”J’ai en tête de faire gagner de l’argent à ma banque” : - The paradox of measuring performance among bank employees -

Abstract: Fast changes and external demands have made companies to continuously needing to improve their performance. Banks in particular have come to make a complete changeover to keep up with the competition. They have gone from bureaucratic structures to become more sales oriented. This has come to affect the management model banks use, meaning that the tools to control and navigate the company had to be modernized and adapted to measure new activities. Before the structure change, it was usually enough for a bank to use financial measurements only focusing on indicators such as ROI, when measuring performance. Today, banks have realized the value of the company’s employees, they are a crucial factor for reaching success. Therefore the banks have realized that they need to measure the employees performance. By measuring the employees the bank will be able to know how to improve their performance in order to reach greater success. However, measuring the employees performance has backsides, in some cases it has created unwanted behavior. My problem definitions goes: How are the Swedish banks motives to reach sales goals, creating a conflict between employees actions towards customer relations and banks results? My purpose is to increase my and banks understanding in how sales goals affect the employees and their actions in a bank. I will increase my and banks understanding by finding what factors with the sales goals foster a certain behavior. I am also interested in finding a way to prevent certain behavior that occurs with sales goals. In order to answer my purpose I have conducted seven qualitative un-structured interviews with bank employees. I believe that I can take part of their reality by interpreting their answers. Therefore I argue for a hermeneutic view. The theoretical framework includes theories which I believe are relevant in order to increase my understand about the situation. The theoretical framework will be brought together with the seven interviews and together they will act as a platform for my analysis. I have conducted unstructured interviews, consisting of one sales manager and six bank employees. The interviews were conducted in one company, the purpose was to understand the actions in one context. During these interviews I used an interview guide as an aid. I found that employees are affected by the sales goals due to the fact that they have not participated in deciding them. Meaning that the goals are not of much value for them. Furthermore I found that the employees perceive that the bank is neglecting them, which I found was a result of how the manager values the management model. The behavior of the employees is affected by what parts of the management model the manager chooses to communicate.