It's Time To Take Performance Management Out of the Penalty Box
Have your employees and managers lost faith in your organization's review process? The symptoms of a broken appraisal process are obvious. Reviews are incomplete, late and inaccurate and performance doesn't improve from year to year. If the common refrain is why are we doing reviews; then it's time to fix your process. The good news is that it is easier than you think.
Flawed review practices give appraisals a bad reputation. Fix these flaws and employees and managers will have a restored faith the process. One of these flawed practices is a manager using canned feedback in their direct report's appraisal.
If a manager finds that writing performance evaluations are overwhelming, you are not alone. There is something about having to organize one’s thoughts about an employee that fills managers with dread—and fear. Perhaps it is because writing an evaluation combines two things that make people uncomfortable: writing and providing feedback.
Some managers cope with this discomfort by buying books filled with canned phrases that they can copy into their reviews. Although these may simplify your life, they will not improve your employees’ performance— which, after all, is your ultimate goal.
Canned feedback phrases copied from a book or automatically inserted from the appraisal software and sometimes euphemistically referred to as authoring aids or writing assistant isn't a best practice. Employees know that the manager is cutting corners on their review and that the feedback isn't authentic so how can you expect the employee to go the extra mile in their job. Canned phrases send a message that the review is perfunctory and not important and the employee in turn mimics the manager with a late, incomplete and inaccurate self-evaluation and so the cycle goes year after year.
Employees don’t need artfully drafted prose; they need specifics. They need input. And they need your respect, consideration, and time. They get none of those things from canned phrases.
Moreover, if you use phrases that are obviously canned, vague, or inapplicable to an employee’s situation—particularly when critiquing an employee's performance —it could get you into legal hot water if the employee later sues. A lawyer could discredit your feedback as a sham and not your own observations and conclusions.
The good news is that you don’t need those canned phrases. If you follow the process—gather information, draw conclusions, and then write the evaluation—and don’t worry too much about the quality of your writing, you’ll do just fine.
For more on the legal side of this argument read Amy DelPo author and consulting editor who specializes in employment and family law issues.
To learn about other faulty review practices check my other blogs at the links below. following:
Blindsiding an employee in a review is unforgivable and completely avoidable.
Doing Reviews are Worse Than Tax Returns
Mitigating Wrongful Termination Claims
Performance Management Isn't an Annual Event
?Go From Performance Management to Performance Engagement
For More Information
Performance Appraisals - A Bad Concept or Bad Practices
Rethink Performance Management
It's Time to Take Performance Management Out of the Penalty Box
"A day without laughter is a day wasted" Charlie Chaplin
?