Performance Appraisal Key Terms Term Definition Introduced in · 2017-12-07 · Performance...

Performance Appraisal Key Terms

Glossary

Term Definition Introduced in:

Development activitiesActions that challenge and improve employee performance such as training, mentoring and leading projects Module 3

Development goals Objectives meant to increase employee knowledge and skill through learning and development Module 3

Job description Aids in hiring and defining the essential job tasks and responsibilities of a position Module 2

Performance development

The cultivation of employee knowledge and skill to reach performance goals; involves coaching, training, and guiding your employees to build skills and develop the performance you need in order to accomplish your goals Module 1

Performance goals Short term, specific objectives related to job description and organizational goals Module 2

Performance reviewA formal, sit-down meeting focused on the successful or unsuccessful accomplishment of employee goals and essential job role tasks Module 1

Skill assessment The evaluation of critical skills of a given position Module 3

SMART goals Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound objectives Module 2

Performance Appraisal Module 1 Page 1

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL MODULE ONE – PERFORMANCE DEVELOPMENT Module One – Performance Development. So what is performance development and

why should you as a manager do it? You know how busy managers are. You’re

responsible for getting the job done, no matter if you have too few resources

or not enough time, it’s your responsibility to get the job done. And now here

I’m telling you that your most important job is employee development. But I’m

talking now about how you can accomplish your organization’s mission for the

long haul. You can’t jump in and do everything yourself. You can’t clone

yourself in order to have all of your employees with your skill set and

knowledge and experience. It would be great if you could hire employees who

already had the exact skills that they need, and know exactly what to do and

how to do it. But how often does that happen? So what you need to do is to

make an environment where your employees can develop the knowledge and

skills that they need to get the job done. And that involves training, coaching,

and guiding your employees to build skills and develop the performance that

you need in order to accomplish your goals. And in order to get the employees

where they need to go, first you have to evaluate where they are now. And so

we have Performance Appraisals. But can’t you guide your employees and

develop performance without the need for the whole formal sit-down interview

that ends with a rating? A lot of people think so, and I myself would rather do

away with the rating aspect of the process. Most of the appraisal systems that

I’ve seen – been familiar with – have used a five level rating system where 5 is


perfect, 4 exceeds expectations, a 3 meets requirements, 2 needs

improvement, and a 1 means the employee is in big trouble. Now I don’t think

these ratings work well in practice for a lot of reasons that we’ll talk about a

little bit later. I’ve worked with systems that have tied pay directly to the

ratings, and the ratings were directly tied to the accomplishment of the

employee’s annual goals. The idea was to reward the best employees with

bigger raises and bonuses – pay for performance. Well, that system might have

sounded good on paper, but it was a disaster in practice. While my own

performance was being evaluated under that system, I had received a big

promotion with a corresponding pay raise during the year. So at appraisal

time, my manager told me that while of course I was one of the top

performers, as evidenced by the big promotion, he had to depress my rating for

the year and rate me as average. Depress my rating? For one of the best years

ever? Well, he was sure that I would understand that if I got the raise that was

actually tied to my performance, that I would be making more money than –

and then he named a couple of names of other managers who had more

seniority than I had. Well, I’ll have to admit that I did not understand while we

went through the motions of this very complicated system, and then picked a

rating out of a hat. The best system that I worked under had only two ratings:

the employee meets or exceeds requirements; or the employee does not meet

requirements. The focus of this system was the feedback cycle and the

developing the employee performance rather than on the ratings. Now of

course, you have to work with the system that you have in place at your


organization, and if you’re required to give ratings, then you’ll just have to

make them as fair and objective as you can. But if you have an opportunity to

not do ratings and still give feedback, I think that’s the way to go. So what’s

the problem with performance reviews? Well first, everybody hates them. The

way most companies handle performance reviews, they’re treated like a big

event. At the end of the performance year, now it’s time to do reviews. HR is

sending out reminders of which managers are late, and everyone’s in a big rush

to meet the deadline. Lots of managers rush through the process, and I can’t

tell you how many times I’ve gotten my annual review left in my in-basket with

a post-it note saying, “Please sign, make yourself a copy and return.” Well, I

hope that if you use some of the techniques and advice in this program, you

can get your reviews finished without a lot of stress. Most work is too difficult

to quantify. Not everyone works on a production line where you can quantify

the number of items completed in a time period. So a lot of times, in order to

make the review objective, managers will focus only on the things that they

can count and not mention any of the other things that the employee has done.

