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Performance Appraisals:
To Dread or not to Dread?
Despite performance appraisals having the potential to be highly worthwhile workplace instruments, research shows that both managers and employees alike tend to dread, rather than embrace, their impending approach. As such, these particularly helpful tools are often criticised by academics for their tendency to ‘nourish short-term performance, annihilate long-term planning, build fear, demolish teamwork and encourage rivalry and politics’.
However, research also reveals that companies that are able to successfully manage employee performance are more likely to outperform compared to companies that avoid the often tedious task.
Dennis Finn, PricewaterhouseCoopers Head of Performance Improvement, cites one of the major problems that managers face in regards to performance management as failing to set achievable employee objectives in the first place. Finn also emphasises the importance of setting non-financial goals when aiming to build characteristics such as leadership and management skills. Melbourne-based HR consultant, Derek Stockley, adds that.
“It’s important to set objectives that people can actually achieve and over which they have control.”
According to a 2002 Mercer Human Resource Consulting survey, other barriers to successful performance management include ‘inadequate manager skills in giving feedback, lack of follow up of agreed actions and inadequate ongoing feedback’. Furthermore, managers often report dissatisfaction with their current performance management system which, according to the managers themselves, can be attributed to ‘lack of links with organisational goals or with promotional and salary rewards’ as well as ‘few participation or feedback opportunities, inadequate appraisal training, and implementation and administrative difficulties’.
Regardless of these criticisms, a recent poll conducted by Alan Nankervis, an Associate Professor and Research Director at Curtain University of Technology School of Management, revealed a steady rise in the use of performance management in Australia – with 96 per cent of managers using it today, compared to 85-86 per cent in 1990 and 1995. Nankervis attributes this rise to ‘the need to bolster productivity in the face of greater competition, a rise in performance-based employment contracts and a more "strategic" approach to performance management’.
According to Finn, the more often performance appraisals are conducted, the better, believing that “The tip is not to make it a one-off thing. Having a monthly one-on-one "mini-review" would measurably reduce the anxiety created at the end of the year and eliminate the surprise that is sometimes experienced. You'd also correct what you need to earlier”.
Management Today, August 2004
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Food For Thought.
- 45% of Australian managers rated their organisations HR and people-management practices, including performance management, as average or below average.
- Only 20% of Australian managers using performance management reported a high or very high level of satisfaction. Just over 30% reported being less than satisfied, while half reported moderate satisfaction.
- 89.2% of Australian organisations use performance management to determine training and development needs, 88.9% use it to appraise performance, 28% see it as a tool to change corporate culture, and only 27.5% use it to retain high-caliber staff. “Spend more time on a candidate’s ability to sell and less time looking at the resume.”
Management Today, August 2004
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