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Two Approaches to Performance Appraisal
Trying to find real quantitative data to appraise your knowledge workers and avoid subjective ratings? If you've got quantitative data about performance that are neither trivial nor contaminated, it makes perfect sense to use them for evaluating performance. But our most important and valuable workers — our executives, managers, and knowledge workers — generally perform jobs that require subjective skills such as analysis, problem solving, creativity, and judgment. Even when there appear to be "bottom line" results such as profits or sales, the performance picture will always be incomplete without subjective evaluations.
Performance Management Rule #1:
No single appraisal technology satisfies all appraisal needs.
What Managers Need From Appraisals - Managers need (and the law encourages) comparative performance data for making comparative decisions — decisions that affect both the person selected and the ones not selected. With the exception of a "termination for cause", it is hard to imagine a personnel decision that is not comparative. Here are some examples of decisions which are comparative:
- Promotions
- Downsizing
- Merit Pay
- Incentive Pay
- Job Assignments
- Training Programs
With comparative decisions, if one person is promoted, others are not; if one receives a favorable job assignment, others do not. In the case of decisions with negative consequences, such as downsizing, some are let go, others are retained.
Whenever employees believe the outcome of a decision has negatively affected their careers, or their opportunities, or their chances for advancement, they can claim unfair treatment. The organization can only defend itself from such a claim if they can show that the person selected was not just qualified, but better qualified than the others not selected.
To meet the Manager's need for solid comparative data, ReliableSurveys.com has created Performance Ranking.
What Employees Need From Appraisals - The individual employee, however, needs information about his or her performance that provides feedback about how his or her performance is viewed by the organization, and especially about areas of marginal or substandard performance. In addition to being a review of performance, the data should also stimulate a dialogue between manager and employee that anticipates future performance, with an eye to growth and development.
To meet the employee's need for feedback about strengths and areas of needed improvement, ReliableSurveys.com has developed Performance Profiling.
Why Can't One Method Do Both?
There are reasons that one method can't work for both managers and employees:
- Managers need to see the total comparative picture of performance for a group, and the employees only need to see information about themselves.
- Employees need to see where they stand relative to their manager's performance expectations, managers need to see where employees stand relative to each other.
- Managers get all the information they need with 4 to 7 dimensions or broad performance factors, while employees benefit more from knowing about their competencies and skills, so they can focus on improvement.
- Employees need feedback on how they are performing, and a forward-looking dialogue with the manager that focuses on growth and development, managers need retrospective performance data that will back them up when they have to make tough decisions.
Take me to Performance Ranking.
Take me to Performance Profiling.
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