In that pay for performance system that I talked about before, we had to set

our goals and objectives for the year, and we were limited to three goals. And

we were only rated and only given feedback on whether or not we had

accomplished those three goals, no matter what else we might have had done

through the year. Performance reviews are not objective. Reviews by nature

are mostly subjective, and even if you could say that you as a manager are 100

percent fair and unbiased with your employees’ reviews, it’s likely that your


employees’ ratings are being compared to other employees who were rated by

other managers. Performance reviews are an excuse for not talking during the

rest of the year. How many managers have you had that didn’t give any

performance feedback until the annual appraisal? Giving feedback is not easy

for a lot of managers, so they end up avoiding talking to their employees about

their performance until the annual review when they can’t get out of it. I hope

that you use the techniques in this program, and that you’ll learn not to be one

of those kind of managers. Reviews take a lot of time. Well, I agree. But like

I said, employee performance development is your most important job. The

payoff will be that if you spend your time developing your employees, you

might not have to spend your time fighting those crises that come up when

your employees don’t have clear direction and expectations. And last, most

managers don’t practice what they preach. Well, this is undoubtedly true.

That same guy who always left my appraisal in my in-box was the strongest

proponent of that pay-for-performance system. One thing that a lot of

managers do that I really feel robs employees of genuine feedback is they

require their employees to do a self-review prior to the annual review. Well,

that’s fine. But then they commandeer the employee self-assessments and use

them for the annual review write up and just add a rating. That results in zero

feedback. I had a manager who ever year, took my self-evaluation and wrote

“concur” by each item, and then gave me whatever rating he had already

decided on. But you don’t have to be the manager who doesn’t practice what

they preach. In fact, if you use the ideas in this program, writing and giving


your annual reviews will be a lot easier. So what’s the answer for ineffective

performance reviews? Well, in order to make the reviews effective, make the

annual performance review part of an effective performance development

cycle. Don’t just do the annual review and feel that’s all the feedback you

owe to your employees. The annual review is only one part of the performance

development cycle. You need to clarify and define objectives and goals. This

gives employees motivation through achievement. Employees should be

accountable for their performance, and I’m not saying that they should be

rated only on the goals that they set at the beginning of the year. We have all

set goals that for one reason or another, something outside of our control made

them impossible to achieve. But sometimes, an employee can do some really

great work and still not have met that goal. But they are accountable for their

performance. You should include development goals and development

activities that will increase your employees’ skill and knowledge. And you

should give ongoing feedback – not just at review time. And you should include

employee recognition – rewards for going that extra mile and for outstanding

performance. We will talk in more detail about all of the steps in the

Performance Development Cycle as we go through today’s program. So what

are the rewards of an effective performance development cycle? It sounds like

a lot of work for you, the manager, who’s already the busiest person in the

place. So what’s in it for you? Well, you have a much better chance of

achieving your own goals and your company’s mission if your employees are

knowledgeable, they have clear expectations, and they’re working toward


goals, and they’re more invested in doing a good job. You as the manager, the

more time that you spend on developing your employees, the less time that you

might have to spend on fixing problems or on discipline problems that arise

from unclear expectations or lack of knowledge. The costs of failing to manage

performance effectively include unresolved performance issues, and lead to

lower productivity, poor morale both for the problem employees and for the

other employees on their team.

[End of recording.]


PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL MODULE TWO – STANDARDS, GOALS, AND EXPECTATIONS Module Two – Standards, Goals, and Expectations. In this module, we’ll talk about

writing standards for evaluation and setting performance goals. First we’re

going to talk about job descriptions. A job description is the standard against

which you measure your employees’ achievements. A job description, or

position description, is a brief written explanation of a job. It’s a summary of

the main duties and responsibilities of the position and what is needed to be

successful in that position. As a manager, you may or may not be the one who

develops and writes the position descriptions, but even if you don’t write

them, you should make sure that the position description supports your

expectations for your employees. If not, then you need to have them changed.

The position description should contain enough detail so that a reader can

make accurate references about what the job entails. The main elements of a

position description are the position details, position characterization, and

position requirements. The position details include the position title and any

other classification information about the position, such as job, rank, or grade.

