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Employee Performance Appraisal - An Ideal System
by Dick Grote
Published on this site: January 8th, 2007 - See
more articles from this month
In America's best-run and most-admired organizations, employee
performance appraisal is a vital and vigorous management tool.
No other management process has as much influence on
individuals' careers and work lives.
Used well, employee performance appraisal is the most powerful
instrument that organizations have to mobilize the energy of
every employee in the enterprise toward the achievement of
strategic goals. Employee performance appraisal can focus each
person's attention on the company's mission, vision and values.
And ideally, the process can answer the two fundamental
questions that every single person in the organization wants
the answers to: What do you expect of me? And How am I doing?
But most folks scoff at the idea that there might be a perfect
system for doing employee performance appraisal. They think
that since their organization is "unique," then their system
for analyzing employee performance must be unique, too. How
foolish.
Don't scoff - there is an ideal method for the assessment
process. In organizations that take employee performance
appraisal seriously and use the process well, the system
functions as an on-going process - not merely an annual event -
by following a four-phase model.
- Phase - Employee Performance Planning
At the beginning of the year, the manager meets with each
person for discussion on the planning piece of the employee
performance appraisal process. In this hour-long session they
discuss the "how" and the "what" of
the job:
- How the person will do the job (the behaviors and competencies
expected of the company's members), and
- What results the person will achieve over the next twelve
months (the key responsibilities of the person's job and the
goals and projects the person will work on).
They also discuss the individual's development plans. This
discussion immediately generates improved employee performance
because people know exactly what's expected of them. And as the
manager, you have just earned the right to hold people
accountable at the end of the year by making your expectations
of them clear from the start.
- Phase - Employee Performance Execution
Over the course of the year, employee performance should be
focused on achieving the goals, objectives and key
responsibilities of the job. The manager provides coaching and
feedback to the individual to increase the probability of
success and creates the conditions that motivate and resolve
any performance problems that arise.
Midway through the year - perhaps even more frequently - they
meet to review the individual's progress toward the plans and
goals discussed in the employee performance planning meeting.
And the employee is responsible for certain elements of that
progress - seeking out coaching and asking for feedback are two
key examples.
- Phase - Employee Performance Assessment
As the time for the formal employee performance appraisal
approaches, the manager reflects on how well the subordinate
has performed over the course of the year, assembles the
various forms and paperwork that the organization provides to
make this assessment, and fills them out. The manager may also recommend
a change in the individual's compensation based on the quality of the
individual's work.
Best practice calls for the appraiser's boss to review the
completed assessment form before discussing it with the
assessed employee. One key here is not falling victim to the "
myth of quantifiability" - the erroneous belief that in order
to be objective you've got to have numerical data to prove your
assessments. Nonsense! An employee performance appraisal is a
record of a manager's opinion of an employee's quality of work,
so don't shirk from candidly providing that opinion.
- Phase - Employee Performance Review
The manager and the subordinate meet, usually for about an
hour. The employee performance appraisal form is reviewed with
the self-appraisal that the individual created assessing her
own performance. The manager and employee talk honestly about
how well she performed over the past twelve months: Strengths,
weaknesses, successes and areas needing improvement. At the end
of the review meeting they set a date to meet again to hold an
employee performance planning discussion for the upcoming
twelve months, starting the process anew.
This four-phase performance appraisal process not only
transforms employee performance management from an annual event
to an on-going cycle, it tightly links the performance of each
organization member with the mission and values of the company
as a whole. And that's the real purpose of employee performance
appraisal in the organization. The real value is focusing
everyone's attention on what is genuinely important - the
achievement of the organization's strategic goals through
demonstration of the company's vision and values in each
employee's day-to-day behavior.
Dick Grote - has been a management
consultant
for almost thirty years, specializing exclusively in the field
of
http://www.groteconsulting.com/services/performance-appraisal/index.asp
and management. Visit: http://www.groteconsulting.com/
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