Performance Appraisal and Feedback

Performance of an organization can be said to be proportional to the performance of its employees and hence the importance of performance management. Performance appraisal is the center piece of performance management and the two are often referred to interchangeably. Over the years a body of research on subject has been built up and different thoughts and ideas are abound. Organizations have tweaked and transformed appraisals in search of that ideal system and they continue to evolve. Some musings....

?Objectives and Types of Appraisal System

Appraisal systems have developed to primarily serve couple of purposes or objectives. One may slice and dice them into numerous others, but they all boil down to either driving performance or to act as a reward differentiator. ?Appraisal is considered to be a source of feedback. This feedback is expected to let the receiver know what is lacking or what more can be done so that there is improvement in performance which in turn would give a boost to achievement of business goals year on year. The appraisal is also supposed to act as an objective means to differentiate – that is determine and justify who is to be rewarded in terms of promotions and salary increments, identify employees for assignments or when faced with head count decisions.

?Regarding the type of appraisal systems, there are numerous categorizations and descriptions that have come about. To name a few prominent ones, we have trait based, behavior based, objective based, 360 degree, ranking and grading. Today’s appraisal systems may be a mix and have elements from a few of these, trying to draw upon the best of each. Also, as against only an annual appraisal, modern appraisal systems may involve periodic appraisals and or reviews through the year.

Observations

Whatever be the purpose or what ever be the type of appraisal system used, it boils down to an interaction between two individuals and that is where the search for an ideal apparatus hits the hurdle. Biases and errors, on either side, are at play and whether an intricate and detailed system meets the objectives in letter and spirit, is debatable. ?

What would one want in an ideal appraisal system. In a nutshell, it should be objective so that it is seen as reliable and consistent and minimizes discord and it should not add to stress to the interlocutors. However, any appraisal system, how so ever designed to bring objectivity is ultimately based on impressions and is subjective at its core. Leaving aside purely metric based appraisals, there will always be a significant element of subjectivity in assigning a number or rating or grade. Even when it is an objective based or an incident based ?appraisal, unless these are purely number driven objective or incident, there will be inherent subjectivity. About stress – the process of appraisal is closely associated with stress and anxiety. Hardly anyone is really capable of hearing anything negative about themselves and the anticipation itself is stressful. The givers are also known to undergo their own share of stress. Also the anxiety is obvious when one knows that the appraisal is linked to future rewards. Hence appraisal systems are intrinsically subjective and carry a dose of stress.

An important point to note is that the appraisal systems over time have built feedback mechanisms into it. This is aligned ?with the requirement to be objective and fair in appraisal and to drive performance improvement. Multiple appraisals, mandated reviews or documented feedback through the year aided by technology based systems is an outcome. This implies that such appraisal systems today attempt to execute two distinct tasks in one go – differentiate and provide continuous feedback. They are distinct because appraisal is an assessment or an estimation, while feedback is an input meant to bring about improvement. Appraisal requires dispassionate approach and feedback requires a compassionate approach. Doing both together on the same platform could be making the feedback experience stressful as also make it susceptible to more distortions. Also to expect all managers and employees to understand the distinction and treat them as such, notwithstanding all the training, socialization and safeguards, may be expecting much. They are prone to mix up the two, kicking in self-preservation instincts and stymieing feedback. Therefore trying to kill two birds with one stone here, may not be entirely a good idea.

Looking at the appraisal interaction itself, very broadly, there could be three situations – either the receiver is fully aligned or is partially aligned or is completely not aligned with the appraisal given / review done. While the aligned state is not an issue the other two clearly are. When we overlay the personalities involved on these situations, we see each interaction assume a color of its own. There may be overt reactions in case of misalignment and there could be covert undercurrents, in the manager – employee relation, in case of partial alignment. The bulk of the interactions or appraisals are the partial alignment kinds – many choose to live with the disquiet and some turn sour in due course, mostly when rewards are determined based on this. Detailed appraisal systems generate unwanted chatter and distraction when the only purpose is and should be to convey a management decision on potential reward and future deployment.

At an organizational level, owing to the central tendency and other biases and since rewards are linked to the appraisal, there is an angle of management moderation that may come in. The senior management’s inclination to direct how to mark or not to mark in a certain way cannot be ruled out. Though the bell curve system has mostly been shed, the appraisal systems remain prone to ‘window dressing’ on those lines.

Lot of processes and requirements have been added over time. Since technology enables, it has been possible to add more functionalities to the appraisal systems. In order to ensure the manager provides constructive and continuous feedback, objectively appraises and fairly decides on the rewards, some of the processes and steps get added over a period of time. Hence, the appraisal system is steadily assuming proportions difficult for every one to keep up with. It adds to the mandates and controls that everyone in the organization has to complete in the laid down timelines through the year. Any breakage in the process may have implication towards overall consistency and reliability of the system. So the appraisal systems may be becoming somewhat complicated, time consuming and an elaborate process.

