of the work expected of them, and to mange their own caseloads effectively
  
• Adequate levels of support should be provided. This includes additional administrative support, access to computer equipment and a good and safe work environment

Responding to good performance

Managers should always ensure that good performance is recognised and there should be a clear policy statement about how the organisation will respond to good performance whether this is part of a staff appraisal system, a part of staff supervision or an ongoing dialogue between managers and staff. A positive approach to the recognition and rewarding of good performance helps to promote a positive environment of encouragement and continuous improvement.

Ways of recognising good performance include:

• Having a hierarchy of responses to recognise good through to excellent performance
  
• Encouraging constant verbal feedback to staff about good performance, whether through formal appraisal or supervision arrangements or on an informal basis
  
• Making staff aware of any compliments received from service users or carers
  
• Communicating the achievement of broader organisational goals to all staff who have contributed. This might include, for example, improved performance against key national indicators
  
• Introducing a scheme of non-financial rewards, for example extra leave
  
• Introducing a scheme of financial rewards such as performance related pay supplements or accelerated pay progression
• Ensuring commissioning and contracting arrangements encourage a similar approach by external providers of care services
  

Note: It is essential that if either non-financial or financial reward schemes are put in place, the details of the schemes are made known to all staff and their application is a transparent process. If these schemes are put in place, it is advisable to have a clear appeals process to deal with any concerns staff might have about the implementation of the schemes.

Dealing with poor performance

Councils should have a policy statement about how poor performance will be handled. This should include the identification of poor performance through appraisal interviews or staff supervision arrangements and when complaints have been made from service users or carers, other members of the public or other members of staff. The policy statement should include a reference to the council's formal disciplinary procedures and the circumstances under which it would be invoked.

In order to ensure that staff feel confident about reporting poor performance of other members of staff, and that staff who are poor performers have the confidence to raise issues which may be contributing to that poor performance, the council needs to have in place effective policies and procedures for dealing with bullying, whistle-blowing, harassment and discrimination.