The position characterization describes the job duties and the job

environment. For example, it may include a summary of tasks and

responsibilities, information on the level of contact, working condition, and the

tools and equipment that are used in the position. The position requirements

list employee characteristics necessary for success in the position. For

example, position requirements could include such qualification as knowledge,


skills, abilities, education levels, experience levels, and certifications, licenses

or degrees or other credentials. A good job description sets clear

expectations. The first step in performance management is to make sure that

your people know your expectations. What are some pitfalls of job

descriptions? Job descriptions get out of date very quickly. In today’s rapidly

changing work environment, job descriptions become dated fast. Outdated job

descriptions are like time bombs ready to explode. The reality of what you

need now doesn’t match the description of what was done in the past. So you

should review your job descriptions regularly as part of your performance

development system. Inflexible job descriptions encourage a that’s-not-my-job

attitude. Job descriptions need to be flexible enough so that people can think

outside the box. They need to allow for cross training and development

activities. You don’t need to document every single task that you ask someone

to do in their job description, but you should list the essential duties that

absolutely have to be done, and state that they’re essential. Have you ever

had a contentious employee who keeps falling back on the job description?

“You can’t make me do that. It’s not in my job description.” Well the way to

win that game is to make sure that your job descriptions are accurate and up

to date. Poorly written job descriptions can be used against you. If job

descriptions are written too specifically, which would point to the idea that

you’re trying to list every single job duty, then poor performers could easily

use the job description as an excuse if you ask them to perform some task

that’s not on the list. If the job description is too vague, then a poor


performer could claim that he didn’t know what was expected. I’ve seen this

many, many times in employee grievance procedures. Poor performers can

often win, not because they were not a bad performer after all, but because

they claim that they were not fully informed about what was expected. Some

organizations require everyone to have performance goals, and some

organizations require that only the managers have performance goals. I think

that every employee should have performance goals. Having a goal gives an

employee something to shoot for, and when they achieve their goals, they can

get a big sense of accomplishment. I don’t think, though, that achieving goals

should be the only criteria for evaluating employees’ performance. The whole

idea of performance development is to help the employee improve and

maintain a high standard of performance. What if, for example, you made a

goal to complete a nice-to-have but not critical special project during a

performance year. As the year plays out, you are hit with crisis after crisis,

which you do an outstanding job of problem solving, and save the company a

fortune in both time and money. So here comes your annual appraisal, and

your supervisor marks you as not meeting expectations because you didn’t have

time to finish that nice-to-have project. I’ve seen this scenario happen, where

the manager was just checking off boxes and didn’t really evaluate the

employee’s performance. So you should evaluate the employee’s performance.

The goals are critical and keep the employee focused on the type of

performance that will be valuable. But don’t cop out and only evaluate on

whether or not the employee completes the goals. I’m sure you’ve all heard of


SMART goals. SMART goals are almost a cliché for management. I’ve heard one

person say, “If I hear SMART goals one more time, I’ll scream.” Well

sometimes, something becomes a cliché for a reason. You hear it over and

over because it’s right. So yes, we’re going to hear about SMART goals again.

SMART goals stand for Specific Measureable Attainable Relevant and Time-

bound. Now this is a pretty sample concept. But I can’t tell you the number of

times that I’ve had to have my employees redo their goals because they missed

one and sometimes a lot more than one of those SMART elements. Specific –

exactly what do you plan to do? Your goal doesn’t need to be a project plan.

For the goal, what we want to know is what you intend to do, but not how you

intend to do it. And Measureable – as a supervisor, I need some kind of way of

knowing if the employee has successfully accomplished a goal. You don’t have

to put a bunch of numbers – like my goal is to accomplish 16 projects per day.

