Leaders: Making Performance Appraisals Matter

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Melissa Lanier

Performance Assessments

The end of the year is just around the corner.  Are you preparing to write performance appraisals for the people on your team?   

According to the 2012 SHRM/Globoforce Employee Recognition Report, only 55 percent of the HR leaders who responded to the survey think annual performance reviews are an accurate appraisal for employees’ work at their organization.

What would that number be if we asked the people receiving the appraisals?

Year-End Results

The 55% level is a dismal statistic.  But as a manager of people, you can’t opt out of your organization’s year-end review process.  And even more importantly, as a leader, you know that people need feedback to develop.

Every learner needs feedback. It is the only way to know whether or not you are getting close to your goal and whether or not you are executing properly. – Kouzes and Posner, The Truth About Leadership

Getting Feedback

Sometimes you may not have the full picture to provide helpful or balanced  feedback.  In many cases, it is helpful to seek feedback from peers that see your team members in action on a daily basis.

In fact, some companies find peer feedback so useful that they are making it a part of their ongoing performance management process.

For example, Hearsay Social Inc., a San Francisco-based social-media software company with some 90 employees, began doing peer reviews for all of its employees in 2012.

In this approach, employee chooses reviewers and department leaders also request input from others who might be able to provide relevant feedback.

Peer feedback, incorporated into the performance review, can be an important tool in the development of the people you lead.  But like any other tool, you should understand how to use it to get the best results.

Benefits of Feedback

There are many benefits that can come from peer feedback.

Here are a few examples:

  • Input from peers can round out your perceptions of a direct report’s performance.
  • Feedback from multiple sources allows you to give each person on your team more complete feedback.
  • Specific examples can add detail and clarity to the appraisal.
  • You may gain insights about previously unknown conflicts.
  • Misses brought up in peer feedback can give the opportunity to reinforce the idea that sometimes we learn best when we  try new things and make mistakes.
  • Comments that focus on strengths can help to identify successes – great examples of people living your organization’s values or meeting critical goals.

Seeing the Whole Picture

It is important to note that peer feedback may not paint a total picture.

Here are some reasons:  

  • Peers may have concerns about being revealed as the source of negative feedback.
  • Some may have concerns that a manager will share raw data or quotes.
  • You many encounter fear  that open feedback will lead to friction on the team.
  • Sometimes people are asked to provide feedback on a peer they do not know well or on behaviors they do not have a chance to observe.
  • Finally, sometimes reviewers provide very cursory feedback as they are pressed for time and don’t want to decline to participate.

Making the Most of Feedback

So what can you do to make the most of peer feedback for your team?

Here is what you can do:

  • Ask your direct reports for 3 names of peers to provide feedback and then add others you think would add value.
  • Request feedback from those that employees work with consistently and who have a chance to observe their day-to-day behaviors.
  • Be aware of friendships in the organization and request feedback from those most likely to be unbiased.
  • As you use the data from the feedback in the performance review, focus comments on behaviors rather than individual personality traits.
  • Adapt the feedback to the situation.  Feedback is most effective when it is provided in the content of the person and their situation.

Giving Feedback Over Time

Personal insight and development is not the result of a single instance of shared feedback.  Developing your team will happen over time and will be the result of ongoing, meaningful conversations.

You don’t want to save up feedback until somebody fails. -  Blanchard and Ridge, Helping People Win at Work

In fact, you may want to continue the process of asking for peer feedback throughout the year. This type of ongoing feedback can help you know how to coach the people on your team to success.

Your Opinion Counts!

Q: Do you think annual performance reviews are an accurate appraisal for employees’ work at your organization? 

Participate in this quick poll and share your thoughts!

Do you think annual performance reviews are an accurate appraisal for employees’ work at your organization?  Are you using peer feedback as part of your appraisal process? Do you have other tips to make performance appraisals more accurate and relevant?

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Melissa Lanier

Melissa Lanier leads Global Talent Management for an S&P SmallCap 600 Firm
She is driven to build High Performing Cultures Aligned to Strategy
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Blog | Web

Image Sources: tylerandmimiford.com

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Slacker Talent: Your Recipe for Disaster

Posted on May 27, 2011 by Delana Mckinsley

Loser Sign

The number of employees that are highly disengaged has doubled since the beginning of 2008.

It’s tough enough to make it out of an economic downturn, but companies and leaders now also have to deal with the legacy of the talent they hired during a boom that came before that downturn.

Remember the good times? The good times we enjoy in our economy aren’t always great for recruitment. For hiring the right person in the right job, the good times seemed to cover over poor recruiting just to “put cheeks in seats.”

You have a very small pool to swim in and sometimes you unwittingly hire slacker talent.

So What To Do?

On Managing Performance in an Uncertain Economy, The Corporate Leadership Council is making research available to its members on topics of great interest. The legacy of the boom coupled with the downturn is a recipe for disaster.

This one caught my eye:

“How do we keep high performance, manage out low performers, and improve productivity of the broader workforce?”

