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Last updated: 25 October 2007
Agency Health: Monitoring agency health and improving performance
Conclusion
Focusing on corporate health to identify organisations at risk of poor performance in the public sector is a relatively new development, although a number of agencies have implemented ‘balanced scorecard’ approaches. Nevertheless, several points are clear:
- there is a direct connection between an organisation’s corporate health in terms of its overall governance framework and its performance against its business objectives
- focusing on identifying signs of poor corporate health can help in the early identification of agencies at risk of poor performance, and allow the early implementation of remedial strategies to avoid poor outcomes
- monitoring corporate health needs to be viewed as an essential part of an agency’s risk management framework
- there is no one-size-fits-all approach—ultimately agencies need to adapt or tailor processes or systems to reflect such things as their business objectives, size, organisational structure and interaction with the community
- a strong sense of organisational direction, effective leadership, strong organisational capability, appropriate governance processes, a focus on relationships and integrity, and an effective agency culture are crucial to any agency’s corporate health
- agency leaders need to take responsibility for monitoring their organisation’s corporate health and taking action where problems are identified.
Where areas of concern are identified, it is important that leaders focus on remedying problems rather than being distracted by assigning blame. It is also important that leadership and management teams acknowledge the potential for problems and accept responsibility for addressing any problems that arise. The general focus in agencies should be on moving forward, rather than on focusing on past issues which are of secondary importance.
