Should the performance appraisal be cancelled?

No matter where, the word "performance appraisal" always makes employees feel scared and uneasy.

Their worries are understandable. The frequency of performance appraisal is not too high, but the results are often unsatisfactory. Good performance appraisal can give employees constructive and fair feedback. Poor performance appraisal reflects the prejudice of the supervisor, and at the same time, it will also hit the confidence and enthusiasm of employees.

But the problem is that the balance of the two does not seem to tilt towards good performance evaluation. David Insler is the Senior Vice President of Sibson Consulting in new york. According to his estimation, only 35%-40% companies do a good job in performance appraisal.

Obviously, the frequency of performance appraisal is one of the problems. Peter Capelli, director of the Center for Human Resources Research at Wharton Business School, pointed out that annual performance appraisal is implemented in many places. "If you wait until the end of the year to tell employees how they did in the past year, they will be surprised and dissatisfied when the results are not ideal. People are always used to focusing on negative things, "Capri pointed out. "Therefore, the' balanced' feedback always makes us focus on the bad parts of performance appraisal." .

However, he and others point out that the rapid changes in the workplace and the field of employees are changing the way of performance evaluation. For example, because more and more companies are project-oriented, including software, engineering, advertising, accounting and consulting companies, these companies often conduct performance appraisal at the end of the project or at the setting stage of project implementation. In this way, the annual assessment at the end of the year becomes a summary without suspense, which is mainly used to enjoy the information about salary increase, bonus and other benefits with everyone.

In terms of labor force, the latest batch of employees include millennials (a generation born in the late 1970s and early 1990s). They are used to getting feedback from their parents, friends or social media sites at any time, and they hope their employers can do the same. As Daniel Pink, a professional expert and writer, recently pointed out in an article entitled "Think Tank: Reorganizing Workplaces, Not Employees" published in the Daily Telegraph, millennials "live in an environment full of feedback most of the time." However, when they enter the workplace, they find themselves "in the desert of feedback" ... If they can only get performance feedback once a year, it will be difficult to improve. "

Conflict agenda

According to the research report cited by Capri, 97.2% of American companies conduct performance appraisal, and 965,438+0% of global companies conduct performance appraisal. It can be seen that performance appraisal is universal, so why is performance appraisal so "notorious"?

Matthew Bidwell, a professor of management at Wharton Business School, pointed out that the goals of performance appraisal are often conflicting: from the perspective of employees, they seek frank and useful feedback, but they also know that if they don't use the opportunity of performance appraisal to improve their performance, they may not get the maximum bonus or salary increase.

John Paul Du Fei, a management professor at Wharton Business School, said that at the same time, companies "want to pay employees according to their performance and merits, and they also want to provide development feedback so that employees can improve". "However, organizations must also make difficult decisions to determine which employees rank higher and which bonuses to give to employees. If the organization does not allocate salary according to performance in order to satisfy everyone, then this process will be considered unfair. "

In addition, prejudice will also affect the performance evaluation process, which may be subtle or open. For example, some managers tend to give their employees better performance evaluation scores. In addition, Bidwell said that "there is a lot of evidence" that some managers are biased against women and African-Americans. Although there are signs that "this bias has disappeared over time", there are still some managers who are guided by organizational policies or influenced by "wily" employees.

Finally, with the support of the human resources department, some performance appraisals only focus on completing the appraisal tasks and achieving "100% pass rate", without paying attention to the appraisal quality. Sibson Consulting /WorldatWork survey found that 58% of human resource managers rated their performance management system as "C-", partly because managers were not trained to conduct effective evaluation.

Samuel Calbert, a professor at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, made a frank attack on performance evaluation. "Performance appraisal has destroyed the trust relationship between the boss and employees, and caused a huge waste of time, manpower and funds to the company. The employees who are evaluated will worry about how to please the boss before providing the evaluation results to the company. "Cancel the performance evaluation! How can a company stop being afraid, start managing and focus on what really matters? (Remove the performance appraisal! How companies can stop intimacy and start managing-and focus on what really matters). In addition, performance evaluation also makes employees afraid to talk about the problems they find, because it may affect their career prospects and salary and benefits, Capote said. For example, he mentioned "the nuclear reactors of Toyota Motor Corporation, BP and Japan". The employees of these companies are very clear about the product problems of their own companies, but they have not reported them, precisely because of the lack of trust between employees and management.

There are others who disagree with the performance appraisal. Daniel Pinker wrote in Think Tank that there is "little real dialogue" in performance evaluation. "More often" is the kabuki theater in the west. In this highly programmed ceremony, people recite the same lines and go through the motions mechanically. "

Insler also pointed out another problem of traditional performance appraisal. "The company thinks that if the performance evaluation index is not quantifiable and very objective, it is not a good evaluation index," but in recent years, with the rapid increase of knowledge-based companies, "the ability to evaluate performance subjectively and qualitatively" needs process support, which focuses on "firstly, what are the important performance standards, and secondly, how to measure them when they are qualitative standards." He suggested asking employees during the evaluation, "How did they finish the work, what [abilities] did they develop, and whether they were constantly improving their knowledge and skills."

