Comments on: Performance appraisals, do we really care? http://www.refactor.co.za/2009/12/22/performance-appraisals-do-we-really-care/ It's all about improvement Mon, 19 Jul 2010 10:58:54 +0200 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Rick Tonoli http://www.refactor.co.za/2009/12/22/performance-appraisals-do-we-really-care/comment-page-1/#comment-51 Rick Tonoli Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:30:42 +0000 http://refactor.co.za/2009/12/22/performance-appraisals-do-we-really-care/#comment-51 In part I agree with you, performance appraisals are necessary but I believe how they are used needs to be re-evaluated. In my opinion linking reward to performance doesn't work for this simple fact: if you tell someone "You produce 5 widgets and I will give you X reward" what is the incentive to ever produce more than 5 widgets? Performance related rewards cap potential in staff. I believe reward and appraisal should be separated from each other. Rewards should be tied to something that has no cap (like company performance, share price or number of satisfied customers?) and people should be rewarded on the performance of the whole, not the individual. Rewarding individual performance discourages team work and emphasizes the individual over the team. Appraisal should be with the aim of self-improvement of the individual WITHIN the team; asking questions along the lines of: "in what way can we (employer) help you (employee) be better at what you do" (or something like that). Here are some interesting reads off the infoq site on the topic (both for and against): http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/03/bonus-for-agile-teams http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/10/performance_review http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/11/scrum-individual-reward In part I agree with you, performance appraisals are necessary but I believe how they are used needs to be re-evaluated. In my opinion linking reward to performance doesn’t work for this simple fact: if you tell someone “You produce 5 widgets and I will give you X reward” what is the incentive to ever produce more than 5 widgets? Performance related rewards cap potential in staff.

I believe reward and appraisal should be separated from each other. Rewards should be tied to something that has no cap (like company performance, share price or number of satisfied customers?) and people should be rewarded on the performance of the whole, not the individual. Rewarding individual performance discourages team work and emphasizes the individual over the team. Appraisal should be with the aim of self-improvement of the individual WITHIN the team; asking questions along the lines of: “in what way can we (employer) help you (employee) be better at what you do” (or something like that).

Here are some interesting reads off the infoq site on the topic (both for and against):

http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/03/bonus-for-agile-teams
http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/10/performance_review
http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/11/scrum-individual-reward

]]> By: Tim http://www.refactor.co.za/2009/12/22/performance-appraisals-do-we-really-care/comment-page-1/#comment-34 Tim Mon, 18 Jan 2010 11:11:48 +0000 http://refactor.co.za/2009/12/22/performance-appraisals-do-we-really-care/#comment-34 sure, you've explained the ideal environment that managers should create, but for a couple of reasons I think periodic performance reviews are a necessary evil. Firstly, where remuneration is linked to performance, there needs to be some formal evaluation of perfomance. Awards of increases and bonus usually happen on a particular quarterly or annual schedule, so it follows that the evaluation also needs to be regular rather than ad-hoc. In some jobs/industries this evaluation is easy and might be based on sales, turnover or whatever. But for technical staff it's more difficult. Desirable behaviours, attitudes, and outputs need to be discussed and agreed ahead of time, and then evaluated. The more frequently this happens the better, but in reality it usually only happens every 6 months or so. The second reason formal performance appraisals are necessary is that some people don't perform well, and in fact may under-perform to the point where they should be dismissed. Without a paper-trail of performance discussion, coaching, development plans etc it's difficult to manage this situation. This is not a problem in a high-performing team of professionals, but I challenge you to take an alternative, less formal approach in an environment like a call center where there are lots of young without formal qualifications and varying levels of motivation and ethical outlook. I work in an environment where we don't try to micro-manage people and try to empower teams as much as possible, but we still follow a formal performance management process that is linked to remuneration. sure, you’ve explained the ideal environment that managers should create, but for a couple of reasons I think periodic performance reviews are a necessary evil.

Firstly, where remuneration is linked to performance, there needs to be some formal evaluation of perfomance. Awards of increases and bonus usually happen on a particular quarterly or annual schedule, so it follows that the evaluation also needs to be regular rather than ad-hoc.
In some jobs/industries this evaluation is easy and might be based on sales, turnover or whatever.
But for technical staff it’s more difficult. Desirable behaviours, attitudes, and outputs need to be discussed and agreed ahead of time, and then evaluated. The more frequently this happens the better, but in reality it usually only happens every 6 months or so.

The second reason formal performance appraisals are necessary is that some people don’t perform well, and in fact may under-perform to the point where they should be dismissed.
Without a paper-trail of performance discussion, coaching, development plans etc it’s difficult to manage this situation.
This is not a problem in a high-performing team of professionals, but I challenge you to take an alternative, less formal approach in an environment like a call center where there are lots of young without formal qualifications and varying levels of motivation and ethical outlook.

I work in an environment where we don’t try to micro-manage people and try to empower teams as much as possible, but we still follow a formal performance management process that is linked to remuneration.

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