Employee Performance Appraisals

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

 

What do employee performance appraisals and report cards have in common? No one looks forward to them.

Virtually all employers have some form of periodic employee performance appraisals or evaluations. Some are complex, written, and detailed others are simple, some gather input from a 360 range of peers, subordinates, and supervisors, others do not. Managers do not enjoy delivering them and employees do not enjoy receiving them. And why is that?

For many managers and employees the “annual” review is one of a very few times when they both sit down and talk about expectations and performance. In a typical day, managers and employees often deal with each other in attempting to put out some fire, deliver a report on time or deal with some crisis. However, there needs to be time dedicated to discussing performance throughout the year. While I am personally in favor of short informal monthly “discussion” sessions throughout the year, others may prefer something more formal and on a more or less frequent basis. For me, these are two-way conversations where I am coaching the employee, understanding what barriers the employee encounters, and getting feedback on how I am doing as a supervisor.

We have all had managers who had no business being in a supervisory role. I always used these situations as an opportunity to learn what NOT to do and add them to my own supervisory toolkit. I found that an understanding of the employee’s life, their situation, their family, and their environment allow me to build a relationship that promotes trust. That trust provides me with an opportunity to coach the employee on a daily basis and shape their behavior in the direction I want. Moreover, since this is done within an environment of trust, the employee generally perceives it in a non-threatening manner. Furthermore, by laying groundwork of my expectations through coaching early on in our relationship, the employee was less likely to find themselves is an “I got you” situation in the future.

Rather than deliver a barrage of expectations after the fact or in the middle of some crisis, setting my expectations up front, in advance, and then coaching the employee daily, results in the desired outcome. Borrowing a phrase from Richard Finnegan’s “Rethinking Retention in Good Times and Bad”, I “scripted” the employee’s experience in a manner that delivers “value” to both the company and the employee. This approach allows me to quickly develop an understanding of the employee’s performance capabilities and build a relationship with the employee. If an issue with the employee’s performance develops early on, it is easier to deal with while it is small and manageable, rather than a year later when it is a serious problem.

Certainly, the formal annual employee performance process is an essential part of managing the supervisor-employee relationship. However, the outcome of that process should not come as a surprise to the employee. All too often employees learn of a performance issue for the first time during their annual review rather than when it occurred six months earlier. If we are coaching and managing the employee’s performance throughout the first 30, 60, 90, and 180 days of their employment; the employee is going to have a clear understanding of where their performance stands long before their annual review. Something is wrong if we, as supervisors, are sitting down with the employee at their first annual review time explaining that they are being let go. If a performance issue arose and we failed to address it six months earlier, then someone has to question why we are in a supervisory role.