Performance Evaluations in a Changing World

Friday, February 28, 2014

We are all familiar with the ubiquitous employee performance evaluation.  Virtually every organization has one or more, sometimes associated with the employee’s job classification.  Every human resource vendor has several for sale.  Some are purchased and some are developed in-house.  Furthermore, no one likes them or thinks they are very good at measuring “true performance”.  Thus many question an attempt to measure employee performance with a tool that is perceived as less than accurate, valid or reliable, especially when organizations are changing at light speed?

Organizations need some method of how well an employee, and by proxy, how well mangers and business units are performing in the human resource sphere.  Otherwise, how else is an employer going to support employee and job actions?  Likewise employees want to know how they are performing and employees also want to be rewarded.  This cycle of behavior-reward has been programmed into us from birth.  We are rewarded with parental praise as a child and with recognition and advancement in school.  And lastly, we expect to be rewarded and advanced in the workplace.  Essentially, this paradigm is the foundation of much of human behavior.

At issue is how do we evaluate performance when job expectations are consistently changing?  How do we, as managers, set expectations when neither we nor our organizations may know the next major direction the organization is going to take?  How do we coach and direct an employee on what skills are needed for the next project in the pipeline?

First, none of us may ever be able to foresee the next big change in our organizations.  We need to learn to accept the fact change is going to occur and occur at an ever increasing rate, aka, Moore’s Law.  Dealing positively with change becomes a skill in our toolbox as well as in our employee’s toolbox.  Coaching employees to see change as a challenge and an opportunity for the employee to shine is one approach.

Second, the mental model with we approach change is going to telegraph to everyone around us.  If we are positive, they are more likely to see the change as positive.  Since our success as leaders is closely correlated to the success of those we lead, it really is in our self interest for them to rise to the occasion. 

Lastly, it is important to communicate with everyone.  This means asking those who lead us to explain the business reason(s) behind the change.  Once we understand the driving force of the change we can better communicate to others, such as those we lead.  Our complete understanding of what change is occurring is going to help us positively communicate with your management, peers, and those we lead.

RoseFass, CEO of the consulting company fassforward was quoted in an 11/05/2013 article by Dorie Clark in Fobes as saying,” The best kind of change comes when you envision, initiate and control it. That type of change creates opportunities, transforms companies and ignites growth.”