Performance Appraisal
Performance appraisal starts with the identification of what you are looking for within your employees and identify how you will measure them. Managers use performance indicators to make decisions depending on the level of the performance. When appraising someone’s performance there needs to be good and accurate measuring, feedback and coaching the employee and help him/her get better. In general appraisal is done by the direct supervisor of the employees, but can also be done by peers.
Performance appraisal is used in making decisions on promotions and raises for employees. This should be an open process in order to have transparency and give the person in question a chance to improve. Performance management is also used to give legal justification to fire someone if they are under performing.
Performance appraisal can be done in 2 ways: Relative and absolute. Relative comparison is when employees are compared with each other. These tend to be less objective as peoples general performance is compared to each other instead of clearly defined dimensions. This form of judgment is useful when building teams.
Absolute performance appraisal is based on clearly defined indicators. These indicators are usually company wide and the same for everyone. Although be it adjusted to the job roles as the measurements should be relevant to the job.
People can also be judged by their traits, behaviour and outcome. Trait appraisal tends to focus on certain traits or characteristics a person has. These tend to be focused on leadership, decisiveness, reliability and energy. These measurements are not clear and a bit obscure as they are highly subjective. You can measure them to an extent but are hard to legally defend.
Behavioural measurement are much clearer than traits as they are easily observable. One of the important behaviours: “does the employee work well in a team”. These are more relevant to the job but are hard to specify correctly sometimes. Changing behaviour is a hard task and takes a lot of time there for these should be measured over a longer period of time.
Outcome based measurement looks at the outcome of the job that person is performing. A good example is in sales. How much does this person sell. This for of measurement is the clearest of the three as it looks at the outcome of the work this employee performs.
The actual management of performance can be hard. The objective’s you measure also called key performance indicators (KPI’s) have to be made well. People work by the way they get measured. The KPI’s identify the key areas which are important to the company. After every KPI is identified these need to be communicated towards the employees. Employees should be empowered and coached to improve on their weaknesses. The communication needs to be transparent and clear. All the assessments should be without and prejudice or personal issues with that person.
CASE: A Performance Appraisal Horror Story (With A Happy Ending) (Bumgarner 2011)
In this case an employee felt mistreated after having a negative feedback session from his boss. He thought he was doing fine as he never got any negative feedback. He felt mistreated and betrayed by his boss. He was doing everything that was asked from him however, his boss didn’t see the job the same way.
In order to resolve the issue a plan was made. The employee and his boss had regular feedback sessions and clear goals were laid out. Thanks to these regular meetings the boss and his employee were able to line-up their view of the job. This shows that feedback needs to be open and regular. People can’t improve if they don’t know they’re doing something wrong.
Performance Management and KPIs (Mind Tools 2020)
In order to measure something that impacts actual performance you need to have key performance indicators. These are indicators that are made about the specific subject you want to measure. Kpi’s are hard to set up as they need to be well formulated. They need to be SMART. SMART stands for: Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Companies use these KPI’s in order achieve company wide goals or to improve a single employee or teams performance.
Performance management: Why keeping score is so important, and so hard (McKinsey, 2017)
Performance management is an essential tool in gaining a competitive advantage. Aligning people in the company with the strategic goals helps everyone pull in the same direction. Strong performance management rests on the simple principle that “what gets measured gets done.”(Mckinsey, 2017). Performance management can go wrong in many ways. In this article they give 3 big reasons: Poor metrics, Poor targets and lack of transparency.
If the metrics are poor, it means you are measuring the wrong thing. There for people will get the wrong feedback and make more mistakes. Poor targets sometimes companies focus on the wrong en goal or to big of a target. Lastly poor transparency means that the goals and feedback aren’t communicated clearly which can lead to frustration.
How The Digital Workplace Of 2019 Will Affect Performance Management (Harris-Briggs, 2019)
This article was written in 2019 but is relevant to these covid-times. The article talks about the digitalisation of the workplace. Going online has benefits to the employer as they need less office space which costs money. Going online and using programs like teams can help track the performance of employees.
When working it is often easy to lose track of the targets and goals you need to reach. Using project management tools makes it easier to track progress. This has some downsides as to some employees it can feel as if they are constantly being watched. The benefits do out way the risks. It brings more flexibility for the employees, people can work together more easily and see what others are doing.
References
Carpi, R. Douglas, J. Gascon, F. 2017. McKinsey. Performance management: Why keeping score is so important, and so hard. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/performance-management-why-keeping-score-is-so-important-and-so-hard. accessed on 23 September 2020
Gomez-Mejia, L.R., Balkin, D.B. and Cardy, R.L. 2016. Managing Human Resources. Global Edition 8/E. Pearson. London.
Harris-Briggs,N. 2019. Training Industry. How The Digital Workplace Of 2019 Will Affect Performance Management. https://trainingindustry.com/blog/performance-management/how-the-digital-workplace-of-2019-will-affect-performance-management/. Accessed on 23 September 2020
Bumgarner, J. 2011. Cascade Employers Association. http://www.cascadeemployersblog.com/salarytrends/a-performance-appraisal-horror-story-with-a-happy-ending. Accessed on 23 September 2020
Mind Tools 2016 https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMM_87.htm. Accessed on 23 September 2020
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