BCA

By Scott H. Brown

You know the feeling. All day you have been distracted by that 2pm appointment on your calendar; “Annual Performance Appraisal with Supervisor”. Your palms are clammy, your thoughts are distracted and you find yourself questioning whether your boss really knows your true value and what you accomplished this year.

In many organizations, the annual performance appraisal is tied to merit pay increases and possibly future promotional opportunities. When supervisors look to promote from within, often the first question they ask is “may I see the candidate’s performance appraisals?” But are these annual performance appraisals really the best source of data to measure someone’s promotional worth or merit increase?

Annual reviews mean keeping records

To answer that question, let’s first take a look at the timing. Annual performance appraisals take place annually, just as the name implies. This means that a supervisor should have been keeping records of all the positive contributions the employee made to the Company in the past year as well as all of the mistakes the employee has made over the past year.

More often than not, the record of the employee’s performance contains far more of the negatives from the past year rather than the accomplishments. Because let’s face it, there is a far bigger need to keep records of issues than there is to keep a record of accomplishments in the mind of most managers.

Most supervisors have not been trained

Secondly, most supervisors have not been trained on how to write and conduct performance appraisals effectively. This lack of training, when coupled with a lack of oversight from a third party, can lead an employee to be reviewed on an incomplete and sometimes biased recollection of his/her body of work. Managers commonly make rater errors, not because they mean to, but because they don’t know how not to make these errors. Included in these rater errors are the mistakes of:

Recency – giving far too much weight to a recent success or failure

Halo/Horn effect – looking at a miniscule sample of the total body of work and deciding the employee is either better than actual (halo effect) or worse than actual (horn effect).

Same as Me Effect – if the employee takes a markedly different approach, he/she may be reviewed more harshly for not doing it like the rater would do it.

Comparison Effect – comparing employees only to each other rather than to a pre-determined set of criteria. The best employee on a rotten team may be rated as a star when his/her performance may only be average compared to the job description.

Bias Effect – placing personal bias against an individual because of any number of reasons can affect the rating either way significantly. If the rater does not like people from cold weather climates, the individual’s performance will have little bearing on the outcome of the performance appraisal.

Conflicting Messages – telling the employee all year that his/her performance is acceptable and then delivering a different message during the review process can erode the confidence the employee has in the supervisor and the company. This issue is much more common when the employee’s supervisor changes during the year and rates the performance against a different standard than the previous supervisor used.

Critical Incidents – providing too much weight to a spectacular incident that occurred throughout the year. While it may work in the employees favor is the incident was positive, it can have devastating effects if the incident was negative.

In addition to these rater errors, timing of actual feedback can have a significant impact on actual employee performance. Feedback, either positive or negative, that occurs at the time of an incident or at the close of a project is far more effective in shaping employee behavior than feedback that is only provided once a year.

This is especially true for younger workers in an organization who are accustomed to receiving immediate feedback from immediate rewards for most everything in their life.

Younger workers expect immediate feedback

From Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn to drive-thru’s to microwaves, younger workers have been programmed to expect immediate feedback and immediate rewards. If praise is consistently not delivered when a success is achieved, the employee can begin to feel as though he/she doesn’t matter.

Conversely, if coaching feedback is not delivered, it loses its value of being applied to the specific discrepancy of performance.

For all these reasons, it is apparent that the annual performance appraisal, when used individually, is not only a poor tool to use when looking to make a promotional or compensation decision, but is also a poor tool to use when looking to impact employee behavior and performance. But I do not recommend scrapping the annual review process all-together.

Combine appraisal with other tools

Rather, I promote using the annual performance review in concert with other tools:

•Train all raters on how to effectively rate an employee’s performance
•Train all managers on how to document the good as well as the bad that is witnessed over the course of a year
•Establish a vetting process to ensure oversight in to the review process to reduce rater bias and rater error
•Implement a coaching in the moment program to ensure all supervisors become excellent sources of immediate positive and constructive feedback
•Augment the annual review with a monthly touch base between the manager and the employee
•Ensure other metrics are utilized to verify the employee’s true contribution to the success of the organization

These tools will contribute to better business decisions

By putting all of these tools to use in your Company, you will not only increase engagement of your employees, but you will also have the tools necessary to make better business decisions in regards to your people.

My HR Business Partner is an Orlando, Fl based human resource consulting firm specializing in delivering expert human resource advice and solutions to ensure our clients build a competitive advantage through their people. We specialize in helping small-to-mid sized businesses who either can not afford their own HR department or who need specialized services not available from their in-house staff. Visit us today at http://www.myhrbusinesspartner.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_H_Brown

From the Center for Creative Leadership

Businesses with effective corporate social responsibility programs often reap significant benefits from “doing good.” They can build a winning brand and encourage a positive outlook by both customers and shareholders. But can the same social responsibility programs have an impact on employee retention?

The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL®) explored that question during its 2008-2009 World Leadership Study, which sampled the opinions of 2,215 workers around the globe. There were three key findings related to how employees respond to social responsibility initiatives:

1.Corporate social responsibility programs are linked to how committed an employee is to an employer. This finding holds true across all ages and job levels and is particularly strong among women workers. The higher an employee rates an organization on its commitment to good corporate citizenship, the more committed the employee is likely to be to the organization.

2.Employee perceptions about corporate social responsibility remained constant during the depth of the economic decline. Despite budget reductions and layoffs becoming commonplace, employees were bullish about at least one thing. They believed their employers were committed to acting responsibly in the community.

3.Corporate social responsibility programs are not a panacea for retention issues. CSR is related to organizational commitment, but not to turnover, so companies can’t consider corporate social responsibility programs a cure-all for retention issues.
“If an employee isn’t happy, a strong corporate social responsibility program isn’t likely to tip the balance,” says Sarah Stawiski, Ph.D., a CCL post-doctoral research fellow and co-author of a report on the research. “Though a good social responsibility program won’t reduce turnover, it can impact how employees view your organization and the kind of ambassadors they will be when they come in contact with your customers, shareholders and community members. There are definitely positive benefits to be had.”

Stawiski’s recommendations to employers: Look for ways to leverage social responsibility initiatives internally. Communicate the contributions you’re making in the community and get employees involved.

Further details on CCL’s study are available in the report Employee Perceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility and the Implications for Your Organization. It was authored by Stawiski and her fellow CCL researchers, Jennifer Deal and William A. (Bill) Gentry.