Overview

A continuous employee improvement program has been established. It centers on behavior modification through training and performance measurement, in an environment where business results become the only focus, not some sort of unintended by-product of the work performed.

Continuous employee improvement (CEI) is the seventh business fundamental of focus within the Best Practices Enterprise philosophy. As Figure 9.1 suggests, it is the last piece of the pie. It is about staff development and measurement. In a nutshell, a well-structured CEI program prepares employees to deliver expected results, tracks performance against those expected results, and rewards personnel when outstanding results are delivered.

Figure 9.1: The employee improvement program completes the picture.

Current corporate training and performance measurement paradigms seldom work that way. Most are not integrated; they place emphasis only on training and measuring on a work step basis. At best, these types of approaches offer only incremental improvement opportunities. In fact, it seems that many programs have lost sight of the overall business results being sought by the organizations that have implemented them.

CEI, on the other hand, brings together training and work measurement activities, integrating them into a mutually dependent whole aimed at changing behaviors and improving business performance (see Eskom sidebar for a real-world example).

Let us explore how CEI programs work.