User Submitted!
Home > Articles
49

Australians = Lousy Managers?

Posted 134 weeks, 4 days ago by Anthony Meaney.

Crocodile_dundeeBy Anthony J.

Some damning information from a recent study published by The Performance Management Institute of Australia.

The study found Australian companies severely lack performance management skills:

Most Australian organisations don't understand what top performance means in relation to their employees.

Performance data is used in only 11.8% of organisations to helpidentify top performers. Also, only 20.6% of organisations usePerformance data for identifying potential successors. Skills andexperience may still be the overriding factors in determining staffperformance, with little consideration given to past Performance data.

Only 38.2% of businesses use Performance data during the recruitment selection process.

These results appear to debunk the talent shortage myth. Australianorganisations are their own worst enemies when it comes to identifyingand therefore retaining their top people and on implementing highimpact succession plans.

So is this unique to Australia or are companies universally poor at identifying top talent? My experience on this one is mixed. I have had some clients who were absolutely brilliant at this and some who were lousy.

I would be interested in hearing your thoughts and opinions on this one either from a recruiter perspective or from an employee perspective.
 

Anthony Meaney's blog

Canadian Headhunter
Wed, 12/21/2005 - 10:17pm

What does this mean?

"Only 38.2% of businesses use Performance data during the recruitment selection process."

Does it pertain to internal promotions? In which case the company would have easy access to such records?

Or are you recommending that they ask candidates to bring past evaluations at other companies with them?

Chris Scruggs
Wed, 12/21/2005 - 10:52pm

I can not speak for Australian firms, but here in the States, many companies in many industries still struggle with performance management. Within the Architectural and Engineering industry I serve, there is poor understanding of the use of performance data during the hiring process. This is largely because there has been little formalized thought as to, withing their business, what makes a top performer.

I am surprised at the data which suggests that more than 3 times the number of companies use performance data for hires, than companies who actually use perforamce data to identify top performers. My experience tends to support the opposite.

Michael Specht
Wed, 12/21/2005 - 11:32pm

I am about to launch on a 9 hour drive back to Sydney in an hour but I could not resist!

Without reading the underlying research data it is very hard to see really what this report is saying. They interviewed 140 managers but do not say from which industries. Australia has portions of the workforce that are still heavily unionised and yes in these industries I could believe the results. The other factor not indicated in the research is the organisation size, Australia has a vast number of small enterprises (under 20 employees) and again these organisation would probably fit the results.

I doubt that these figures reflect many of Australia's top 100 employers but you never know. From experience I would heavily question the results when it comes to many of the larger employers in Australia as this is not the case.

I do think that there is some truth behind them regardless of the organisation demographic. HR has huge opportunities within Australia. We still have many HR managers who grow out of personnel who just like pushing forms around. This year the Australian Human Resource Institute had HR recognised as a profession, is introducing certification for their members and working very hard with industry, government and universities to improve the quality of HR.

(Note to self, review survey in more detail in 2006.)

Shally
Thu, 12/22/2005 - 11:50pm

I dissagree. My boss is ozzie and he's one of the most performance based managers I've even know, so either he's an exception to this rule or maybe he really isn't from down under :)

When I lived in Sydney I did notice that people were typically much happier with their jobs there than here, if I'm allowed to over generalize like that, but then again, with a real unemployment rate of close to zero that's to be expected :)

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <font> <img> <span> <p> <br> <br/>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
More information about formatting options