In large organizations having multitude of departments and different business units, an across the board, fixed set of parameters in the appraisal may be acting as an impediment for a more relevant feedback. Traits or behaviors that could be more important for the sales person need not be so for the technology team.

Suggested Appraisal

An appraisal is an assessment and is meant for making reward decisions – it is not feedback in itself. If that is agreed to and we also accept and acknowledge that this is inherently a subjective process, the appraisal system may be telescoped to comprise of a half yearly appraisal and a final or annual appraisal. The half yearly appraisal may have only two elements, namely, a rating on overall performance – superlative, satisfactory and needs improvement and a descriptive assessment – elaborating on the reasons for the rating. The annual appraisal may contain a third element apart from repeating the above two – and that is a promotion or role recommendation ?– recommended and not yet recommended. This can be used as a prerequisite to promote / assign a role as and when the vacancy or budget is available.

This does away with multiple parameters each of which only adds to the potential for discussion, debate and disagreement when the entire thing is ultimately a subjective opinion to start with and revolves around differentiation decisions. What matters to an employee in an appraisal is whether s/he is being considered for promotion or not and whether in the eyes of the manager s/he is a rock star or not. If this is communicated upfront, simply and unambiguously, without padding up with justification in the form of feedback, it should lend to more trust and transparency. This should also make acceptance of the appraisal easier by keeping it simple and straightforward and significantly reduce overall appraisal related stress. It will also help disassociate appraisal from feedback, freeing them to become more effective towards their respective purposes by adopting a more focused and appropriate approach.

The manager owns the ratings and is responsible to manage the rewards linked to it. That is a check in itself, for the manager to be balanced and thoughtful while rating. If the manager fails to do so, s/he will have difficulty in differentiating when planning rewards and for head count decisions. So the manager must be made to feel and own the ratings fully and be held responsible for subsequent decisions flowing out of it.

Feedback

Feedback should not be linked or likened to an assessment. ?A feedback, about a specific behavior or task, ?which if worked upon, leads to greater efficiency and performance improvement. It is best given on the spot, for maximum effect and receptivity. During structured feedback / review sessions the feedback assumes an aggregate complexion and together with the haziness between appraisal and feedback, it may get delivered in the form of an assessment and understood as such too. Thus, chances of the feedback being received as a feedback for action, probably reduce. Calling out past instances to justify the feedback may appear as ‘witch hunting’ in some conversations. Linking feedback with appraisal may also be leading to ‘stage management’ – the manager has already formed a subjective opinion and provides feedback building up to the visualized rating. Also a structured feedback / review session, invariably carries an air of anticipation / anxiety and can easily turn into an intimidating and stressful experience. Hence de-linking feedback from appraisal and driving specific instance based / on occurrence feedback behavior may be more practical and effective.

One of the major reasons why the feedback and reviews have been built in into the appraisal systems is to help the employee to re-calibrate efforts during the course of the year if things are not going as per management expectations. When a ‘needs improvement’ appraisal is given, the receiver should not feel wronged or helpless if no indication was provided of such a situation earlier. It is also because an organization would like to see that any of the rating given is fair and has basis. These requirements may be amply addressed by following the separate, stand-alone appraisal system, suggested earlier. ?

In order to drive performance, regular coaching and feedback is essential. Every manager is responsible for driving performance and getting business results. If s/he does not and fails to get the results, the manager would be held accountable. Hence ideally it should be left to the manager as to how, when and how many times s/he wants to give feedback or in other words drive the performance of the team. The manager has been instituted for these very purposes only. However, the organization should periodically sensitize the managers about the importance of feedback and socialize the support systems / tools available for this purpose.

If the organization wants to monitor and drive the behavior of giving feedback, a tool facilitating documentation of such feedback could be deployed. The tool could contain a basket of behavioral and task related parameters, from which a manager could select relevant ones and provide feedback. Example – punctuality, collaboration, diligence, reliability (behavioral) and timely execution of task, accuracy, errors, communication, target numbers etc (task related). This would lend flexibility to the managers as also guide them identify elements to give feedback on. This could either be made mandatory (say anytime once in a year) or preferably left at the discretion of the manager to initiate or for the employee to request. Similarly other feedback aids could be designed and provided. However, it should preferably be left to the persons involved to use these or not, based on their unique giving / receiving equilibrium / quotient. Each feedback pair is unique and for it to play out well, ample space and flexibility need to be provided rather than ring fencing them tightly with process.

All in All

Whether performance gets managed or not is primarily an outcome of interaction between two individuals and ?the systems and processes only aid it. Hence the support system needs to be simple and allow sufficient space to the parties involved to discover their meeting point and move ahead. De-linking appraisal and feedback from each other and refocusing each system to its core purpose should not only drive the respective objectives but should also ease the environment around appraisal and feedback, making them less stressful and more effective.