Governments need a disproportionate number of knowledge workers, and attracting and retaining these workers—in the face of strong competition from the corporate sector and changing loyalty values among younger employees—is an ongoing challenge.

Major Approaches

Although interrelated with other personnel policies, such as recruitment, pay and benefits, expectations, and disciplinary procedures, the predominant approaches to maintaining a high performance workforce include:

• Evaluating performance
• Improving performance through goal setting
• Linking performance to compensation
• Linking performance to employee advancement and development
• Building teams and work groups
• Managing special circumstances that can affect performance.

A Valuable Resource

ICMA’s Human Resource Management in Local Government: An Essential Guide devotes an entire chapter to the topic of maintaining a high-performance workforce. The chapter examines each of the major approaches to retaining top performers and provides a number of techniques, resources, and sample documents local government managers can use to implement a successful system.

The section on goal setting, for example, provides a set of guiding principles to consider before developing goals and discusses the challenges managers can encounter during the process, including confusing goals, which can be understood as target levels toward which the employee is to work—with performance standards—which are the general expectations established by the employer for performance. The goals established for an employee should stretch their capabilities and offer enough of a challenge for them to perform at an increased capacity but not so high that they are impossible to attain.

As a local government leader, you must be prepared to help your employees attain the goals that have been established for them, while  assisting them in meeting or exceeding the standards established for measuring satisfactory performance. To improve performance through goal setting, you should consult with your employees in establishing performance standards, make them aware of ongoing progress checks, and give them the opportunity to improve through on-the-job training or other learning.

Three Elements of a Goal-Setting System

The chapter in Human Resource Management in Local Government on maintaining a high-performance workforce discusses three elements of a goal-setting system that will help local government managers establish employee goals. They include:

1. Performance contracts. Goal setting that establishes challenging or stretch performance levels tends to foster higher levels of productivity. The commitment that an employee makes to achieve those goals represents a performance contract. The contract identifies targets for the employee to achieve that are higher than "satisfactory" performance levels but are not the standards against which the employees will be evaluated.

2. The individual development plan. This plan provides a means of confronting any deficiencies of the employee in a constructive way, especially if the employee is involved in the planning. The focus should be on providing the employee with opportunities to expand his or hers knowledge, skills, and abilities, not only to meet current performance standards but also to prepare for future advancement.

3. Employee assistance programs. An additional means of addressing performance deficiencies is to refer employees to an employee assistance program (EAP) (if your organization has one) or to a certified counselor under contract with the jurisdiction. While this is usually a delicate matter psychologically and legally, discussion with the employee as well as the referral must be made in the context of performance deficiencies in the employee's work. Any focus on personality or on perceived addiction problems should be avoided.

As you work with your employees to develop a plan, the goals that you establish should be specific, clear, and realistic statements of potential attainment. No need to set your employee(s) up for failure!