Appraisals: Measuring success?

Synopsis: With assumptions built into the performance appraisal process, context is generally missed.

Theorists say that each job should be directed towards the objectives of the business, the success of the whole. Performance appraisals (PA) are meant to identify and measure, so that this success may be managed.

The assumptions

Built into the PA process are assumptions that:

• One appraisal process can effectively serve several functions at the same time – like training, promotions, compensation, etc.
• People want and need to know where they stand, and appraisals tell them so, i.e., they provide accurate performance feedback.
• The organization and the supervisor are responsible for individual employees’ morale, performance, and development – and PAs help to motivate the employees.
  

The PA decides the organizational value of the people. It’s relied on to regulate outputs and manage resources.

Differing focus

But critics say that when management focus is solely on the bottomline, the targets set are often unrealistic and impossible to reach. In most companies, PAs also turn out to be the only source of employee feedback.

As a result employees may spend much of their time dissatisfied with their last review or dreading the next one. Their work focus then shifts – from actual performance on the job to calculation of rewards.

Inequity

Interest in the work itself diminishes, and workforce members compete for favours from authority instead. What gets measured gets done or enhanced. Obviously other aspects of the job may be ignored.

Employees realize that they don’t own their job decisions; they don’t have control over their work. And thence, many don’t feel accountable for it either. The sense of teamwork or a collective performance for the organization is lost. When the tasks are complex, or there is inequity between effort and remuneration, working hard may soon become hardly working!

The burden

One PA to feed many channels is a "bureaucratic burden" that interferes with performance and wastes resources. It pressures individual, group and organization, with numerous hours of preparation, extensive paperwork and psychologically stressful interactions. The employee at work is made to feel the sword of Damocles hanging overhead.

In knowledge-based situations, many managers are unhappy themselves with using the PA process on members of their teams. Documentation of individual performance could imply serious performance problems even when there aren’t any.

Missing context

Surveys conducted through the ‘90s showed that between 80 and 90 percent of appraisals are ineffective. Should organizations then stop measuring performance?

No, say performance consultants, because measurement of performance and its feedback is critical for a high performing unit. However, they point out, the performance appraisals as practiced, generally miss the “adult-to-adult context”.

Fact is the workforce is also an organizational stakeholder. In knowledge-based systems, their intellectual capacities form the business platform. It is difficult to pin numbers on these contributions. The organization that relies overly on targets achieved fails to recognise the efforts involved, and effects of the circumstances surrounding the performance process. It fails in its duty to its internal customers - the workforce - and in alienating them, loses long-term effectiveness.

Cont’d 2… the drive to excel