There just has to be some way of knowing if the employee has accomplished

the goal. Attainable – I want my employees to reach high with their goals, but

not so high that there’s no way for them to achieve them. Now I had one

employee who made a goal to put procedures in place that would save the

organization $5 million over the next year. Well, that was a good goal for us

because we were talking about the United States Marine Corps. But if you’re

running a smaller business with smaller budgets, then that goal would not be

realistic. Relevant – now my definition of relevant in regard to goals is that

every employee’s goals should tie back to at least one of the organization’s

goals. Now this is really important because it helps the employee to


understand how the work that he does contributes to the organization’s mission

and goals. And Time-bound – a goal without a deadline is really just a vision. A

goal needs a specific time frame. So let’s look at some goals and compare

them to the SMART criteria. Is this goal SMART or not smart? My goal is to

become a millionaire before I’m 50. Well, is it specific? It is. That’s very

clear – become a millionaire before I’m 50. Is it miserable? It certainly is. You

can look at my bank account. Is it attainable? Well, it may be. With the

number of investment opportunities, it certainly should be possible to become

a millionaire before I’m 50. But is it relevant? Well, it is for me and my

retirement. And it’s certainly time-bound. The timeframe is bounded by when

I’m 50 years old. So that goal is SMART. Let’s try another one. My goal is to

work hard and do an outstanding job. Is it specific? No, it isn’t. Measurable? I

don’t know how to measure that. It’s hard to tell what it is. I don’t know if

it’s attainable or not. And it’s not relevant or time-bound. Now this is the

kind of thing that I would have to send back to my employees the most often.

While I do think it’s admirable to strive to do an outstanding job, this is not a

SMART goal. Let’s try one more. My goal is to be able to go on vacation and

have my work caught up when I return. Actually, this is a real goal that one of

my employees submitted to me, and I use it for an example a lot of times

because I think it’s great. My employee, John, had to make a plan and do

quite a bit of work up front in order to make this happen. And in order to

achieve this goal, his performance had to be pretty good. He had to make a

plan, get another employee to cross train with him on some of these specific


tasks that he was responsible for, and then make sure that employee had

enough information to be able to do that work while John was on vacation. I

think that goal was very SMART. Performance goals evaluate employee

performance in their current position. You use information from the

employee’s job description. You use the organization’s mission and goals. And

it’s really important to make sure that employees know how the organization’s

goals and how the work that they do contributes to the overall accomplishment

of the organization’s goals. So you should work with your employees to set

goals that are relevant and beneficial to the organization. Now I had one

employee who complained that she wasn’t invited to all of the meetings that

were critical to her being able to do her job. So we made it a goal for her to

get invited to all the meetings that were critical to her job by the end of the

performance period. She had to find out why she wasn’t being invited, which

turned out to be because she worked in a different division than all of the

other people concerned. So she’d accidently been left off of the message

distribution list. So then she had to find out who owned the list and ask that

person to add her name to the list. As it turned out, there were several

distribution lists involved, and one by one she got herself added to the list and

achieved her goal. And because she wasn’t missing information that she

needed, she improved her performance. So performance goals should be short

term objectives. You’re not writing a five-year plan. You’re developing goals

that drive the employee’s performance for that rating period. Remember that

the goals should be SMART goals. They should relate to the job description,


relate to the organizational goal, and include clearly defined expectations for

success. Performance goals should answer the question, what is expected of

the employee in this position? I did want to bring one more goal from one of

my employees. I had an employee whose goal was, “My goal is to complete the

performance appraisals for all my employees before the deadline.” Well, this

one came from a supervisor who worked for me who was notorious for being

late with his performance appraisals. So he made this a goal in order to

improve on that area of his performance – and to keep me off his back.

[End of recording.]


PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL MODULE THREE – EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT GOALS AND ACTIVITIES Module Three – Employee Development Goals and Activities. Employee development

