Ahh, that old topic again. Performance management is one of those lifecycle activities that lots of people know doesn’t really work, but we keep on doing all the same because we haven’t come up with anything better. There are several reasons why traditional approaches towards performance management don’t deliver the value that they should.
The commonly held view in many organisations seems to be that “performance management” is something that you do at particular times – maybe once a year when it’s the dreaded appraisal meeting or when a member of staff is seen as underperforming and their manager has that “we need to performance manage x” conversation with HR. You know the one. Where “performance management” is a euphemism for “get rid of ”….
One of the main reasons that traditional performance reviews don’t work is that a lot of people are very bad at them. Giving feedback, especially when it is not positive feedback, is very difficult, and many managers will simply avoid it if they can.
Another reason for the failure of performance reviews is sometimes the process itself. It has been made too complex, too difficult to comply with, or too bureaucratic. Occasionally it is a training issue for managers in terms of how to actually do them at all. Sometimes, people just don’t see the need.
Here is what we think. Performance management should not be once a year. Neither is it something that should only be done to someone when they are underperforming. But when done badly, performance reviews are more disengaging than engaging.
Lots of HR departments don’t like performance reviews either. They make us become something that we don’t really want to be: all about compliance. We monitor how many have been completed, the scores that have been attributed. This doesn’t help us with the reputation issue we talked about earlier. A completed form also tells you precisely nothing about the quality of the conversation, only the quantity completed. Anyone can do a review. Doing an excellent one is a different ball game entirely.
Recommendations for performance management:
• Consider whether you really need a ‘score’. If the score doesn’t link to anything or drive anything, then stop having one. They alienate people and make the score the focus of the conversation, not the performance.
• If you do stack ranking/curve ratings, then consider stopping these immediately. They are disastrous for your culture and employee engagement.
• Review your process, and simplify it wherever possible. The more straightforward the process or the form to be completed, the more the focus will shift to where it should be: the conversation.
• Make sure that your managers have the skills they need to give good feedback and to coach rather than tell.
• If you have a problem with managers completing reviews at all, resist the urge to tinker with the process until you find out the reason why.
• Discourage use of the ‘feedback sandwich’. This is where you give good feedback, followed by something you want the person to do differently, followed by good feedback. Although it slipped some years ago into accepted practice, it doesn’t work and is confusing for the recipient.
0 comments:
Post a Comment