Yesterday I came across the article below by Reylito A. H. Elbo entitled "Experimenting with Self-Appraisal." While his comments about his experience was that mature responses were made, it fails to address the main point of appraisals, to help to eliminate bias in evaluating performance and giving meaningful feedback to an employee. In my doing Assessment Center work, in evaluating senior managers, it is amazing how many see themselves vastly different than how others view them. (Of course this is true of all of us to some degree or other.)
In the early '80's in our Fortune 100 company, we were trained to have the subordinate prepare their evaluation, using the same form as we would being filling out on the individual. We also began to use quantified and qualified performance parameters at this point in time. Training was held about the process and competencies involved and a rating scale presented to help encourage uniformity of review results across the company.
This review process allows the subordinate to address the same areas of performance as those to be used by the manager. We would then exchange the reviews and mutually discuss them, with the manager taking notes of areas of difference and agreement. The manager then went back and wrote up the review taking into account the discussion. Then there would be a final review session, a discussion held, and the employee signed the review and could make notes of agreement or disagreement to the review.
As mentioned earlier in this blog site, organizations began to flatten and become matrixed in the '80's, so many times the subordinate was doing things the manager was not well aware of. As an organization flattens, interpersonal skills become more important. The amount of direct supervision declines substantially, and many times there are activities and accomplishments the subordinate may be proud of, that are overlooked, not known, or not valued by the manager.
In this fashion the performance appraisal became a better reflection of actual performance by gaining input from the employee and helped to capture and highlight, more accurately, areas for recognition that might have been lost otherwise. This was an effective method for dialog and alignment between the manager and the employee rather than just a one way discussion from the top down, which had been the case before this process was used. [Note: Salary discussions were separated from the Review Process and held later, at another time.]
In the '90s, 180 degree and/or 360 performance reviews began to be used, as this helped to gain a better, broader, more comprehensive and objective view of someone's performance. However, it was time consuming as the questions had to be assembled, mailed or handed out to different people who interacted with the individual in question. These questionnaires had to be filled out and returned. Then, the information was collected, analyzed and written up and incorporated in the overall quantified/qualified (now called metrics) areas of the performance evaluation (many times this took weeks of effort).
Normally the manager or an assistant had to "assemble/tabulate" this information, so she/he saw all the responses and comments, and who made them. The manager might decide to value some comments/ratings more than others, or disregard ratings entirely, if it suited the purpose of supporting the view of the manager. However overall, it was a much better way of obtaining objective information for conducting a performance review, as it helped in gaining greater buy-in from the employee as these were no longer just the observations or opinions of the manager, but included input from many other people. Most of the time, this was more palatable to the person being reviewed and this encouraged greater participation in the interchange between boss and subordinate.
In today's technological world, it has to be asked why companies and organizations do not, or will not use 360's?
The internet provides the conduit for the performance form dissemination and is to be filled out online (many times only taking 15 minutes per rater), and if "assembled" and collated totally online, it offers COMPLETE CONFIDENTIALLY of how each person rates the individual in question, as well as capturing "comments" around each competency or area being reviewed. The assembly time takes a matter of minutes and can generate full detailed and informative reports, not days or weeks like before, and the information and results are not touched by any individual. This helps in obtaining CANDID comments and ratings from: peers, subordinates, internal/external customers, and in many cases today, multiple bosses, and of course the person rates him/herself.
This significantly adds to helping to identify: gaps that need to be addressed, coaching that can be done by the Manager or an external Coach/Consultant, Training Needs identified, and this builds stronger support for performance evaluations and what will ultimately be placed in the Personnel File.
Below is a quick graphical depiction of the evolution of the performance review system. Hopefully, the person who posed the original question to the writer in the link below, can be enlightened to the possibilities in today's more sophisticated HR processes, and "dabbling" can be replaced with concrete and proven processes and technologies.
In the early '80's in our Fortune 100 company, we were trained to have the subordinate prepare their evaluation, using the same form as we would being filling out on the individual. We also began to use quantified and qualified performance parameters at this point in time. Training was held about the process and competencies involved and a rating scale presented to help encourage uniformity of review results across the company.
This review process allows the subordinate to address the same areas of performance as those to be used by the manager. We would then exchange the reviews and mutually discuss them, with the manager taking notes of areas of difference and agreement. The manager then went back and wrote up the review taking into account the discussion. Then there would be a final review session, a discussion held, and the employee signed the review and could make notes of agreement or disagreement to the review.
As mentioned earlier in this blog site, organizations began to flatten and become matrixed in the '80's, so many times the subordinate was doing things the manager was not well aware of. As an organization flattens, interpersonal skills become more important. The amount of direct supervision declines substantially, and many times there are activities and accomplishments the subordinate may be proud of, that are overlooked, not known, or not valued by the manager.
In this fashion the performance appraisal became a better reflection of actual performance by gaining input from the employee and helped to capture and highlight, more accurately, areas for recognition that might have been lost otherwise. This was an effective method for dialog and alignment between the manager and the employee rather than just a one way discussion from the top down, which had been the case before this process was used. [Note: Salary discussions were separated from the Review Process and held later, at another time.]
In the '90s, 180 degree and/or 360 performance reviews began to be used, as this helped to gain a better, broader, more comprehensive and objective view of someone's performance. However, it was time consuming as the questions had to be assembled, mailed or handed out to different people who interacted with the individual in question. These questionnaires had to be filled out and returned. Then, the information was collected, analyzed and written up and incorporated in the overall quantified/qualified (now called metrics) areas of the performance evaluation (many times this took weeks of effort).
Normally the manager or an assistant had to "assemble/tabulate" this information, so she/he saw all the responses and comments, and who made them. The manager might decide to value some comments/ratings more than others, or disregard ratings entirely, if it suited the purpose of supporting the view of the manager. However overall, it was a much better way of obtaining objective information for conducting a performance review, as it helped in gaining greater buy-in from the employee as these were no longer just the observations or opinions of the manager, but included input from many other people. Most of the time, this was more palatable to the person being reviewed and this encouraged greater participation in the interchange between boss and subordinate.
In today's technological world, it has to be asked why companies and organizations do not, or will not use 360's?
The internet provides the conduit for the performance form dissemination and is to be filled out online (many times only taking 15 minutes per rater), and if "assembled" and collated totally online, it offers COMPLETE CONFIDENTIALLY of how each person rates the individual in question, as well as capturing "comments" around each competency or area being reviewed. The assembly time takes a matter of minutes and can generate full detailed and informative reports, not days or weeks like before, and the information and results are not touched by any individual. This helps in obtaining CANDID comments and ratings from: peers, subordinates, internal/external customers, and in many cases today, multiple bosses, and of course the person rates him/herself.
This significantly adds to helping to identify: gaps that need to be addressed, coaching that can be done by the Manager or an external Coach/Consultant, Training Needs identified, and this builds stronger support for performance evaluations and what will ultimately be placed in the Personnel File.
Below is a quick graphical depiction of the evolution of the performance review system. Hopefully, the person who posed the original question to the writer in the link below, can be enlightened to the possibilities in today's more sophisticated HR processes, and "dabbling" can be replaced with concrete and proven processes and technologies.
