Does performance appraisal work ?

Introduction

This issue is about performance appraisal at GENSER SPRL (GENERATOR SERVICES). Our main responsibility is to service any generator of our customer on time. Our mission is to perform our jobs above customers’ expectations thereby improving the quality of service. However, at the company, the focus is mostly on getting the work done and increasing the company’s bottom line. There is no formal career path in place for employees. Employees are employed based on the skills they have, and it is a ‘sink or swim’ situation. This has resulted in talented people leaving the company, more workload for the current employees and a general feeling of dissatisfaction among staff.

Although management is aware of the problems; demotivation and employees’ dissatisfaction with the lack of upward mobility at the workplace they have not taken any formal measures to improve their policies or systems. For example, my supervisors are always temporary because of my varied job duties and the supervisors do not compile any documentation or interact in such a way to perform an honest assessment of my work. This is very detrimental to my job performance appraisals as it determines a bonus and or promotion.

Lack of an honest performance appraisal for me has resulted in my dissatisfaction at work. Although I have not been fired I think performance appraisal would provide me with the professional development opportunity I need to increase my current knowledge. Performance appraisals would also provide a measure of what I can do so that I can market myself to other job markets. However, with a lack of proper documented appraisal performance I am unable to advance professionally. I feel very demotivated and dissatisfied.

Description of the problem/issue (So what?)

Performance review is a very important part of every employee in all organization. Any fiscal year starts with setting up goals and ends with performance evaluation. While, the super visor has a responsibility to set up goals for employees so that the employee can help the organization achieve its goals and the employee sees growth in his or her own career. While setting up goals might sound easy, performance evaluation is never easy for supervisors. While each team member could be equally good, or they could all achieve all goals but in real life, the supervisor cannot give all of the same performance evaluation. Hence. Performance evaluation often causes dissatisfaction among employees and demotivates them.

So, the issue is two part. The supervisors cannot differentiate between employees’ performance wise and secondly, the employees often do not feel the performance review they got is justified. As they do not feel their hard word recognized and they do not get any feedback on how to improve their performance so that they can obtain the career growth they want to achieve. As a result, employees feel demotivated and might leave the company due to dissatisfaction.

So, it creates an issue for supervisors to maintain a happy and motivated team and retain employees. Performance review in traditional term has limitations. It cannot be an apple to apple comparison. When employees are rated based on their performances, it appears they are being compared against each other and nobody prefers to be called out as inferior to other coworkers.

Alternatives considered (research/best practices)

Only about one quarter (26%) of managers and employees think the traditional process works, according to a new survey of 169 North American companies by compensation consultants Towers Watson, and 50% of employers in North America say they are scrapping yearly appraisals in favor of real-time conversations about goals and performance (Fisher,2015)

Performance review should primarily be about future performance and not just about evaluating the past year’s performance and determining if the employee is eligible for raise or bonus.

Here are few options any organization can adopt instead of performance review.

1.    Elimination of Appraisal – Some organizations are already stepping away from formal performance appraisal and doing the performance appraisal in a different way to avoid negativity associated with performance appraisal.

2.    Regular “Check-Ins” – Supervisors can set up regular weekly or bi-monthly meetings with employees, set up goals and check-ins on progress. It is not an annual performance review but formal short duration performance evaluations.

3. Real-Time Feedback or Real-Time Development - This activity is often used in conjunction with the "check-in." Instead of waiting for the check-in, managers and employees provide each other with specific feedback in a timely fashion. Supervisors and employees need to work closely and effectively to make this work

4. 360-Degree Reviews – This system is already in effect in some organization. Instead of getting evaluated by the only supervisor, in this case, employees get feedback from everyone they work with. This is supposed to be positive. The results of the review are used as a coaching and development tool. Like real-time development, it's critical to give proper training to everyone involved in the process, so good feedback is shared (Lauby, 2017).

Every the organization is it for profit or non- profit focuses toward achieving certain objectives and goals. Employees help the organization reach its goals. Leadership and management team play a vital role in setting up goals and steering employees towards goals. Performance management for employees cannot be just a tool to give a raise or bonus. Performance management should focus on helping the organization reach its target and goals. So, performance management should be designed to help employees help the organization and achieve pick performance and productivity and achieve targets.

Some Reasons for Employees dissatisfaction with Performance Appraisal

Poor or lack of onboarding process. Some workers have been working at the company for over ten years when the company had not yet gone global and the job duties were not as demanding.

Lack of interest in employees. At time of employment no established career path was established for workers. Although workers are trained in various skills they are not encouraged to move up and moving to a higher status is left up to each employee.

Lack of clear goals are established during employee employment cycle. Most of the jobs are repetitive and management has not seen the need to review or redesign employees job duties over time therefore employees feel demotivated and not valued.

Employees feel there is a lack of transparency. Employees feel managers are not transparent in how things are done and what the company portrays to the public.

Best Practices in Performance Appraisals

The article, People Performance Toolkit (2017) states some factors that demonstrates best practices in implementing a performance appraisal. They include;  letting the employee know what the organization is trying to achieve, their role in helping the organization achieve its goal, the skills and competencies necessary to fulfil their role, the standards of performance required, how they can develop their performance and contribute to the development of the organization, how they are doing and when there are performance problems and what can be done about them.

Implementation of Performance Appraisal

The following guidelines should be followed when implementing a performance appraisal.

·       Ensure appraisal is in line with other human resource system

·       Get organization members to buy in

·       Communicate the process and system to stakeholders

·       Train employees and managers

·       Evaluate and improve the process as needed

 In addition, when conducting a performance appraisal with an employee the following protocols should be followed;

·       Have dialogue with employee - If regular feedback has been given to employee a clear idea of what to say will be already established so that nothing said will take the employee by surprise.

·       Be prepared by asking yourself questions such as: do I have all the evidence I need? Are there any extenuating circumstances for any poor performance or conduct? Have you spoken to employee about any problems? How well do you know the employee?

·       Avoid making assumptions about personal life, concentrate on the issues.

·       If concerns need to be raised be confident that you can do so in the right way.

Budget Estimate for Performance Appraisal

Performance appraisals cost organizations in terms of time. It takes time to plan, execute and respond to them. It is estimated that performance appraisals costs range from over $100,000 to $1.2 million annually. The following is a sample of performance appraisal cost for company:

Time taken to prepare and meet for Performance Review	Hourly Wage including benefits	Number of Employee/Managers involved	Cost
3 hours	30	50	4,500
3 hours	15	50	2,200
			6,700

Performance review course of action

Performance improvement plan is a set of goals that an employee who has low performance review. The main purpose is to give a chance to the employee to improve his work and reach all the assigned goals of the company.

As we are line managers and supervisors which are leading and managing employees or team of people, we must make sure of the quality of the service they are to deliver, we must also make sure that our employees are feeling good in their daily tasks. Those managers are still able to train and lead their employees to become more productive and productive. (Mccarron, 2018).

Performance Improvement Plan