Organizational Change Factors that can Influence Implementation of a Performance Management System

The environmental health profession has struggled to successfully define the value of its diverse programs in order to demonstrate positive outcomes and to obtain support for funding and infrastructure. To overcome this, CDC’s May 2001 Environmental Health Competency Project Recommendations include, among several others, the need to market the value of environmental and public health. More specifically, it recommends the capacity to articulate basic concepts of environmental health and public health and convey an understanding of their value and importance to clients and the public. One way to better evaluate and communicate the value of environmental health professions’ collective impact on society, in addition to improving performance, may be through performance management. In particular, performance management may help environmental health directors to tell their story by leveraging the treasure chest of information they collect to make decisions. Performance management can thus help directors to prioritize use of limited resources, and support funding needs by illustrating accomplishments and under-funded areas that protect the public’s health. However, the problem identified through this study is that there is little guidance on how to implement a performance management system within an environmental health department. This action research-based developmental evaluation case study follows the work of UIC doctoral students and environmental health directors who are members of the California Conference of Directors of Environmental Health (CCDEH), over a three year performance management change readiness process, in order to address the problem. For three years, the directors and students collaborated in an iterative process and learned more about performance management and organizational change factors that may improve readiness for change. The findings of this study were also integrated into a CCDEH performance management implementation guideline and toolkit to assist the directors with implementation of a performance management system. Change readiness, as discovered during the literature review and during the course of this study, is a continuous process throughout a given change rather than a one-time state to be achieved before implementation (Stevens, 2013). The study identified three organizational change factors; administrative operability, organizational culture change, and political acceptability that may improve readiness for change. Moreover, the study found that in order to support the implementation process, you need to have the right administrative operations and resources in place and the change initiative has to be politically acceptable. More importantly, however, the study found that people need to want to change, which means factors associated with organizational culture change need to be addressed in order to build trust. This notion is aligned with Weiner’s (2009) reference to organizational readiness for change as “members” shared resolve to implement a change and shared belief in their collective capacity to do so. The results of this study can be extrapolated to the national discussion on change readiness and performance management. This is because the environmental health departments in California vary in size and serve diverse communities, including mostly rural, mostly urban, and mixed urban and rural, which is reflective of the national landscape.