In recent days, whenever I see a large number of forms for performance appraisal, the ever-changing goal decomposition method, or the flood of data in consulting reports, my head is always haunted by a huge spider's web full of data. I said to myself, "The day is not far off when you'll collapse over your performance appraisal."
Believe me, I'm not the only one on the verge of a meltdown. There are tons of tools, ideas, and case studies stacked up on business school shelves about performance, and there's no shortage of HR departments and front-line managers working diligently to seed the forms and harvest the data. But in all fairness, how many people enjoy fiddling with this stuff? Stanford University's Professor Jeffery Pfeffer cited two examples: some Silicon Valley companies to complete staff appraisals on time to the manager to buy tight basketball tickets as a reward, and when SAS's former HR boss David Russo to the end of the year assessment of the form of the torch, the staff cheered, and peers ran to tell the others. Our Chinese companies may have slightly different styles of doing things, but managers and managers generally do not like performance appraisals, this is a fact.
Not to be seen performance appraisal, does not mean not to be seen performance management, especially executives, are keen to discuss this topic. Performance management, like a rose with thorns or fried stinky tofu, is a love-hate relationship. The concept of performance management is broader than performance appraisal, which is not the only thing that matters, but also communication and feedback. At present, managers generally focus on "reasonable decomposition of objectives", "accurate quantification of KPIs" and "solving the 'unfairness' of the appraisal system in different departments. ", as well as "salary and assessment results linked" and other planning and assessment issues, ignoring the performance of feedback and communication. In fact, my "cobweb" illusion is not unreasonable, because the nature of the performance management system should be a large network, but not a data network, but the network of communication. The performance management system is essentially a communication system.
The net of performance management is the contractual relationship of employment. Performance is that share of responsibility that each organizational member assumes in accordance with the role defined by the organizational division of labor. Performance and pay are reciprocal commitments between the employee and the organizational contract. This commitment is financial and even more psychological and requires constant communication to maintain. Performance management, on the other hand, is the expectation of the organization to achieve its goals and objectives at different levels, and the expectation can only be implemented in behavior through communication and feedback. Appraisal data is an aid to communication and cannot override communication.
From this point of view, the common problems in performance management, in fact, all is a communication problem: "reasonable decomposition of the target" is in order to split the organization's big expectations into portable small expectations for the team or individual, easy to understand: "accurate quantification of KPIs "Reasonable decomposition of goals" is to break down the organization's big expectations into small portable expectations for teams or individuals, which is easy to understand: "Accurate quantification of KPIs" is to express the organization's expectations in numerical terms and to unify the language; absolute fairness between different departments? In my opinion is never reached, only through communication to change the expectations of employees to ease the contradiction; and "pay incentives and assessment of the results of the dependence", is the key words of the enterprise communication expectations and fulfillment of the promise, in this aspect of the articulation will make the staff of the entire contract of employment to produce doubts.
The performance management system network carries not only the contract and commitment, but also the power. For example, "Who will evaluate me" conveys to the employee, who is "important", "indifferent" or "most insignificant" person in the organization to me? Who in the organization is "important", "not important" or "least important" to me? And "will the appraisal information come from my subordinates and co-workers" affects the perceived power of organizational members over each other. When feedback comes from a variety of directions, rather than just one top-down channel, power in the organization is relatively decentralized and information is transmitted more smoothly.
In addition, the way an organization uses performance appraisal information directly conveys its attitude toward employee development. If only the appraisal information collected, simple notification of the staff therefore up and down how much wages, is to tell everyone to focus on the previous behavior and scoring system of the so-called fairness, the staff's attention will be focused on the "why I am so much different from him", "this score is how to play! "How was this score given?" and other "looking back" topics. If a company seeks to combine assessment information with detailed behavioral feedback from employees, encouraging correct behavior and correcting deviations, it can direct employees' attention to behavioral improvement. If the feedback is further utilized for team skill sets and individual career development, it will indeed encourage everyone to "look forward". The result is a positive, development-oriented interaction that is a relief to both the scorer and the scored.
Performance management is alive, and the source of its vigor is the constant flow of feedback and communication. Semi-annual performance feedback is a cobweb gathering dust. Appraisal data can be used as a wheel for communication and feedback from time to time, but the living can't let the data stick to the web. No matter how reasonable the target setting looks, how accurate the KPIs are, if the organization makes performance management a web of data and quantitative appraisal rather than a contractual web of communication and feedback, it will be even more devastating in the days to come. Why don't you learn from David Russo of the United States or Sun Xingzhi of China, and burn this Pansi Cave with a fire?