Caisse Nationale D’Assurance Vieillesse (CNAV) is a state-owned administrative body in France. CNAV has a nationwide responsibility for managing the general pensions branch of the French social security system for employees in commerce, industry, and services.
CNAV serves 10 million current pensioners and more than 30 million people belong to its pensions scheme. CNAV operates through 16 regional social security offices (CRAMs) and 4 overseas offices (CGSS) with approximately 13 000 qualified staff serving current and future pensioners.
“We use QPR Metrics to monitor and consolidate our performance information from local offices to a nationwide level. Now everyone in our organization is interested in meeting the performance targets,” says Mr. Dominique Gérard, Directeur de la coordination nationale at CNAV
Caisse Nationale D’assurance Vieillesse (CNAV) has implemented a nation-wide performance management solution in order to improve performance preparing for serving the increasing number of pensioners in the near future. The solution – powered by QPR Metrics and implemented by IMNET – consolidates performance information from 16 regional offices (CRAMs) and 4 overseas offices (CGSS) to national level. Incentives are linked to reaching local and national performance targets.
From Baby Boom to Pension Boom
With the aging population, France is facing a Pension Boom just like most of European countries. While the number of employees is going to increase more moderately, CNAV needed to improve its operations and performance to better serve the increased number of pensioners.
Another challenge is that the Pension Boom is also hitting CNAV from the inside as several experienced employees are going to retire in the coming years. This means the tacit knowledge in the heads of these people will be lost.
CNAV’s response to this challenge is to improve performance by automating processes with renewed IT systems, improving retirement planning with the customers, and implementing a performance management system with incentives.
Cascading from Government Management Agreements to Regional Performance Indicators
CNAV has chosen to become a pilot organization for reporting and consolidating performance information using scorecards.
“CNAV signs a management agreement with the French government. The objectives are derived from the political strategy and the objectives are broken down into performance indicators with targets. After this, CNAV agrees on the target levels with each local office (CRAM). The target levels are set progressively to reach the agreed national performance level”, explains Mr. Dominique Gérard, Directeur de la coordination Nationale, in charge of performance management at CNAV.
CNAV operates through 16 regional social security offices (CRAMs) and 4 overseas offices (CGSS).
Objectives are high-level targets such as the Accuracy of pension/salary information. 24 indicators have been derived from these objectives, for example, the Average number of days used to work on a pension folder.
Performance is reviewed monthly on a local and national level. Performance targets for the final year of the 4 years are always fixed while the targets for the previous years can be negotiated. Targets for the first year were set based on the average of the previous 3 years’ performance.
Each local office gets its scorecard for following its performance against the local and national targets. The performance results are consolidated to the national level scorecard. Scoring and weighting of performance results are modified based on the importance of each objective and indicator.
Automation is Crucial
CNAV chose QPR Metrics as the software solution for automating the performance management system and IMNET for providing implementation consulting services. Mr. Gérard feels that an automated system is one of the key success factors for establishing performance management in large, distributed organizations like CNAV.
“Previously we had two persons working in gathering, consolidating, and distributing the performance information with Excel and paper. Now we have automated this process with QPR Metrics,” tells Mr. Gérard about the tangible benefits of automation.
To ensure the quality of the performance information, all actual values for indicators are automatically fetched from other IT systems. No manual input is needed for updating the actual values of the indicators.
Currently, QPR Metrics server is located on the premises of CNAV headquarters in Paris and local offices will use web clients to access the performance information through the intranet. This allows efficient maintenance of the solution and easy access from any local office. Also, the development of national and local scorecards is done centrally by the project team in Paris.
One For All and All For One
All employees in local offices will be able to view their own office’s scorecard and also other offices’ scorecards. This creates transparency and allows benchmarking between the offices.
Incentives are linked to reaching local and national performance targets. In total, approximately 5 million Euros is reserved for performance-based bonuses annually. Reaching national targets triggers 2/3 of the total bonus while local targets constitute 1/3 of the total bonus. Each employee – from office clerk to director – gets a bonus of 400 euros, if all performance targets are reached.
Benefits and Experiences
In addition to saving time and effort in data gathering and reporting, QPR Metrics have made it easier to view and communicate performance information. A consolidated national performance overview also allows drill-down from the top-level objectives to local indicators whenever the performance target is not met.
“This allows us to make better decisions,” says Mr. Gérard.
Defining objectives, indicators, and targets as teamwork has generated better commitment to the performance targets. Currently, 15 of 20 local offices are meeting their performance target. QPR Metrics alerts users when targets are not reached.
