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Annual staff appraisals inadequate
Many managers are uncomfortable judging their employees’ performance. File
A rich man who had three sons wrote in records how he wanted his wealth of 17 cows divided when he died: half of the cows to his eldest son; a sixth for the second son and one ninth to the youngest.
Everyone must give a cow to the person who divides them to all the three without dispute.
This was confusing. The villagers concluded that at least one had to adjust. But none of the brothers was willing to sacrifice their part. Everyone was expecting a quarrel.
Then a traveller appeared with a cow. After inquiring about the case, he volunteered to solve the problem — if the villagers and the brothers would let him. They agreed.
He added his cow to the other 17, making 18. He gave half of them to the eldest; a sixth to the second son and a ninth to the youngest.
The traveller got three cows for solving the problem and took back his cow.
Companies worldwide understand that employees are the most important resource in business, and growth is being driven by pressure to get more value from the workers.
However, until recently, methods and technologies to measure and quantify employee performance have been inadequate. Largely, the traditional process run by HR is suffering from a few problems:
Performance is continuous. Thus, this method cannot save mid-way disasters caused by employees or by negligent managers who have not been following business plans or objectives.
Once-a-year-evaluation also leads to lack of a collaborative platform between HR and line managers, and HR often knows little about specific employee roles and management functions.
Nonetheless, the evaluation forms are usually prepared by the HR department and are often too general and rigid, containing jargons that do not apply to the employee.
Subjective values, like personal traits, are often used, making it hard to rate employees. Measuring maturity, attitude, personality, initiative, dependability, and competencies may also lead to charges of bias and discrimination.
If there are, the goals are established by the supervisor. As a result, the evaluations do not correspond nor are they unified with the overall company objective.
Because the evaluation is done based on what the supervisor thinks about the employee, employees often perceive feedback as inadequate, misleading, inconsistent, or biased.
Accordingly, employees have less trust and enthusiasm when performing their tasks. Furthermore, without a unified system, problems occur when the supervisor or manager leaves the job or is transferred to another department before the evaluation period starts.
Historically, HR has fewer employees compared to other departments and technology has brought departments down to a skeleton. With such an unfavourable difference, human resource teams cannot give the necessary attention required for each employee.
Line managers and employees know each other better, have a greater level of trust, or are at least better suited to comment on each other’s competencies. This is not necessarily the case between HR and employees.
Managers and supervisors who loathe assessment
Many managers are uncomfortable judging their employees’ performance. Who to reward for excellent performance or who to train for improvement becomes a big issue, especially when there is no methodology for measuring performance.
Constructive criticism can be difficult for some employees. Many take criticism personally and become defensive.
The villagers and sons looked at the problem from inside and were, thus, unable to come to a conclusion. In order to arrive at a better decision out of a HR problem, always step away, and look at the it as a third person does.
The traveller looked at the problem from outside and was able to give a better solution to the problem. All the best with your performance evaluation challenges for 2013.
