Coming soon · Book Profile
GUIDELINES - Testing and Assessment
A comprehensive practitioner's guide to designing and running performance management as a continuous, forward-looking, developmental process owned by line managers that aligns individual and organizational goals to build a high-performance culture.
A profile of this book is on the way.
What it’s about
Michael Armstrong's Performance Management distills decades of research and practice into a clear, actionable framework for turning the discredited annual appraisal ritual into a living, continuous process of dialogue, agreement, measurement, feedback, and development. Drawing on surveys from the CIPD, IRS, e-reward and Lawler & McDermott plus rich case studies (Halifax BOS, Pfizer, Raytheon, Standard Chartered, the Scottish Parliament), the book shows how to set integrated objectives, agree role profiles and performance measures, review and assess performance fairly, improve individual, team and organizational results, link (or deliberately decouple) performance from pay, use 360-degree feedback, and embed performance management through the committed involvement of top managers, line managers, employees and HR. It is both strategic and eminently practical, offering checklists, forms, guiding principles and evaluation methods for anyone introducing or improving a performance management system.
The through-line
- Who it’s for
- A line manager, HR practitioner or leader who wants to get better, sustained results from individuals and teams and build a high-performance culture.
- The problem
- Traditional performance appraisal is a bureaucratic, backward-looking annual ritual that fails to improve performance and is resented by managers and staff. They feel frustrated, cynical or anxious - unsure how to have honest performance conversations, deal with underperformers, or make appraisal worthwhile.
- The plan
- Understand performance management as a continuous plan-act-monitor-review process, not an appraisal event.
- Agree role profiles, integrated objectives and performance measures in a performance agreement.
- Manage performance throughout the year with ongoing feedback, coaching and continuous learning.
- Conduct constructive, forward-looking review meetings and assess performance through analysis rather than mechanistic rating.
- Improve performance at individual, team and organizational levels and manage underperformers positively.
- The payoff
- Individuals and teams take responsibility for continuous improvement within a high-performance culture. · Clear line of sight between organizational strategy and everyone's work. · Motivated, engaged, developed employees receiving fair, evidence-based feedback.
See our guide
Related profiles we’ve built
Additional reading
- Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Assessment and Development Centres; Best practice guidelines · British Psychological Society (BPS)
Cited by the author as an authoritative source for best practice, covering key issues like fairness, design, and evaluation that are central to the book's guidance.
- Assessment Centres (3rd edn) · C Woodruffe
Recommended for readers seeking a broader overview and history of the assessment centre method.
- The big five personality dimensions and job-performance; a meta-analysis · Barrick, M R and Mount, K M
Provides the empirical support for the book's caution against over-relying on personality tests in selection, a key topic in Chapter 5.
- A theory of the validity of predictors in selection · M Smith
Offers a theoretical framework for understanding why different selection tools have varying levels of effectiveness, underpinning the book's core argument.
- Competence at Work · Spencer, L M and Spencer, S M
A foundational text on the concept of competence, relevant to Chapter 2 on developing a competence framework.
- Development and Assessment Centres · Charles Woodruffe
Cited as a key text for readers wanting a more recent and in-depth exposition of assessment centre work, a core topic of the book.
- Performance Management: The new realities · Michael Armstrong and Angela Baron
The book uses Armstrong and Baron's definition of performance management as its foundation, making their work a primary source for understanding this core concept.
- The Competent Manager: A model for effective performance · R. F. Boyatzis
The author attributes the current usage and definition of 'competency' to Boyatzis, making this a foundational text for a central theme of the book.
- Appraisal and Feedback: Making performance review work · Clive Fletcher
Fletcher is cited as an authority on appraisals, a key one-to-one interaction within performance management, providing deeper insight into this specific practice.
- The Easy Guide to Repertory Grids · D. Jankowicz
The book presents the repertory grid as a powerful technique for developing interview models; this book is recommended as a highly accessible introduction to the method.