IV. Achieve Results with a Customer-Focused, Performance-Based Culture

The Postal Service is among the nation's largest institutions and its 700,000 career employees live and work in every community. Their efforts have a direct and visible impact on the organization's results. None of the successes under Transformation would have been possible if the Postal Service had not fully engaged all employees in the effort. Workplace environment improvements succeeded in reducing distractions and allowed employees to focus on delivering results and satisfying customers.

1. Engage Employees
The Postal Service is committed to being a model employer of choice, regarded by current and future employees as the best place to work. Through policies that support employees' work life from pre-employment through retirement, the organization is building a performance-based culture that encourages excellence and full participation — where employees contribute their ideas, seek challenges, assume leadership roles, and exceed business and personal goals. Managing organizational change is essential to continued success, and helping employees adjust to changing roles will require open communication at all levels.

Driving Performance through Goal-Setting
In today's competitive market, there is a continuous need to ensure that all employees are engaged in shaping and driving success. The establishment of specific, actionable objectives is an essential element of the process. The Postal Service's strategic goals — generate revenue, reduce costs, improve service, achieve results — are made tangible with the establishment of specific organizational objectives and a structured process of review. This process includes deployment of targets throughout the organization, assignment of accountability, allocation of resources, and ongoing review.

 

Performance is Recognized and Rewarded
The Postal Service developed and implemented its current performance measurement system in 2003. This system, the National Performance Assessment (NPA) is a nationally consistent, Webbased measurement and reporting tool that consolidates performance data from source systems across the organization. These data are translated into balanced scorecards that report on corporate and unit indicators. This balanced scorecard serves as the foundation for engaging more than 73,000 executive and administrative employees in discussions around individual and organizational performance. Success against the targets is the basis for pay actions in the Pay-for-Performance (PFP) program. Specific indicators are set for different organizational levels and annual performance ratings are commensurate with the level of achievement.

The Postal Service is increasingly recognized as a government and industry leader in performance measurement. The success of NPA and PFP has been the subject of several studies in 2006 that highlight the Postal Service approach:

• In February, the WorldatWork Journal (formerly the American Compensation Association Journal) published an article, "Pay-for-Performance Works: The United States Postal Service Presents a Powerful Business Case."

• In March, the IBM Center for the Business of Government published a paper, "Using the Balanced Scorecard: Lessons Learned from the Postal Service and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service."

• In September, the Excellence in Human Capital Management Award was received from the Performance Institute, a non-partisan government research group.

Metrics and measurement systems at the corporate, group, and individual levels will be refined as the organization evolves to meet changing business needs and will serve as drivers for gaining positive performance results.