“Now everyone in our organization is interested in reaching the performance targets.” summarizes Mr. Dominique Gérard based on CNAV’s experience.
To ensure performance monitoring is done correctly, each local office is audited at least once during 4 years. This is done to avoid sub-optimization in the work processes in order to reach the performance targets. For example, delaying registration of applications to shorten the average processing time of applications to be reported.
Future Directions
CNAV’s ultimate goal is to improve performance for better quality of the service. This means an increasing number of customers – currently more than 30 million current and future pensioners – will be able to enjoy the results of performance management in the very near future.
From Baby Boom to Pension Boom
With the aging population, France is facing a Pension Boom just like most of European countries. While the number of employees is going to increase more moderately, CNAV needed to improve its operations and performance to better serve the increased number of pensioners.
Another challenge is that the Pension Boom is also hitting CNAV from the inside as several experienced employees are going to retire in the coming years. This means the tacit knowledge in the heads of these people will be lost.
CNAV’s response to this challenge is to improve performance by automating processes with renewed IT systems, improving retirement planning with the customers, and implementing a performance management system with incentives.
Cascading from Government Management Agreements to Regional Performance Indicators
CNAV has chosen to become a pilot organization for reporting and consolidating performance information using scorecards.
“CNAV signs a management agreement with the French government. The objectives are derived from the political strategy and the objectives are broken down into performance indicators with targets. After this, CNAV agrees on the target levels with each local office (CRAM). The target levels are set progressively to reach the agreed national performance level”, explains Mr. Dominique Gérard, Directeur de la coordination Nationale, in charge of performance management at CNAV.
CNAV operates through 16 regional social security offices (CRAMs) and 4 overseas offices (CGSS).
Objectives are high-level targets such as the Accuracy of pension/salary information. 24 indicators have been derived from these objectives, for example, the Average number of days used to work on a pension folder.
Performance is reviewed monthly on a local and national level. Performance targets for the final year of the 4 years are always fixed while the targets for the previous years can be negotiated. Targets for the first year were set based on the average of the previous 3 years’ performance.
Each local office gets its scorecard for following its performance against the local and national targets. The performance results are consolidated to the national level scorecard. Scoring and weighting of performance results are modified based on the importance of each objective and indicator.
Automation is Crucial
CNAV chose QPR Metrics as the software solution for automating the performance management system and IMNET for providing implementation consulting services. Mr. Gérard feels that an automated system is one of the key success factors for establishing performance management in large, distributed organizations like CNAV.
“Previously we had two persons working in gathering, consolidating, and distributing the performance information with Excel and paper. Now we have automated this process with QPR Metrics,” tells Mr. Gérard about the tangible benefits of automation.
To ensure the quality of the performance information, all actual values for indicators are automatically fetched from other IT systems. No manual input is needed for updating the actual values of the indicators.
Currently, QPR Metrics server is located on the premises of CNAV headquarters in Paris and local offices will use web clients to access the performance information through the intranet. This allows efficient maintenance of the solution and easy access from any local office. Also, the development of national and local scorecards is done centrally by the project team in Paris.
One For All and All For One
All employees in local offices will be able to view their own office’s scorecard and also other offices’ scorecards. This creates transparency and allows benchmarking between the offices.
Incentives are linked to reaching local and national performance targets. In total, approximately 5 million Euros is reserved for performance-based bonuses annually. Reaching national targets triggers 2/3 of the total bonus while local targets constitute 1/3 of the total bonus. Each employee – from office clerk to director – gets a bonus of 400 euros, if all performance targets are reached.
Benefits and Experiences
In addition to saving time and effort in data gathering and reporting, QPR Metrics have made it easier to view and communicate performance information. A consolidated national performance overview also allows drill-down from the top-level objectives to local indicators whenever the performance target is not met.
“This allows us to make better decisions,” says Mr. Gérard.
Defining objectives, indicators, and targets as teamwork has generated better commitment to the performance targets. Currently, 15 of 20 local offices are meeting their performance target. QPR Metrics alerts users when targets are not reached.
“Now everyone in our organization is interested in reaching the performance targets.” summarizes Mr. Dominique Gérard based on CNAV’s experience.
To ensure performance monitoring is done correctly, each local office is audited at least once during 4 years. This is done to avoid sub-optimization in the work processes in order to reach the performance targets. For example, delaying registration of applications to shorten the average processing time of applications to be reported.
Future Directions
CNAV’s ultimate goal is to improve performance for better quality of the service. This means an increasing number of customers – currently more than 30 million current and future pensioners – will be able to enjoy the results of performance management in the very near future.