Insler said that at Sibson Consulting, a subsidiary of Segal, performance evaluation is conducted at the end of each project, and the project cycle usually ranges from six weeks to six months. The company also has a mid-year performance appraisal process, "mainly focusing on the development level of employee performance, pointing out the main advantages of employees and studying how to make use of these advantages", followed by a more formal year-end assessment.

In addition to the mid-year and year-end evaluation, the company also recommends talking to employees once a month or quarterly. Insler pointed out: "In our client companies, some executives scoff at the idea of providing monthly or quarterly feedback. "They said that if you don't communicate with employees every day, you will miss something. We suggest having a conversation at least once a month, during which we can make an assessment to get the latest situation and provide an opportunity to submit feedback. "

Feedback cycle and other innovations

In fact, in the discussion on how to improve performance appraisal, the importance of frequent feedback is mentioned almost every time. Daniel Deborah is the co-CEO of Rypple, a Toronto social software company whose products are designed to show that people continue to share feedback and provide guidance. Rypple's target market is a knowledge-based company with 50 to 1000 people, focusing on innovative cooperation in the field of "scenarios described by social network models".

The target employees are millennials, because "feedback is the way to learn when they grow up," Debao said, supplementing Pinker's previous point of view. "It's natural to get feedback to help improve. Millennials are very clear about their career goals. They don't want to stay in a company forever, but cultivate their reputation and skills to help them build their personal brands in the process of job-hopping. "

Deborah believes that top managers can also benefit from feedback. "For example, the CEO wants to know their position and ask questions about their strategy, performance and what needs to be done." Whether people will improve in the process of counseling intervention, the most important determinant is "whether they will constantly seek feedback from people around them", Debao quoted the research report of marshall Goldsmith, a leader trainer/writer.

The basic principle of Rypple system is to let employees get anonymous feedback, which is only open to employees and will not be known by his or her manager or personnel department. In addition, Deborah pointed out that feedback is done in a "small circle" in real time, so that employees can take immediate action according to the feedback. "This kind of advice may be that someone says,' I'll give you a constructive suggestion: don't interrupt when customers are talking, because it will interfere with them.' "

The system also includes the concept of reward, which expresses gratitude and rewards to team members who have done a good job (such as awarding medals). "This can directly improve the enthusiasm of employees," Debao said. The third part of the system is counseling. "An excellent manager should be an excellent mentor. Including setting goals and explaining that employees achieve these goals through one-on-one cooperation and communication. "

Joe Cruz, senior IT project leader of Wharton Business School, started using Rypple from June+10, 5438. "This is not a formal evaluation process," he said. "It's more like,' You did a cool thing through software implementation, called honor.' Honor is published publicly. If I get a bad review, it's only personal; It can ensure that the feedback loop continues ............ Ryple is not a substitute for existing programs, "Cruz added," but a supplement to help us maintain the highest execution quality. "

Cruze and others in his department "formed a team on Rypple website, and the relationship between people was set by the website." I established direct contact with three members of the team. We can provide task lists, goals and feedback on their performance. We use Rypple system to promote one-on-one communication every two weeks and group meetings once a month. Because Rypple's communication system is separate from the mail we receive, the experience is quite smooth. It can show that we can filter out unnecessary information and keep us in the same direction. "

Other companies have also come up with some methods of performance appraisal, which can gradually break away from the more traditional methods.

Capote proposed a pre-evaluation of performance, not an evaluation. His definition of performance pre-evaluation is "discuss while there is still time to achieve good results." He suggested that the company "change workplace politics by involving the boss" ... The boss's job is to ensure that every direct subordinate is successful; To ensure this, their assessment should be completely consistent with their direct reports. He proposed to establish a dialogue channel between employees and bosses, "to ensure that they know what they want (from each other), so as to achieve the best results." In an article in The New York Times last month, Capote pointed out that "the measurement standards created by bosses are often arbitrary, and subordinates will no longer be the only ones responsible for such measurement standards. On the contrary, bosses will be trained to know how to conduct real management ... "

There is also a completely different kind of management participation. Mike Du Fei mentioned a senior manager of Merrill Lynch, who had regular communication with important executives and made an inventory of outstanding talents in the company. "He wants to seek opportunities for these talents," said Mike Du Fei. "He thinks it is a good thing for employees to feel that senior staff regularly consider their development prospects. This means that employees are valued. "

Pinker put forward in Think Tank that performance appraisal should be completed by colleagues. He cited an example of a large engineering company in the United States, which allowed employees to give their colleagues a bonus of $50 at any time instead of the annual bonus provided by the boss. "The boss may not remember your glorious deeds. Although these bonuses are not many, they can make colleagues feel the recognition of their excellent work immediately. " This can create a workplace environment, so that feedback "emerges regularly in boring workplace life." According to Pinker's report, in 20 10, the employees of this engineering company gave each other nearly $2,000 in bonuses.

