Performance Management Workflow

Performance Management Overview

The goal of the Performance Management Workflow is to improve the quality of services offered to residents and address any identified issues. In this workflow, you will evaluate the performance of your organization in the eyes of your community and create and carry out a plan for improvement based on gathered feedback. It’s an effective and outcome-driven way to measure performance and build up key areas in a public agency.

Here is a summary of the process steps:

Performance Management Workflow Steps

There are four stages to the performance review process, which is meant to be cyclical and repeatable. By the end of the process, you should have a clear measure of community services, a targeted and executed action plan to address critical areas, and data-driven results that can be shared internally and externally to foster public trust. 

If you don't have all of these tools listed in the steps below, focus on those that are most relevant to you.

Phase: Planning

Purpose: Set priorities for performance management by using digital tools to gather community feedback and determine baseline benchmarks for measurement and goal-setting. 

Zencity Tools:

• • Community Survey: When designing and approving your Community Survey questionnaire, ensure the add-on and follow-up questions support any key areas that you need input on for goal-setting. 
  • Experience Survey: Review data in your Customer Experience dashboard, identifying key performance issues that need improvement. 
  • Organic: Create an Organic project focused on specific services/topics that need input and use the project dashboard to monitor related community discourse.

Phase: Feedback Collection

Purpose: Engage residents with the performance management process and collect more focused feedback on relevant services.

Zencity Tools:

• • Community Survey: Launch your Community Survey and monitor the live feed tab to identify emerging issues in real time. 
  • Organic: Highlight your new Community Survey through your social media accounts via Publishing and the Press Release Generator in News Feed. Announcing your outreach efforts will help engage the public in the process. 

Phase: Action Plan Creation

Purpose: Based on gathered feedback, create an action plan to address critical areas for improvement.

Zencity Tools:

• • Community Survey: Access the dashboard to analyze results from your most recent cycle. Pay special attention to strategic initiatives or focus areas from the previous cycle action plan, as well as results that deviate from your benchmarks. Make sure to consider both the highest and lowest scores highlighted in the report and use the feedback to develop your action plan. 
  • Community Survey: Approve your questionnaire for next Community Survey cycle - note the add-on and follow-ups sections and make sure they align with priorities from your action plan.
  • Engage: Create an Engage Project on a key issue from your action plan to help accomplish plan goals. Use the Project to share helpful information with the public and incorporate an Engagement survey to pull continued feedback on the issue. 

Phase: Action Plan Follow-up

Purpose: Inform the public about your action plan, continue to solicit and share feedback as you work towards your goals, and prepare for your next performance management cycle. 

Zencity Tools:

• • Community Survey: Once your new survey cycle closes, download the survey summary report and share it with stakeholders to demonstrate progress made on your action plan goals. 
  • Organic: Inform the public of your action plan through your social media accounts via Organic Publishing and the Press Release Generator in Organic News Feed. Continue tracking progress on action plan goals through a custom digest focusing on key Organic projects related to your plan (access Subscriptions in main navigation menu).
  • Engage: Create an Engage Project on your action plan to inform residents about steps you are taking to improve identified issues and involve them in the process. 

Performance Management Examples

This workflow focuses on gathering community input on local agency performance and implementing a plan to increase efficiency, accountability, and resident experience. Some practical examples for the Performance Management Workflow include:

• New service assessment
• Quarterly evaluations
• CompStat
• Resource allocation
• Benchmarking
• KPI evaluation

To see a real-world application for using Zencity tools to evaluate city service performance, click here to read a case study from the city of College, PA. 

Performance Management Checklist and Resource Links

A checklist to guide you through the Performance Management workflow can be found within your Customer Hub. Use this resource within the Zencity platform for working through the steps of this workflow.

To access a checklist offline, click below to download a PDF version that your organization can utilize.

There are many additional articles and videos available to you in this Help Center that are relevant to implementing Performance Management steps. Listed below are some key resources to support you in using workflow-related Zencity tools:

• Performance Management Checklist (1).pdf70 KB