Performance Management/Self Appraisals

@Brenda. I hope you share the outcome with us. I would love to hear how things turn out. Unfortunate, but great test of how seriously mgmnt views this process.

A great question Tiffany. Typically the domain of larger companies, performance evals are a great concept, but extremely difficult to manage for the reasons already noted. I worked at a company once where they tried to do this, and the managers rated everyone very high across the board for three reasons. 1) they didn't want to create conflict with their reports, 2) they thought that documenting that they had poor performers was a reflection on themselves and 3) everyone knew that when the company did this, that meant staff reductions would follow...... Needless to say, it ultimately was a waste of time and effort.

If the intent is pure, that is, to track an employee and help them learn and grow to the benefit of both themselves and the organization, and the employee truly believes that, then these programs can really be of value. If not, and no one supports it, the old addage "garbage in, garbage out" applies.

Coming from a finance background, I understand the logic of tying comp plans to performance, as that works best on the sales side, but I tend to agree with Nik that in general application, having it be fixed or arbitrary does more harm than good to morale/motivation. Also, the practice of making it annual (both the review and comp) hurts the process it in my opinion. Perhaps a new twist might be to follow the popular project management method of agile/scrum. That is, break the goals down into very small bits, complete quickly, reward, then move to the next. This is akin to monthly/quarterly commission payments. Just a thought.

In my experience the problem is not that managers and staff don't want these systems, but because there is such an enormous disconnect in the way they are sold and then applied.

And it's the straight jackets built into systems like bonuses that do the damage.

If everyone in an organisation is succesful in a year, and the same number of people achieve twice the turnover and more importantly twice the profits of the previous year, then why should they be constrained to the same rewards as last year?

Why is it organisations are never willing to commit the appropriate resources to developing people in areas identified in their development plans? But are quite happy to penalise the employee in terms of their progression or payment for the same flaw?

And so on...

I once worked for an organisation which would have given most HR professionals a heart attack, sloppy, disorganised, and hard, hard work. But... everyone's reward was directly related to their performance, and the company became the largest private employer in the country in a period of just ten years (starting with just 2 employees!), and not once did they hold back those bonuses when everyone performed, they didn't come round and say "the bonus pool is fixed and we'll scale a few people down to meet that" they held their heads high and paid.

The owner is now a multi-billionaire and good luck to him too, he's not the nicest bloke but he knew how to reward people.