Chapter 3
Most Serious Performance Appraisal Challenges
3.1 Don’t assess actual performance
Dr John Sullivan: Most of the assessment that managers complete focuses on “the person,” including characterizations of their personal “traits” (i.e. commitment), knowledge (i.e. technical knowledge) or behaviours (i.e. attendance). While these factors may contribute to performance, they are not measures of actual output. If you want to assess the person, call it “person appraisal.” Performance is output quality, volume, dollar value and responsiveness.
Managers are hard-pressed with time and business goals and allocate very less time on providing performance feedback / appraisals to their team members. Moreover, they are frustrated and lack faith in the traditional performance appraisals. This leads to the challenge of in-effective appraisals, non-setting of goals and effectively leading to poor employee engagement.
Managers need to be guided towards a well-defined performance appraisal process. If the process is not defined or does not have well defined appraisal forms, it will lead the conversation more open ended. When there is open ended conversation without addressing any goals, performance parameters, competency characteristics, the discussion will focus on personal traits. Clearly defined competency matrix and appraisal forms help managers to focus on providing feedback, set expectations / goals, inspire the individuals towards their key accomplishments.
Solution:
Synergita provides a well-defined mechanism for defining appraisal forms, setting goals, identifying development needs, etc. Managers can provide rating according to well established guideline for each goal / competency characteristic. This allows the manager to capitalize on the strengths of team members and contribute to the accomplishment of work goals rather than personal traits and thereby increasing the effectiveness of appraisal.
A well-defined appraisal form captures the following:
% of weightage may vary between KRA and competency rating from one organization to another organization. For example, certain organizations insist 100% weightage to KRA to and no specific rating for competency. Certain organizations put it as 70% KRA and 30% on competency rating.
3.2 Infrequent feedback
Dr John Sullivan: If the primary goal of the process is to identify and resolve performance issues, executing the process annually is silly. A quality assessment/control program anywhere else in the business would operate in real time. At the very minimum, formal feedback needs to be given quarterly, like the GE process.
Performance appraisal cycle when done annually does not actually reflect the real performance. Following are some of the reasons:
Solution:
Synergita solves this through four different mechanisms.
i. Continuous Feedback
People can provide feedback to an individual at any point of time. And, these feedback are available for reference for a manager anytime. A continuous feedback can be a diary for an individual to note their own achievements, for a manager to keep track of appreciations / area of improvements, for a peer to pass their thoughts, etc. Good thing is the continuous feedback provided is accessible in any other feedback session. This will really help the manager, HR and employee to take stock of others perspectives and use it in constructive manner during the appraisal.
ii. Periodic Feedback
Synergita provides the ability to have periodic feedback sessions to an individual. These feedback can be tailored towards an individual needs. For example, you may have a star performer in your team and you want him/her to pick up leadership skills as the growth path.
You may want to provide periodic feedback around these skills alone. Or, you may have come up with a performance improvement plan for a person and this would cover only some area of improvements. This will also be tailored to an individual. While HR will have an overall view of things happening in a periodic feedback sessions, the manager and employee will be in the driving seat as far as designing the goal of periodic feedback sessions.
iii. End of Assignment Feedback
Several organizations are moving towards project based assignments for their people. And, it is important to provide feedback towards the end of project/assignment. This is prevalent in services organizations such as accounting services firms, law firms, software services firms, etc. Synergita helps in doing such feedback sessions easily.
iv. Formal HR initiated quarterly / half yearly review feedback
HR can initiate a formal quarterly / half yearly review cycles through the organization (or) just for few departments (or) for project teams.
3.3 Non-data based assessment
Dr John Sullivan: Most processes rely 100% on the memory of those completing the assessment because pre-populating the forms with data to inform decisions would be too difficult (cynicism). In addition, most assessment criteria are “fuzzy” and subjective.
It is important for the managers to substantiate their rating with numbers and reasons to get better acceptance among his/her team members. For example, a support engineer should be rated based on the customer satisfaction metric, number of support calls taken, etc. When the parameter is rated based on a number, it avoids all the subjective elements and keeps the decisions crystal clear. However, there may be some parameters which will be assessed qualitatively. But, it is essential to publish the assessment criteria / guidelines to make sure that everybody understands it the same way. These guidelines will help in bringing in better consistency across all managers. Synergita provides following tools in addressing the above challenge:
i. Synergita has a feature called - continuous feedback and related dashboard. Continuous feedback is a ‗critical incident diary‘ for a manager on an employee. Managers can use this tool to pass on appreciations, awards, area of improvements, disciplinary actions, etc.
ii. Every assessment criteria should have clearly defined guidelines for rating to bring in consistency across managers. Wherever possible, associate a metric. For example, if the sales target is 1M USD, rating guidelines should clearly specify:
iii. If there is no ‗good rating‘, make sure that you provide an evidence by attaching reports, emails, etc. so that it is easy for an employee to digest the rating and see the reasons.
3.4 Lack of effectiveness metrics
Dr John Sullivan: Many accept that the goals of the process are to recognize results, provide feedback to address weaknesses, determine training needs, and to identify poor performers. Unfortunately, rarely do process owners ever measure their processes‘ contribution to attaining any of these goals. Instead, the most common measure relating to performance appraisal is the percentage completed.
HR spends lot of time in designing and implementing the process. For many managers, performance management is perceived as non-critical and are tied up with other business priorities. Because of this, HR has to spend lot of time in follow-ups. Typically, for a large organization of 1000 people size, sometimes, performance appraisal process goes well beyond 2 months period. By the time, they complete the process, focus is typically only on salary revisions and NOT beyond.
Solution:
Synergita helps HR in several ways to make life simpler. Status of the process is easily available any time as a dashboard item:
Automated email reminders with multiple escalations are sent out at appropriate time to avoid regular HR follow-up. Managers typically get to see complete information in a single view.
Also, there are several tools available to help on day to day basis. They can maintain critical incident diary on each of their team member easily, without having to spend lot of time.
Once data is available, HR can spend more time in analysis. Rating distribution, SWOT analysis, 9 quadrant report, etc. are available in single click. This will help HR
You will be able to derive following metrics easily from Synergita:
3.5 Lack of accountability
Dr John Sullivan: Managers are not measured or held accountable for providing accurate feedback. While they may be chastised for completing them late, there is no penalty for doing a half-assessed job or making mistakes on them, which is incredibly common. One firm attempting to remove a troublesome employee found that the manager had rated the individual the highest within the department and awarded them employee of the year.
A Manager should be considered as a key player during the appraisal process for his/her team members. If a manager is not held accountable during the performance appraisal process, the onus gets transferred to the Human Resources Department. In several organizations, role of the manager ends with providing the feedback to the employee and the rest being taken care by the HR Department. This is counterproductive and HR will not be able to own a manager‘s decision.
Managers should realize that doing a half assessed appraisal will not instil confidence in the minds of the employees and the gap may widen between the manager and the employee because of this.
Solution:
Synergita provides following:
Idea is to make sure that managers own the employee performance decisions and not the HR. It is a cultural change required in any organization. Synergita helps in fostering and speeding up the cultural change. Process is easy to implement and configure in Synergita; product is still user friendly for managers, employees and HR.