is not about evaluating the employee’s current performance. Development

goals are aimed at increasing employee knowledge and skills through learning

and development activities. You should work with your employees to help

them set development goals, and you should consider the employee’s current

performance, the employee’s individual desires, and the needs of the

department when you’re setting development goals. Development planning is

a great opportunity for employees and managers to plan for an individual’s

development with an eye toward the department’s future needs. For example,

you might know that your organization is planning to implement some kind of

productivity software such as Microsoft SharePoint. Well you might encourage

one or more of your employees to make it a goal to take a training course or

use self-study to become proficient in SharePoint before it becomes mandatory

for the organization. You would gain a resource within your group, and the

employee who accomplishes that goal is in place to become a very valuable

employee. Development Goals. Development goals focus on the employee’s

strengths, skills, talents, and interests. Using the Performance Development

Cycle method should give you a good idea of your employees’ skills and

interests. But you should work with your employee in setting development

goals. Talk to them. Ask them what they’re interested in. Talk to your

employees about the anticipated needs for their job. For example, let’s say


one of your employees is responsible for certain tasks, and that employee is

planning to retire. So you have a need for another employee to learn those

tasks in order to take them over. Talk to your employees about any

organizational needs. Supposing that you’re a supervisor in the Test and

Evaluation Department, and one of your employees is interested in learning the

program. Well, you could look at the overall good for the organization. If you

think this employee would be a good addition to the programming staff, it

might make sense for you to help him get the skills that he needs to qualify for

a programming position. Now even if you don’t want to lose the employee

yourself, it might be the best for the organization to help him grow into

another position with more potential for growth. So answer the question: In

what ways should the employee develop? It could be to improve the skills

needed to be successful in the current job, or it could be to prepare to move

on to another position within the organization. I personally do draw the line in

spending my organization’s time and money in training someone for a job

outside of the organization. That happens often enough when you don’t know

about it, and I would not deliberately spend my company’s resources training

someone for another company. Let’s talk about skills. We’re not talking right

now about your employee’s personal skills. We’re talking about the skills that

are necessary to succeed in a specific position. For example, in my position as

a manager, a critical skill might be developing job descriptions. And as a

manager, if I don’t know how to develop job descriptions, I need to learn

because that’s a critical area of my job. Every job has several skills that are


inherent and that are critical for an employee’s success in that job. Sometimes

new skills come up as technology evolves or the organization changes so that

the skills that are critical for the job could be different from one year to

another. You might manage a job – a group of employees who all perform the

same basic duties. If so, you’re lucky in that the critical skills should be pretty

much the same for everyone. But if you manage a variety of employees with

different jobs, you will have to be aware of the critical skills that are needed

for each one of the positions that you manage. Now you don’t have to track

every single skill that your employees use. You can choose, let’s say five or so

critical skills for each job. You could talk to your employees and get their

input on the critical skills, and you might be surprised that something that you

didn’t feel that was critical might be the most important skill in your

employee’s eyes. For example, for an Administrative Assistant, you might

choose as critical skills Microsoft Word, correspondence procedures, travel

arrangements, supply management, and filing procedures. The Administrative

Assistant certainly does more than that, but you might choose those as the

most critical skills. So the next step is to gage that employee’s skill level for

these critical skills. You should collaborate with your employee by discussing

the critical skills and how they think they measure up. And don’t worry about

making any elaborate measurement. Just talk about need or doesn’t need to

be improved. For example, let’s say our Administrative Assistant is not as

comfortable with travel arrangements as you both would like. So you mark

that skill down for improvement. Another way that you can find out what skills


need to be improved is through the employee’s performance. You can tell

which of the critical skills need to be improved. Once you determine which

skills the employee needs to improve, then you talk about methods to use on

improving those skills. There are many different ways that you can go about

helping your employees to improve their skills. Now a lot of the decision into

what method that you use is going to depend on your budget and the number of

resources that you have available to devote to employee development. So let’s

talk about a few of the most common development activities. First, you can

have your employees take training classes in the skill that needs to be

improved. It’s important to note that taking a training class doesn’t

automatically increase a skill level. The class might be bad; the instructor

might have an off day; or the employee might fall asleep in the back of the

room. So taking a training class itself doesn’t improve skills. But taking a class

– whether it’s a college class, a vendor seminar, or a homegrown demonstration

– is a good place to start when you’re trying to improve your employee’s skills.

You can also assign your employee to give a training class. Now I have always

thought that there’s no better way to learn something than to have to teach it

to someone else. Throughout my career, I’ve been tasked many times with

giving training to other employees. And sometimes I was studying right up until

the time it was to teach the class, only just a little bit ahead of the

participants. But if you need to know a subject well enough to explain it to

someone else, and to answer the questions that they might have on a subject,

then you will learn this subject very well yourself. You can assign your


employee to give presentations. Now giving presentations is a good way to

develop several skills. Your employee must learn the subject well enough to

explain and to field questions. But sometimes a skill that you’re trying to

improve is presentation skills itself. A lot of employees are not comfortable

when given demonstrations or presentations – even, or especially, in front of

their own team. But I have found that the best way to become comfortable

with standing in front of a group and teaching others is just to do it. It might

be a little rough at first, but if you keep up with it, it will get easier. And the

employee’s presentation skills will be improved. Cross training assignments –

remember my employee whose goal it was to come back from vacation and

have his work caught up? Well that’s only possible if you support cross training.

