I feel like starting the week lightly, so I’d like to share with you an infographic that I found both well-designed and educational.
It is called The History of Performance Reviews and was created by the good folks at WorkSimple, which is a company specialised in social recognition and feedback.
I have mentioned before that Social Performance Management may be coming out of the closet. As I explained, I do believe that it is time for companies to move into a more continuous approach to performance conversations, and that these should not necessarily be restricted to a top-down, manager-to-employee conversation. It’s also great to see that some organisations are moving to applications that are similar to the ones everyone is using in their personal time, with a social media ease and look-and-feel.
At a time of the year when many of us have to go through the dreaded annual performance evaluation meeting, and critics of performance appraisals become very loud, this infographic will remind everyone of the progress made, and the probable way of the future.
I hope you enjoy it ! (email readers may have to click through to view the infographic)
Related posts :
- Is social performance management coming out of the closet ?
- How do you link performance management and a performance-driven culture ?
- Does competency-based performance management really work ?
- Why is “soft stuff” so hard really, at least to assess ?
My spouse and I stumbled over here different page and thought I might check
things out. I like what I see so now i’m following you. Look forward to finding out about your web page yet again.
I think that there are deep psychological reasons that make performance reviews unpleasant for both employees and their mangers. For details see http://prasadokurian.blogspot.in/2012/05/performance-ratings-and-above-average.html
Thanks Prasad, this is an interesting article.
Yes, there is superiority illusion in most of us. But in my experience as a manager, when you share very regular feedback on performance and you set clear goals that are agreed with your employee, it really helps in the context of performance management in the company.
Why ? Because the expectations are clear and agreed from the start. They are designed based on the person’s role and capabilities. So even if the person is “in the norm”, when you set the objectives, they are a stretch for them, or, like I used to do, a combination of some “relatively easy” objectives, with a few ones that will make the employee grow.
When we were discussing the objectives, I did describe specifically why this objective was a stretch compared to the current performance and knowledge level of the team member. Success was very clearly described (at target – even with a stretch objective), and over delivery as well. I gave feedback and support on a very regular basis. And at year-end, there was no surprise in the rating. My team members’ self-evaluations were very accurate in terms of performance rating.
Let’s not forget that the rating is relative to the objectives set at the beginning of the cycle, NOT to the absolute performance of the employee over the same period of time (otherwise you are in a subjective, discretionary system and goal-setting is not even worth considering).
Did some of my “normal” employees get an above target rating ? Yes, sometimes, when they had really stretched themselves and gone above and beyond their growth objectives.
Did some of my star employees get a “at target” rating ? Yes, sometimes, when they had reached their stretched objectives but not produced something really great. Did any of them know where they really stood in terms of relative work quality ? Yes. Where they unhappy with the rating ? They might have been a bit disppointed at first, but they all recognised that they understood why they were getting this or that rating, and that they agreed with the end result. Then we discussed objectives for the following year, and they were always focused on doing their best and acing it.
We often forget that if we speak to our team members and treat them as adults, they will react as adults and rely on their logic as well as their irrational thoughts or emotions. It is a lot of work, constant work though, and many managers are not willing (or not capable) to invest this kind of time to manage expectations in an adult relationship with their staff.
Excellent post however I was wanting to know if you could write a litte more on this topic?
I’d be very grateful if you could elaborate a little bit further. Kudos!