When you read this post does it mostly meet your expectations or does it fail to fulfil any of the objectives? Does it hit the targets laid down in previous posts or does it fail to meet our shared goals for self-development? Or does my post surpass all of last year’s expectations thus guaranteeing me a pay rise (hint, hint)?
Most people in large organisations have to go through the appraisal process, sometimes being both the appraiser and the appraised. I have talked to a quite a few people about the subject and every person I have spoken to has responded the same: they would rather have their eyeballs stung by wasps that do an appraisal any time soon. I know it’s not a scientific certainty, but there is something fundamentally wrong with a process when you see people’s flesh pucker with goosebumps at the mere mention of the word. The problem is is that appraisals are commonly linked to cold, hard cash and if you combine the opportunity to criticise people and link their reactions to their salary then something has got to give.
Rather like The Spanish Inquisition, human resources departments the world over have devised a number of fiendish and painful ways of extracting information out of innocent:
- Behavioural Observation Scale Normally it starts at 1, ‘fails to meet expectations’ and ends at 5, ‘Outstanding Performance.’ If you score 1 you are officially a loser; an employee to be scraped off the sole of the corporate shoe at the nearest possible re-structuring opportunity and if you score 5 you simply get a BMW upholstered with money, fuelled by a mixture of champagne and the tears of your fellow workers.
- Management by Objectives (MBO) An employee’s performance is measured by how successfully they accomplish pre-defined objectives. The beauty of this format is that if a member of staff is getting too many pay rises then you can set impossible targets: ‘Target 1: successfully launch a fully functioning satellite using only items from your desk drawer…Target 2: teleport Gwen from I.T. back to medieval Persia to retrieve Ali Baba’s magic carpet’
- 360 Degree Performance Appraisal This is an opportunity – as a manager – to create your own version of Big Brother when you get everyone who works with your employee to write snide things about them so that they won’t be able to feed their kids next year.
- Essay Evaluation‘Once upon a time, there was a departmental head called Bob. Bob, who thought himself wise, was despised by his minions who sat around all day playing Angry Birds when they should have been working. Everyone thought Bob was a bit silly, so this year he won’t be getting any more money…’ You get the idea.
The other purpose is for a manager to be able to keep track of their staff’s development and to highlight any issues that effect their performance so that additional training can be implemented. I have always thought, though, that good management was already knowing what these were – isn’t that what management is all about?
The appraisal process seems – to me – to be a very effective way of describing a horse stable, the angle of degrees that the stable door is open; what kind of bolt is on that door, how the bolt works, the name of the horse that has bolted and how we can ensure that no horses bolt in the future.
The solution? I think managers should be constantly evaluating an employee’s performance, looking for areas of expertise and skill-sets which may be needed. Everyone is different, working on different things with their own challenges and difficulties that are very difficult to measure or quantify. Effective man management is like gardening; everyone grows at different rates, some need to be hot housed and some need nurturing. You can’t accomplish anything if you spend one day in the garden, you need to be there all year .
You could write it on a form…or make a short story about it…or ask everyone else to assess their abilities…or compare what they did to last year but this is about the appraiser not the appraised. If you don’t know who to reward and who not to then you just don’t know your staff.
So, roll your sleeves up, get your gardening gloves out and get to work.
