Four Components of Performance Management

From the top down, organizations must make safety a core value through clear policies and procedures that define acceptable, safe behaviors and unacceptable, unsafe behaviors, along with the associated consequences for violating these policies. Once you develop and communicate your policies and procedures, drivers and office employees will understand performance boundaries and know better how to drive improvement. Tracking and monitoring behaviors and providing specific corrective feedback or recognition is integral to sustaining performance standards, especially safety-related standards.

To support operations with fleet management systems, electronic logging, and the associated telemetric data, the following actions should be considered:

1. Safety Policies and Procedures: Develop comprehensive safety policies and procedures as a foundation for a structured performance assessment program that can:

a. Prioritize risky behavior events for timely coaching,

b. Highlight desirable behavior and provide recognition opportunities, and

c. Provide a balanced measure of good and bad behaviors to gauge overall driver performance and risk;

2. Training: Define when and how (hands-on, class, online training, etc.) people will be trained, and on which skills;

3. Rules and Expectations: Outline when and to what degree drivers will be disciplined, retrained, and when necessary, terminated; and

4. Rewards and Recognition: Outline when and how drivers will be recognized and rewarded for positive behaviors.

A system to integrate these four critical components of performance management is essential to properly administering and sustaining a top-notch performance management program. Again, if you document actions in spreadsheets or on paper, this can be very time consuming, and it is easy to fall behind without an electronic reminder and a repository to document all actions taken. Documentation of timely, relevant coaching and training to improve performance, eliminate unsafe behaviors, and protect your company in the event of a termination or litigation is crucial to protect your company’s brand.

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