Other non-traditional supporters of performance appraisal put forward an all-round feedback process. According to this feedback process, employees should not only be evaluated by superiors, but also by subordinates and colleagues, and when appropriate, by customers and suppliers. This kind of feedback is usually anonymous, and its purpose is to let more evaluators participate in the feedback.

Another method is to force ranking. "If you are worried about employees' complaints about performance evaluation, it is because you always want to give everyone an A+," Bidwell said. Mandatory rankings put an end to this situation. But the problem is, "forced ranking breeds a lot of peer competition. In addition, because it needs to be carried out among a large number of people, from this perspective, compulsory ranking has a certain political color. "

Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at stanford graduate school of business, agrees. Pfeffer pointed out in an article in Business Weekly that "the comparison between peers will always lead to competition and hinder cooperation, and it is a big problem to transfer knowledge in the workplace." In addition, he wrote, "Many people think they are above average. When someone tells us that they are not, we always refuse to accept it ... because performance evaluation usually requires half of employees to score below average, which will pose a threat to employees' self-esteem. Finally, employees tend to ignore these scores. "

Insler said that in addition to feedback, another important topic of performance evaluation discussion is the need to "better train and teach supervisors and managers how to conduct such discussions". "We have all met excellent managers and incompetent managers. Feedback and guidance provided by excellent managers can help employees succeed. An incompetent manager can't do this. What they care about is who is responsible for the problem and who should be blamed. "

case analysis

SAS is the largest private software company in the world, with 1 1800 employees. Last year, its global revenue reached $2.45 billion. SAS is headquartered in Carey, North Carolina, with more than 400 offices around the world. In 20 10 and this year, the company was one of the "Best Employers in 100" selected by Fortune magazine. The company is a leader in business analysis, software and services.

Mike Du Fei cited the case study of SAS in his lecture at Wharton Business School. For many years, he has been inviting senior managers of the company to be guest lecturers. According to Mike Du Fei, in the past 10 years, this company has never used performance evaluation procedures.

However, this situation has changed, because the company's vice president of human resources found that employees hired from universities (usually statisticians at the doctor or lecturer level) were "accustomed to the feedback mechanism in the university environment", so he thought that the company could benefit from the formal evaluation process, Mike Du Fei said. He added that SAS definitely supports the feedback mechanism, "but the company believes that good managers should provide informal feedback throughout the year, rather than waiting for the annual formal evaluation." In fact, excellent managers do. But those incompetent supervisors never give any feedback. Their employees get more rewards, but they don't know where these rewards come from and why. "

The company decided to pilot the evaluation process in one department and eventually extend it to the whole company. The system is based on products purchased from external suppliers, which are customized by SAS. Mike Du Fei said: "This system can be linked to performance and reward plans, so it can also be linked to promotion." . "It has the characteristics of all-round feedback, but it is only used to cultivate employees' personal ability and will not affect salary and promotion decisions. "

Since the income of SAS depends on the annual renewal of SAS product license by customers, Mike Du Fei pointed out, "Therefore, the company pays great attention to the response to customers, and innovation is also driven by customer needs." To this end, many managers will also program themselves. "They sit next to employees and write code. These interactive measures eventually promoted the implementation of the feedback process. "

On the contrary, this practice has also contributed to another innovation in the performance evaluation system. Mike Du Fei said: "While instructing managers how to evaluate, companies can also find outstanding technical talents without excellent management skills." "After that, the company created a separate promotion channel according to technical ability, and called those in the promotion channel SAS researchers'. Now, these SAS researchers can get promotion and status without playing the role of managers. "

A vital requirement

Although there are different opinions on performance appraisal, few experts suggest abolishing performance appraisal. According to the survey of Sibson Consulting /WorldatWork, "a comprehensive performance management process is absolutely necessary, and the focus of this process is goal setting, feedback, coaching and clear expression of company performance expectations." Insler said that in fact, companies with excellent performance are using this kind of performance evaluation.

Although some companies try to abolish performance appraisal, there seems to be a bottom line. These evaluations play an indispensable role in corporate culture in some form. "Without some form of performance evaluation, it is impossible to run the human resources system and reward employees," Bidwell said. "I haven't found any alternatives yet."

Mike Du Fei added that no matter how the performance appraisal system works, "it is impossible to satisfy everyone. But if it is ignored or abolished, the consequences will be extremely serious, which will lead to prejudice and workplace politics, and will also create a cynical atmosphere in the workplace.

This will destroy the idea that any important performance can be rewarded.