In some cases, performance reviews happen once per year. Annual reviews with no other reviews during the year are a sure recipe for drama, suspense, surprise, disappointment and anger. When there is only one review each year, some employees are rated higher than they actually performed because you never told them they are not meeting your expectations. These employees end up with inflated assessments and this has the reverse effect of disappointing employees who actually worked harder and smarter than the employees with the inflated ratings.
Then there is the drama linked to annual appraisals. All year round employees are blissfully unaware of your perception of their performance and then they receive unexpected news that all year they were not performing as they thought. The employee had absolutely no indication there was a gap between their perception and yours. Managers tend to avoid these performance discussions, leaving them until the end of the process.
In a high performing work environment, performance is managed more than once a year. This sounds like more work, and it is, but it also leads to less stress at the end of the year because you are arming employees with feedback so they can recalibrate before the final rating.
Performance Management Basics:
In tough economic times, Managers look for ways to create higher productivity. Here is how you can use performance management tools to improve productivity:
Job Descriptions
Create clear job descriptions. There is nothing worse than working in an environment where duties are not clearly defined. Overlap can occur and turf wars can result because employees claim duties they prefer for various reasons. They may perceive the need for status, visibility and familiarity and low morale will inevitably result.
Recruitment
Effective recruitment practices are essential to high performance. The key is to select the right people for your vacant jobs. In the book “First, Break all the Rules” by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, they state that hiring managers get duped into thinking experience and training in an area are equivalent to talent and performance. Buckingham and Coffman assert that we should hire based on talent, not experience because experience can sometimes be misleading. They also maintain good managers recognize, “People don’t change that much so don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in.”
Objectives
Job descriptions should not exist in isolation. Employee objectives are a necessary piece of the productivity enhancement puzzle. Objectives are measurements and they reduce subjectivity and introduce accountability. More objectivity in the process also means less “wailing and gnashing of teeth” at the end of the year because measurements are unmistakable. Deadlines, volumes and ratios are all examples of ways you can introduce objectivity to the process. Ideally, your objectives should flow out of your company’s strategic plan so that every employee is aligned with the strategic targets.
In some companies, the strategic plan is a shrouded in a cloak of obscurity. For higher performance, your company can create higher levels of transparence and cascade key components of the plan into employees’ objectives.
Appraisals
There are Performance Appraisals that exist that are purely subjective. They leave it up to the manager to decide on ratings based on perceptions. Then there are appraisals that are based primarily on measurements. While there is more objectivity in the latter process, the process isn’t always completely objective because it is not always easy to measure important behavioural competencies.
Performance Coaching
Effective coaching routines complement the Performance Management process by providing a stream of continuous feedback to employees. The more you provide constructive feedback the higher the possibility for improved productivity and the more employees feel valued. Some people leaders coach employees weekly, others every two weeks or monthly. One caution here is for you to be careful not to use the coaching process to micromanage unless you have a disciplinary issue.
Appraising employee performance doesn’t have to be an unpleasant exercise at the end of your fiscal year. Once you lead constructive performance coaching conversations regularly, employees will have opportunities to improve their results and you can avoid the disappointing conversations that affect employee morale and impair trust levels.
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