It might be that you supervise - everyone that you supervise has the same job.

But that’s not always the case. If you have responsibilities that are carried out

by only one person, then you’re at risk unless you have the employees cross

train in each other’s task. Now I know that when John, my employee who

wanted that peaceful vacation, he came to me with this problem. I was not

aware that he was the only person who knew how to do some of the tasks that

he did. Now it should not have been news to me, but I’m going to have to

admit that it was. And so that was a good heads up for me that it was time to

do some cross training before we lost that knowledge completely out of the

organization. It would be a good idea to think through all of the tasks that

your team is responsible for. If there’s any areas where there’s only one

person who knows how to accomplish a certain task, then those tasks are good


candidates for cross training. You can get your employee a mentor. Now some

organizations have formal mentoring programs, but even if yours does not, you

can set an experienced employee up with a less experienced employee for

mentoring. Often mentoring is a lot more important than training classes. The

training class can teach the basics, but a mentor can show the other employee

the ropes, teach him the kind of things that should be documented in the

employee manual, but usually are not. A mentor can teach the other employee

the way that the organization has adapted or customized systems, and other

organization specific processes and procedures. Just as I said that teaching a

class can be as beneficial to the teacher as it is to the student, becoming a

mentor can be as beneficial as having one. When I was a programmer, I had a

series of trainees that were assigned to me for mentoring. And it was part of

my job to train them. It was not optional, and I could not use the excuse that I

didn’t have time because I had my own work to do. This was my work just as

much as my programming projects. But being a mentor can improve the

employee’s own critical job skills as well as improving communication skills,

presentation skills, and people skills. Now I have worked in organizations

where the best employees were exempt from mentoring new employees with

the excuse that they didn’t have the time, or their time was too important or

too expensive to waste on mentoring. I feel that that’s a good way to lose

knowledge permanently when the best employees either leave for other

positions or retire. I think that in order to maintain the continuation of

corporate knowledge, everyone should, from time to time, mentor other


employees. And the last development activity that I want to talk about is to

assign your employee to lead a project. I worked in a group where everyone

was assigned to be a project leader at some time or another. And even the

most experienced and talented employees had to learn to be a team member

and not always a team leader. Assigning an employee to lead a project is a

good way to improve skills and time management, people management, project

management, and tracking. And it gives you the manager an opportunity to see

which of your employees might be a good candidate for team leader or

supervisory positions.

[End of recording.]


PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL MODULE FOUR – FEEDBACK AND RECOGNITION Module Four – Feedback and Recognition. Feedback and recognition are important

parts of the Performance Development Cycle. I know that I’ve said this before,

but I want to go ahead and say it again. Performance development is a

manager’s most important job. You can't do everything yourself. The only way

that you’re going to be able to accomplish your own goals, and the

organization’s goals, is to help your employees perform at a sustained level of

good performance, and to help them improve when they need to. I know that

you’ll get the occasional employee that no matter how hard you try, you can’t

help to improve. But most employees need the encouragement, the coaching,

the motivation, and the feedback and recognition that you give them, and they

can improve. If an employee performs poorly, it might be that the manager is

not paying enough attention to performance development. Remember this

performance development cycle diagram? Managers should be working on

performance development all the time. Performance development is not

something that you do only once a year during the annual review. You should

give feedback as needed – not only at performance review time. You should

give recognition when warranted and not only at bonus time. And development

activities should be done year-round. Managers need to show a committed,

ongoing involvement in the performance development process. They need to

help their employees reach their goals and to hold their employees

accountable. Giving effective feedback, you should use a four-armed model.


