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Performance Reviews — Appeals and Reality

Kate — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:00:29 +0000

Every corporate HR department has a policy on the ability of the employee to appeal their review. They are usually invoked when the manager and the employee have not met enough during the review period so the rating becomes obvious to the employee. If there are no performance discussions during the review period, the employee will (rightfully) assume that their performance is fine. Perhaps not stellar, but not in the “needs improvement” or “if not better in two minutes you’ll be fired” categories.

This, as an aside, is one of the downsides of calibration. Moving a person from “meets objectives” to “needs improvement” – and taking their raise and bonus away from them – because of calibration is just a horrible action to take by management. Especially because you’ve not had any performance discussions with the employee. As a manager, that happened to me once, but that’s a different story.

Here’s the deal with appealing your review: there is no upside for you as an employee to do it. Even though it feels unfair to you. Here are four reasons why:

Appealing to HR about your review is telling your manager he or she is an idiot for giving you the rating. You may win the battle, but you will lose the war. Managers have way too many ways to block your path within the company. If you appeal a rating, plan to leave the company and hope your manager isn’t connected to block your path to another company.
HR does not have your best interest at heart. In fact, their only interest is to protect the company against lawsuits. There will be a thorough analysis of your performance review, of course, and the rating may slightly change. But HR will be in the middle of the discussions to protect the company – not you.
Appeals usually happen because you and your manager have a different view of your accomplishments. And the manager will almost always be right about what was accomplished. This underscores the importance of talking with your manager about your goals and goal attainment during the review period. If you are not doing this, you expose yourself to having a mismatch of accomplishments during the review period.
The manager will (usually) have documentation to back up the review. Even if they don’t have any going into writing the review, they will before the review is given.

The best way for you to avoid having to appeal your review is to ensure that management never has a reason to rate you low. Because the reality is this: if you have to appeal your performance review, you’ve already lost.

Scot

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Performance Reviews Require Calibration

Kate — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:00:40 +0000

In the end, if we all make our goals and are extremely competent, we won’t get the same ratings. No group can be “Outstanding” down the line.

We must go through “calibration.”

Calibration consists of two separate, but equal challenges.

First, each manager must rank each person from top to bottom in their group.

Second, each manager must rank their people and the people from like groups within the department.

If there are 10 people in your group, there is a ranking from one through ten — even if each person is ranked outstanding.

Then, this ranking is taken to another manager or group of managers and their group is included in the overall group. Now 30-people are in the total group, and the group is ranked 1-30 — even if every person is ranked outstanding from the perspective of their goal attainment.

Calibration is where all talent, regardless of performance, is put into a ranking of best to worst. If all people on your team are outstanding, it doesn’t matter; they are ranked from best to worst.

Then, they are thrown into a bigger group and ranked again.

Truth be told, I am conflicted about calibration. One the one hand, I appreciate the fact that one manager can’t simply rank their team as all “outstanding” when each person on their team really isn’t.

On the other hand, the forced ranking — the same one used in layoffs — tends to downgrade the ranking (and pay increases and bonuses) of outstanding teams. There is simply too much pressure to force the rankings to accommodate other manager’s teams.

And if you are “on the bubble” — a person who could be ranked one way or another — calibration will more likely force you to the lower ranking.

As well, if your manager doesn’t have good information to defend your ranking from a results viewpoint, the probability that you will be ranked well decreases.

——————–

As you can see, I am conflicted about calibration. As a manager, I always went in every calibration session with “results” oriented information to defend my ratings and rankings of my people. I appreciated the ability to knock down the rankings of other groups whose manager thought they walked on water but delivered little.

Yet, good people got ranked lower — and their rating (salary increase and bonus) dropped because of the intense pressure of letting the other manager give their due to their people that you didn’t know as well.

Working in a cube means that you need to understand the calibration process. You need to provide your manager good information to defend your realm of accomplishments. And hope that your manager is good in these sessions to get you your deserved ranking.

But the end result of calibration is that it forces the workforce into a “bell curve” of accomplishment. No matter the accomplishment, some people are in the bottom 15% and not getting a bonus or salary increase. Or are gone.

