Question

You work for a nationwide transportation company and provide oversight, management, and supervision for numerous drivers. Your company’s corporate office has recently established new performance guidelines for delivery driver productivity. Many of your drivers have expressed concerns, however, as the guidelines fail to consider numerous factors that can impact delivery schedules, such as significant road construction, bad weather, and even federal limits to the number of hours someone can drive without a rest. Two of your drivers even received an automated performance deficiency report from the company for delays associated with their respective delivery routes and it appears as though others under your direct supervision may be in danger of not meeting their performance guidelines as well. What appears to be the underlying problem in this particular scenario? Is this something you can correct by working with only your subordinates, or is the issue larger than that? What corrective actions would you propose? What are some potential barricades to implementing those corrective actions?

Answer 1

Performance management system is a very critical process as it is used to evaluate the performance of an employee against the set standards for his job. Performance guidelines are quite critical, as the performance appraisal is based on the performance guidelines.

Maintaining the ear to the ground and facing the real factors that are the drivers of performance have not been taken care of. The new performance guidelines have not taken into consideration the real factors that can impact the performance and delivery of the products. This is the main problem in this scenario.

The issue is larger at hand and past performance data of the overall drivers must be analyzed to identify the different factors that have an impact on the performance. This data may vary from the driver’s performance in varying regions; hence the overall data must be considered while formulating the performance guidelines.

The implementation of the new performance guidelines can be paused for the moment and performance data deviation of drivers across region must be studied to conclude that the new guidelines have not been formulated properly and need revision.

The potential constraints or barricades in this problem can be:

• Consensus of overall board for the modification in guidelines
• Time can be a constraint as the performance study may take more time, which may delay modification and implementation of performance guidelines
• Cost involved in conducting the study as well as modification process