I think, as with most things, that the value and impact of employee performance appraisals depend on our reasons for conducting them, and the way in which we conduct them. While our corporate culture will certainly influence both of these, we also have a level of choice and responsibility – both as managers and employees. If we want to, we can use them as an effective coaching tool.

But let’s step back for a minute and look at why we even conduct employee performance appraisals.

Why do we do we conduct performance appraisals?

As with most management questions, there are lots of possible answers:

• To help guide employee performance
• To ensure that employees know what is expected of them
• To give employees feedback on their performance so they can continue to develop and improve
• To communicate the competencies or values that are important to the role and the organization
• To identify employees who are not performing as expected and help them improve their performance
• To identify training and development needs and put plans in place to address them
• Etc.

 Some others might add things like this to the list:

• To compare and rank employees
• To identify low performers and document their poor performance so they can be fired
• To guide compensation/pay increase decisions
• To identify high performers for rewards and/or promotions

At their root, employee performance appraisals are a coaching tool

When I look at the list of reasons why we conduct performance appraisals, it seems to me that these are all (or at least the items in the first list) fundamental goals of employee coaching. So how do we transform employee performance appraisals into an effective coaching tool that helps our employees be their best? 

• Engage employees in the performance appraisal process
• Foster an ongoing, two-way dialogue and relationship between them and their manager

Engage employees in the performance appraisal process

I think that employee performance appraisals often fail to help employees be their best because they’re conducted as “top-down” exercises. The manager gives the employee feedback and ratings, and assigns them goals and development plans. Where is the employee in all of this? What about asking them to provide feedback and ratings on their performance? What about asking them to identify areas where they need/want to develop? What do they think the chief goals of their role should be?

Part of helping someone to be their best is giving them the responsibility to be their best. If you’re the passive recipient of feedback, goals, ratings, development plans, it’s hard to feel engaged with them. By finding ways to let employees actively participate in the performance appraisal process, we increase their engagement with the process and with their performance. Why not have them complete a self-appraisal? Why couldn’t they put together a list of potential training courses/activities to help them develop? Why not ask the employee to draft their goals? And if your manager doesn’t explicitly ask you to, why not take the initiative and do these things yourself?

Foster an ongoing, two-way dialogue and relationship

If employee performance appraisals are a “top down” exercise, directed by the manager, they only represent the manager’s perspective. Yet much of our judgments are based on our perspective or perceptions; and these are often limited or even wrong.

By encouraging a two-way dialogue and relationship between a manager and employee we get a truer perspective on employee performance. Because the employee is engaged and involved in the discussions, managers and employees can get a better, truer understanding of what is driving the employee’s performance and challenges.

And by making employee performance management an ongoing practice rather than a once a year event, we take the judgment out of them, and deal with any performance issues when they’re small and easy to fix. The dialogue should be about how the employee is performing and what can be done by all to improve that, rather than about giving ratings and/or criticism. Managers should be asking employees how they can help support their performance. Employees should be telling managers what they need to succeed. And both should be allowed to be human beings who have strengths and weaknesses, good days and bad days.

This kind of open communication allows employees to seek help or coaching without fear of judgment or consequences. It also puts the manager more in the role of coach than judge. This ongoing dialogue and relationship is a great way to help an employee to be their best.

Conclusion

The value and outcome of your employee performance appraisals depend largely on your reasons for conducting them, and the way in which you conduct them. Are you making the most of this potentially valuable process and using it as one of your main tools for employee coaching?

Sean Conrad is a senior product analyst at Halogen Software, one of the leading providers of performance appraisal software solutions. For more of his insights on performance management, read his posts on the Halogen blog.

Take a look at other guest posts here at Never Mind the Manager. If you want to write for my blog, please do contact me! And yes, do subscribe to my blog as well.

I made this graph in a hurry in Photoshop, it is not beautiful, but it will do for this purpose Keep reading to see it explained. You Rock!

Job Lifespan Explained

When you first start your job, you are excited, you are highly motivated and you are happy because you got a new job (A). You do not need much motivation, but you need training to acquire skills. As you move along you will get more experienced as time pass by (towards B). You will develop naturally as you move along. But at one point you will start to feel stagnation (1), it might take months or even years, but you will feel stagnation sooner or later. Then you might need both motivation and if possible new challenges, training or skills. If you are unable to continue developing or motivation is dropping to the floor you will get into a situation where new information becomes boring and you neglect vital information (Moving towards C). You might end up unable to learn new stuff and you are suddenly losing momentum and you fall behind. If you then stay to long you will end up without motivation and skills necessary to do your job good (D). As you lack motivation you will also fall behind on your efforts resulting in poor results.

The Plateau of Evolution

If you feel like you are stagnating (1), you might be in the danger of a motivational drop (B to C) unless you get out of the rut fast. You need to talk to your leader and together look for new challenges or learning opportunities. When a leader manage to identify that their employees are on a plateau or motivation is declining they need to identify what it takes to bring you high up in the right corner with high motivation and high skill.

When do You Quit?

When you are losing motivation and things tend to be boring you have two choices either find motivation somehow or get out before you find yourself in the C of the graph on your way to D. If you find yourself in D you are in danger of being fired soon.

This is how I have been identifying the needs of my employees, this is how I have tried to keep them motivated and in constant development. But I suddenly found myself falling like a rock late this summer, and since all employees deserve a highly inspirational and motivated leader, I decided to resign from my job. So I quit my job last week. All of a sudden I am looking for a new job somewhere.

Now what?
If you want to see how it goes, and follow my journey to my new destination please do subscribe to my blog and I will keep you up to date. Eh… if you have a job for me, please contact me.

Fun at work is very important for morale

Make a random day a party, have fun at work. I have some great employees at my department and they deserved a little attention. It is cheap and affordable fun and the effect is amazing. What did you do today to celebrate Monday morning? (Thank you Shahab for a great idea!)

My Buffalo Wild Wings Rant

(or, on the folly of rewarding A while hoping for A).

“Do you guys have email addresses?” our waitress asked. It was Thursday, and I was partaking in 60-cent Boneless Wings Day. After delivering a sarcastic “No” I asked why she was asking. She wanted us to enroll in the Buffalo Circle Loyalty Program. No, she didn’t want us to…BWW did. Most restaurants have some variation on “offer a free $4 appetizer on your birthday in exchange for attacking you with spam” programs. Our waitress didn’t seem too interested in gaining our email so I asked, “What do you get out of it?”

“I get a ticket for each person enrolled, and every week we have a raffle. The winner gets out of clean up duty.”

Suddenly, I figured out why she wasn’t interested.

In a perfect world, employees would be perfectly matched to their job. Every manager would be a leader and leaders would inspire and engage their employees by reminding them how their job ties into a larger mission. But sometimes you just need wings delivered to table eight. Those jobs call for transactional leadership, a.k.a., incentives. It’s a standard rule of organizational psychology: that which gets measured gets done; rewarded gets done better (or more often). Expectancy theory tells us incentives work when task performance is easily related to the reward, and the reward is desired. But if you make the incentive too complex, or one no one cares about, the system falls apart.

You get waitresses who don’t care if I become a member of the hallowed Buffalo Circle.

So what should Buffalo Wild Wings do? Pay for performance: a dollar for each enrollee. Or force rank employees: everyone gets a percentage in tip share equal to their percentage of enrollees. There are many different incentive solutions that would simply tie performance to reward.

A raffle tickets is not one of them.

David Burkus
editor | LeaderLab
http://theleaderlab.org