Context – describe the situation as clearly as possible. Be specific and make

sure that the feedback is timely. Don’t wait until review time to give

feedback. Behavior – describe the behavior, good or bad, or the performance

issue as clearly as possible. You should be impartial and speak about behavior

and actions and not about personalities. Impact – what were the results of this

behavior or performance, both positive and negative? And next, steps – what

specific behavior needs to be changed, and why should changes be made? One

area consistently gives managers and employees difficulty, and that’s the need

to give and accept effective feedback. The problem is that giving effective

feedback is one of the most crucial elements that you can do to help your

employees improve performance. It establishes a connection between what

the employees are doing and how the actions are perceived by others. Now

feedback is hard for managers to give, and harder for employees to receive

with a positive attitude. But as much as employees don’t want to hear

anything negative about their performance, having no feedback would be

much, much worse. Now giving feedback is not about dishing out criticism.

But unfortunately this often proves to be the case when managers find

themselves under pressure. Their first, and sometimes their only thought, is to

let the employee know what performance needs to be improved, so all

feedback becomes negative. Managers need to get in the habit of giving

positive as well as negative feedback. Employees should never be surprised at

the annual review. If a manager has given the necessary feedback throughout

the year, the employee will know that his performance is viewed and will have


a pretty good idea of what needs to be improved. Feedback can be formal or

informal. You need to document all feedback for a couple of reasons. If

you’ve documented all the feedback during the year – all progress on the goals,

all development activities – then writing the annual review should be pretty

easy. It’s all right there – a history of the year’s performance. And another

reason to document all feedback is the same reason that you document all

personnel actions. Your documentation is a clear record of why you did what

you did, and why you evaluated the employee the way that you did. If the

performance review ever comes into question, your documentation could easily

make the difference between winning or losing a dispute. A lot of

organizations have a bonus program to reward employees. I think employees

should be rewarded, but just like I think giving feedback, recognition is best

given closer to the time that actions that prompted the recognition took place.

If you have the flexibility to give cash or other awards on the spot, you should

take full advantage of it. But there are many, many ways to give recognition.

And not all of them have to be budgeted. The most important thing to

remember is that you should recognize your employees in public. Employees

like to know that they are valued and appreciated. People also like to know

that recognition is random, and that it provides an element of surprise. If you

thank your team every time they deliver a release on time with a lunch, then

gradually that lunch becomes a given, or an entitlement, and is no longer a

reward. In one organization, the CEO traditionally bought lunch for all

employees every Friday as a reward for a week well done. Soon, he had


employees coming to him asking to be reimbursed for the lunch if they ate

lunch outside the company on a Friday. His goal of team building turned a

given into an entitlement, and he was very disappointed with the results. You

need to recognize people based on specific results and behaviors. Don’t just

give someone a reward for being Employee of the Month. Give them an award

for delivering outstanding customer service when a particular problem

occurred. This creates a culture of doing the right thing. And tie recognition

to your own company values or goals. Some companies have recognition

programs which focus on the company’s mission and goals. So when you give

someone a thank-you award, the award is tied to your own company strategy –

customer service, innovation, team work – or even a revenue or cost cutting

goal. And one more thing – recognition is not only something that managers

should do. It should take place throughout the organization. If possible, you

could start a peer recognition program where one employee could submit

another for recognition or award.

[End of recording.]

Performance Appraisal - Module 5 Page 1

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL MODULE FIVE – THE ANNUAL REVIEW Module Five – The Annual Review. A successful annual review takes careful planning,

constructive communication, and collaboration between you and your

employee. To prepare for the annual review, if you’re doing their performance

improvement, the Performance Development Cycle all year long, preparing for

the annual review should be a pretty simple thing. Take all of the

documentation from all of the performance development activities for the

year, and review them before the annual review. So first, review the job

description. Make sure that that job description is up to date, and that it

accurately reflects the work that the employee does. Then review the

employee’s performance goals for the review period. Make note of whether or

not the employee has achieved the goals, and take note if they didn’t achieve

the goal, if there was some kind of overriding reason why the goal wasn’t met.

