MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Performance management
We have four staff working on those and I will have to make sure
each of those members of staff know what their role is and how
they are going to deliver that role and provide them with support
when necessary, guidance when necessary and also, I suppose,
having then in for chats to say, well look, I'd really like things to
be done this way rather than the way it's been done in the past.
(Interviewee F)
In this Department, what we did is that we interviewed
everybody on individual basis about their roles, what they
thought they could do to make their jobs better. (Interviewee N)
As I've been here longer and got more confidence I have
developed my own management style. So we have
departmental meetings every month which almost no other
department does. We have an annual appraisal which no other
department does. And when I have a new member of staff I do a
quarterly appraisal (Interviewee L)
Performance management
As this manager suggests, CWU does not have a corporate appraisal
scheme. Performance management, therefore, is seen as problematic:-
Because we haven't got appraisal systems - there are hardly
any other organisations outside that wouldn't have had them - it
means that it is very difficult to deal with performance
(Interviewee J)
Right now, it’s almost impossible to deal with somebody who is
not performing well (Interviewee N)
One manager looks forward to IIP accreditation when:-
they will be much more conscious of the need to talk to their
staff about their development needs and more difficult issues of
performance. But none of that happens and it does cause all
sorts of difficulties (Interviewee K)
Another manager makes a loose connection between the fact that a
member of staff has their office door closed and his ability to be able to
monitor what is happening in terms of that member of staff’s work, what
used to be called ‘management by observation’:-
It is quite obvious that some of the people who are sitting behind
doors in their own offices do it because they are empire building,
they are trying to make out that the tasks they perform are so
complicated and high faluting and secure that they are
surrounded in mystery and that they have to have their own
offices for it….There is one particular individual who works in the
Finance Department and her door is constantly closed.
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