Business Performance Assessment Program Best Practice 13 – Capture Improvement Opportunities within the Corrective Action Program

Self-critical business performance assessments yield multiple opportunities for performance improvement; yet their benefits often go unrealized because assessment recommendations are not acted upon. To ensure the organization profits from each self assessment, it is necessary to programmatically pursue the recommended performance improvement actions*. The structured approach employed should drive accountability for implementing the improvement activities balanced with the organization’s other priorities.[wcm_restrict plans=”47778, 25542, 25653″]

Effective corrective action programs capture the organization’s identified performance improvement opportunities regardless of source, prioritize these opportunities in aggregate including the assignment of due dates, designate a responsible individual and apportion resources to implement the activities associated with each opportunity, and monitor activity progress to a timely completion. Consequently, the corrective action program is the process best suited for documenting and tracking the implementation of self assessment recommendations so to ensure their benefit is appropriately realized.

Numerous benefits result from capturing business performance assessment identified improvement actions within the corrective action program including:

• Identify issue/opportunity significance consistent with all submitted issues/opportunities/suggestions
• Establish action priority in aggregate with all other organization activities
• Assign and reinforce accountability for issue resolution
• Allocate resources to perform corrective actions consistent with the issue’s priority relative to other activities and within the organization’s limited resource capabilities
• Trace corrective and performance improvement actions to their identifying source
• Report on the status of performance improvement actions and associated results achieved for both individual assessments and the overall program
• Evaluate self assessment program effectiveness at driving performance improvement through the monitoring of action status and results achieved
• Analyze self assessment findings over time in order to identify broader-based issues more deeply rooted in the organization’s culture and/or programs that would otherwise go unobserved if such a broad-based analysis was not possible
• Perform causal analysis for issues associated with regulatory non-compliance and significant performance deficiencies that go beyond the scope of the self assessment program

* In this context, performance improvement actions refer to those activities needed to resolve a performance deficiency, mitigate an identified risk, enhance already satisfactory performance, or capitalize on an emerging opportunity.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”47778, 25542, 25653″]

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About the Author

Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.