Review the employee’s development goals for the review period in just the

same way. Make sure that you check to see if the goals have been met, and if

they haven’t been met, was there some kind of reason or obstruction in the

way of meeting that goal. Review all of the documentation from the feedback

since the last review. Review the documentation from recognition since the

last review. And then review the critical skills for that employee. And that

would be looking at the critical skills, and then looking at how that employee

measures up with their skill levels for those critical skills. So you have there in

front of you during this review an entire history of that employee’s


performance for the last year. So writing the annual review should be a pretty

simple thing. Now every organization has its own requirements for the forms

and the type of reviews that you give. But no matter what form you use or

what are the requirements for the reviews or the ratings, all of the information

that you need should be contained in the documentation that you’ve been

keeping as you go through the Performance Development Cycle. So now you’ve

written the review. It’s time to conduct the review conversation. Since there

shouldn’t be any surprises in that review, this conversation should not be very

stressful for either you or the employee. When you conduct a review

conversation, you need to make sure that you have that conversation in a quiet

place where you can’t be overheard by other employees, and that your

employee and you are not interrupted by telephone calls, by beepers, by

anyone coming into that meeting. You need to be able to convince your

employee that this meeting that you’re having with your employee is the most

important thing that you have on your schedule for this day. And it is. The

first thing that you do in the review conversation is review the previous

performance period. First you’re going to discuss the successes and the

progress for the goals on the period under review. You need to review any

obstacles that were encountered since the last review, why did those obstacles

arise, and discuss with your employees what are some possible ways that you

can deal with those obstacles to get them out of your way so that the

employee can accomplish any goals that they have for the next year. Then

you’re going to talk about the previous performance period. Discuss the


training and development activities during that period, what training and

development activities were beneficial for the employee and for the

organization, and which ones were not. Discuss the employee’s skill levels for

the critical skills. Have they changed any because of the development

activities? Talk about the skills themselves. Are those skills still the most

critical skills for that job description? Or have changes in technology or

changes in the organization made other skills more valuable and that need to

be emphasized? And then you discuss and sign the annual review. Again, there

should not be any surprises in that review because the employee should know

what’s coming and should not be surprised. I’m not going to say that they’re

going to be happy with it every time. If they’re not happy with it, it’s because

they were not able to improve the way that you would want them to. But

there should not be any surprises. Once you sign the annual review form, you

close the book on the previous review period. That period is now a thing of the

past, and you put all your focus on the future. You’re going to discuss the next

performance period. You want to discuss with your employee about the

organizational needs for the future. If you know in your position as a manager,

if you know things are coming up in the future, talk about that with your

employee so that you can adjust the needs of your employee to the needs of

the organization. Are the needs of that particular job going to change because

something in the organization has changed? That’s the kind of discussion that

you want to have with your employee about the future. You want to talk to

your employee about the job description. Does the job description still


accurately depict the requirements for the job as it currently is? If not, then

it’s your job as the manager to make sure that job description gets changed.

Then you’re going to discuss the performance goals for the next performance

period. Your employee should bring the performance goals into the review

conversation with them. And you sit with them and discuss the goals that your

employee has made. You make any changes or other improvements or

suggestions for improvements that you might have, and between the two of

you, you agree on the employee’s goals for the next performance period. And

for every goal, you ask, “What can I do to help you?” And that will be goals for

you, is what you need to do to help your employee to achieve the goals. Then

you discuss with your employee the development goals for the next period.

Now these are largely going to be dependent upon the skills – the critical skills

and the employee’s level of skill for those critical skills. So talk about those

critical skills. Are there any changes to the critical skills? Any changes in the

employee’s skill levels? And then talk about what kind of development goals

that your employee should have for the next rating period. Remember, when

your employee brings those goals in to you, they’re probably not going to be all

right and follow the SMART criteria. So check every one of those goals and

make sure that they follow the SMART criteria, and re-write them, or help your

employee re-write them if they don’t follow that criteria. And then you and

your employee should talk about what kind of development activities that you

could do to meet those goals. Again, a lot of the development activities you

might not be able to give your employee their first choice for development


activities because you don’t have enough money in the budget to do what it is

that they want. But you can be innovative and come up with ways to improve

that skill level. The method is not nearly as important as improving that

employee’s skill level in their critical skills. Then you talk about next steps.

Next steps for performance development always is the continuing, ongoing

Performance Development Cycle. The review, as you can see by our chart, this

is the third time that we’ve seen this chart, the review itself is just one part of

the Performance Development Cycle. Performance development goes on all

year long, regardless of when the review. Well, it looks like we’re about out of

time. I hope that we’ve been able to give you some information and some tips

and some ideas that you can take with you back to your work place to help you

with performance reviews and taking some of the stress out. If you do follow

this Performance Development Cycle, the review itself is not stressful. It

should be easy.

[End of recording.]

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