Yes I guess I did say it out loud. Slackers. Lazy people. Ill-fitting talent.

All I see clearly is this: You have the wrong person holding court in a job that perhaps is getting very little or no results but sucking the energy out of you and your team.

Like Ill-Fitting Shoes

Final SaleIt’s perhaps haunting your performance reviews much like the running shoes you bought that never really fit because they were available and on sale.

They just stare back at you with the new tags still hanging off… only worse because the tags are really faded and worn now.

So you can’t take them back anymore. And they are keeping you from running.

Even worse, they had the red tag – the FINAL SALE.

A Better Way to Win

Thankfully in our talent decisions, we don’t have to have a final sale that we are stuck with. It‘s time to get out while you can. And you can. Don’t wait.

Like Nike says – Just do it!

The cost of a bad hire is astronomical. Some experts in recruitment have estimated $15,000. I think that is a drop-in-the-bucket. Many studys say the cost is as high as 2 1/2 times a person’s salary.

What about the cost to the team and all that driving time when you should be listening to your favourite music is fraught with what can I do to make this work. Slackers are playing on your radio. You have dead-weight dragging your good and great performance down into the mud…. and it has been going on for perhaps way too long.

Justifying Your Past

Don’t be too hard on yourself. After all, recruiting and hiring during a time when the talent was downright dismal was, in fact, downright dismal.

You might be thinking, “We did the best we could with what we had.” “We did all the right things:

  • Spent more time trying to manage poor performance…
  • Invested time trying to ‘coach, manage, develop competency’…
  • Thought about it in the car ride home…
  • Discussed it…
  • Mentioned it at lunch…

But Let’s Get Real

Guess what? You didn’t do the right things at all. They didn’t fit the first time. They never did. It’s time to clean that shoe closet. The impact of low, no, or negative performance from these ill-fitting team members can’t be ignored any more.

So now that the downturn will likely be another upswing at some point (…my guess is very soon), always remember the tough lessons.

At the very worst, keep the position empty as a vacancy causing no performance is better than negative performance and cost associated with the wrong shoe rotting in the closet.

Lesson In Shoes

Never buy something that doesn’t fit or sort of fits – even it looks like a bargain. Its true with retail running shoes and in recruitment.  Two great tips. I hope they fit.

Have you ever hired the wrong fit?  What happened?  What did you do about it?  What did you wish you did about it? What are the key issues facing your talent and performance? What would you like to see happening on your team that isn’t? What can you do as a leader to prevent slacker talent from infiltrating? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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Delana McKinsley Zarokostas is VP Housing & Dev at Related Group of Companies
She serves her clients in building organizational development and effectiveness
Email | LinkedIn | Facebook | Skype: delana1973 | (403) 472 – 7779

Image Sources: visualphotos.com, greenwichct.com

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Filed under: Leadership Lessons Learned, Leading & Developing Other Leaders, Professional Development | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Changing Tools for Changing Times

Posted on April 2, 2009 by L2L Contributing Author

pipe-wrench
With changing economic times comes the need to provide tools that are flexible to change along with them. Many organizational tools that were designed for yesterday’s performance standards and not proving flexible enough to be effective for today’s market conditions.

For instance, competency-based performance management systems are proving to be too rigid for these current changing economic times. Although they have beneficial components built in, like including competencies that are applicable to an entire company, they also can be limiting.  They also have beneficial components like dealing with things like strategic thinking, developing others, creating vision, etc., but they may not prove as effective when things slow down and organizational needs change dramatically.

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In a slowing economy, the organization that is set up to effectively deal with fluctuating demand dynamically changes to match market conditions. Unfortunately, the organizational support processes that is geared to serve an organization in a more robust set of economics conditions rarely changes along side the rest of the adaptive organism. These inflexible, un-dynamic systems simply remain the same.

Examples include a performance plan that emphasizes succession planning and developing bench strength when the new realities of the workplace environment show that the needs of the organizations have taken an about-face. Imagine using these tools when faced with 50% headcount reductions. Or what about polices that boast of promoting from within, while training programs are reduced and continuing education budgets are cut.

Having unwieldy tools like this at hand is like asking for a scalpel to perform delicate surgery and being handed a 4-pound pipe wrench to do the job. It just doesn’t seem appropriate.

If a performance management system encourages development, promotion from within, succession planning, and training, does the reward for leaders adhering to these behaviors continue to match the expectation of the organization?

If there is a lack of alignment between organizational expectations and leadership behaviors, what does the lack of alignment do to the management team’s morale? Who needs to address these issues?

Questions: How do you modify the organizational systems/processes without redoing all of the work done on the existing system (training, recruiting, performance management, etc.)? How do you make your toolkit more adaptive and flexible for real life economic.organizational needs? What is your leadership doing about this?

Posted on April 2, 2009 by Contributing Author Kyle Weldon

Image Source castlemanplumbing.com

Filed under: Future Leadership Issues, Leadership Assessments, Organizational Health, Servant Leadership | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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