Covalent addresses the CPA Comprehensive Performance Assessment regime head-on with facilities to provide evidence of achievements made, whilst demonstrating a capacity to improve performance.
Performance management is one of the key competencies that the Audit Commission assesses as part of the CPA inspection process. Inspectors look for evidence that you're acting on results, are focussed on improvement management, and not purely monitoring and reporting Performance Indicators.
Covalent can provide this evidence of actions taken based on performance results which back up your achievements, and highlight the council's capacity to improve. It can directly help councils address the key areas Inspectors are looking at.
Involving members and senior officers in the performance management process. A wide variety of intuitive and visually interesting reports can be created Cin Covalent to ensure senior decision makers automatically receive regular performance reports. Covalent also ensures senior people get actively involved in monitoring council priorities by establishing clear lines of performance measure ownership and accountability.
Articulating corporate priorities and objectives and using performance information to track progress in achieving this. With the reporting facilities in Covalent, the council's performance in each of its key priority areas can clearly be seen. It can also demonstrate what actions, effort and resources are being directed to these priority areas, supporting an investigation into whether the council is making its resources work in the best way to deliver value for money.
Aligning staff work with such corporate priorities so that staff know what is expected of them and managers know if they are achieving it. Covalent could become part of the staff appraisals process if you wanted to cascade the system down to develop individual, team or business unit scorecards, derived from a corporate scorecard.
Covalent manages an 'Objective Hierarchy' which cascades from corporate-level, through departments, service units down to personalised scorecards for individual employees if desired. This will support the so-called 'Golden Thread' that CPA inspectors speak of, by reinforcing an approach of translating corporate ambitions and objectives into operational and service priorities that employees can relate to.
DC Performance - The State of the Nation
BVPIs versus CPA Ranks - Covalent Research