MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Performance management
criticisms they will express is that the organisation is not
managed. People get away with things that they shouldn't get
away with. (Interviewee H)
Formal relations with staff, through their unions, is not however quite as
positive in some places:-
It (industrial relations) is not terribly good. Every time there is an
issue, in other regions where things happen, up here it's -- you
can't do that because of this, or that. There is no sense of, how
do we take it forward? (Interviewee K)
Performance management
Amongst issues mentioned here have been staff development and
performance management. As mentioned earlier UNISON has a
development reviewing scheme, introduced by the then General
Secretary as facilitating the linking of individual development with the
wider objectives of UNISON. These objectives, and priorities, are, as
has been seen, now formalised into a system which seeks to focus the
union on national, sectional, regional and individual objectives
formulated on a cascading basis and there have been attempts to link
this process to resource allocation.
In fact, with the exception of one manager who had not found the
scheme over helpful, UNISON managers do tend to talk about
development reviewing in a contextual way rather than about the
scheme itself. They seem to see it as part of a series of wider
processes. For example, the process of talking to staff on an individual
basis:-
And the one-to-ones, of course, hugely important, the individual
time not just the formal development reviewing process. I would
be very interested to see the results of your analyses with the
four unions because I certainly feel that Unison is streets ahead
in tackling this huge, huge issue. And we have had a lot of
problems, as you know. Compared with where we were two
years ago, it is just remarkable (Interviewee M)
Or in the context of a holistic objective setting and achieving process:-
I think we have at last got it round the right way -- draft the plan,
talk to staff through the development review process, make sure
we have the skills and resources to deliver the plan, draw up
training schedules if we need something, deliver and probably
the area that we are still weak on is to monitor and assess
where we went. (Interviewee L)
Now how you make people accountable, in my view, is that you
agree what the objectives are and what the priorities are within
the framework of the union’s objectives and priorities, what is
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