People who get a “meets expectations” often exceeded their goals and deserved more but don’t get the rating because of the ranking and calibration process.

The bottom line is that if you are a results oriented business and you totally exceed your goals, you most likely will be calibrated to some sort of average.

Having a killer year doesn’t mean getting a killer bonus and salary increase. It’s instead “calibrated” to an average, killing your engagement.

I love calibration. I hate calibration. There’s no way to win.

Scot

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Competencies and the Performance Review

Kate — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:15:30 +0000

In many companies, goals are not the only ingredient of a performance review. Indeed, what is called “competency” can be the deciding reason in a performance review rating.

Competencies address the job, teamwork, and business skills of the employee. Rather than a goal that needs achievement, a competency is a rating about how well the employee fits the job and the work group. Unlike goals that are measured and noted, competencies are the slippery slope of a performance review. Companies (and some web sites) have even suggested statements about a particular competency that ensures the statement is legal, even if not accurate.

Some classic competency categories include statements on teamwork, your business understanding, and improving your skills. Each company will then add their own specific or unique items that they want you evaluated for the performance review. These could include training, extra projects completed or corporate volunteer work done.

The problem with rating competencies on a performance review is the facts don’t relate to a rating. For a goal, the measurement should drive the rating. But listing five training courses completed at the direction of management translates to a 1 to 5 rating of….? You don’t know.

As a result, competencies are fuzzy math. They say more about your manager’s opinion of you as an employee than concrete facts translating to a rating. That being the case, this condition tells us how to approach what we write for our competencies to get the maximum rating.

What are the competency (non-goal) parts of your performance review? I’ll tackle “teamwork” and “understanding the business” tomorrow – any others?

Scot

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Goals to Performance Review: Getting the rating

Kate — Wed, 07 May 2008 11:00:12 +0000

If your company practices SMART Goal setting – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound – then achieving your goals should directly lead to a performance review rating.

The trick is to define the goal to a rating for the goal on the performance review.

If you have a rating system of 1-5 where “1” is horrible and “5” is outstanding, you should be able to tie your goal to your rating.

If “3” is making your goal, then the goal rates a 3 on the performance review.

If you exceeded your goal, then you should get a “4” or “5” on the performance review.

A rating example

Suppose your goal is this: In three months, reduce errors in coding as measured by Unit Testing with the previous three month period as the baseline, by 5%.

This goal would match up nicely with the SMART Goal setting process. Now, let’s apply this goal to our performance review.

Reaching the goal is a “3” – meeting expectations. Your baseline was defined and if your errors reduced by 5% from that number in the three months, then you meet your goal.

But, if you want to get a “4” exceeds or “5” outstanding, what should the accomplishment be for the goal?

Working with your manager, you work through the projects and complexities and work on two variables: the time element and the error rate. You could get to a five-percent decrease in errors faster than the three months. Or, you could get a greater decrease in errors in the three months. Or, you could get fewer errors AND get the reduction faster than the three months.

For discussion purposes, your “4” rating could be “reducing the errors by 6% – 8% in the three month period.” And your “5” rating could be “reducing the errors by >8% within two months.”

As long as you have a SMART goal, it is easy to have these discussions with your manager and for both of you to decide what your rating should be before the performance review. In your monthly discussions with your manager, you can also easily review the status of each of your goals and know what rating you should receive.

Ratings go both ways

Where some people shy away from these types of clear performance measures, though, is when the ratings go the other way.

As well as defining what exceeds the goal, you also have to define ratings that don’t meet the goal. In our example, a “2” rating could be “reducing the errors by <5% to 3% within the three months.” And a “1” rating as “a reduction in errors of <3% within the three months.”

Cubicle Warriors are not afraid of fair and collaborative goal setting and performance. The performance review without the fair and collaborative part is open to question, or course. But without those two key ingredients, management won’t get the employee engaged in the work. But that’s a different subject…

Do you have measurable goals? What’s the most interesting way to measure a goal have you experienced?

Scot

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