Come October and November, each year the corridors of any corporate environment start buzzing with two words; budget and performance appraisal. Budget, for the next year has to be pencilled in during the last quarter and finalised past December results.
Come October and November, each year the corridors of any corporate environment start buzzing with two words; budget and performance appraisal. Budget, for the next year has to be pencilled in during the last quarter and finalised past December results. Budget, is another subject. For now and today, it is performance appraisals!
Performance appraisal forms are inked and finalised during the last two months of the year. Good organisations start in the last quarter the exercise and complete the task before end of January, in the new year. Since the task is performance evaluation it puts one individual in a position of authority as against the other, therefore it is best that the roles of the appraiser and the appraisee are defined first.
Let’s begin with the rights and obligations of each. Since the weak link in this act is that of the Appraisee, his role and obligations, be dealt upfront. Any officer who begins the year with a well-defined set of objectives will have little to argue or to suggest. If the given tasks have been met fully or close to full achievement, the entitlement is to receive the highest ranking. If the objectives at the beginning of the year aren’t spelled out to the employee, then the discussion with the supervisor is fully loaded to get messy. In situations where goals and objectives cannot be quantified, a great deal of subjectivity creeps in.
It is therefore imperative that all employees must implore upon their supervisors to enumerate the tasks they are expected to achieve. And if the job is not mathematically quantifiable in the most strict and precise terms, the yardstick of achievement then must be clearly defined. As an example the person in charge of writing processes and procedures needs to be explained that any product / service launch must be preceded by a set of policy, process and procedure, which ‘MUST’ be crafted in a manner that its distillation and dissemination across the corporate floor is easy and seamless. The measurement in this being ‘all that need to know, have sound understanding’.
In a quantifiable charter of objectives to achieve, if all things remain as per assumptions, then the task of evaluation is easy. Only when one or more of the assumptions, as a result of changes in the market place, fall off the table, that’s where evaluation becomes difficult. A good supervisor in such events would rank “effort” on a higher pedestal than merely “result”.
The appraiser ie supervisor’s responsibility at the beginning of the year is to ensure that objectives determined within the pursuance of the corporate’s objectives are spelt out in clear terms by him to the entire team. A supervisor’s failure to do so should not be to the disadvantage of the “supervised”. In fact very frequently we witness this to be the case in most organisations. Financial targets, the easiest of goal setting parameters, can be conveyed with least possibility of misinterpretation. But when the supervisor adds to the list of tasks to be achieved, elements of subjective nature, like “must develop succession planning within the Division” or “must bring harmony within the Unit” – there is always great potential for disagreement.
While this battle of wits, arguments, counter-arguments, evidence of performance or lack of it, takes place in the entity, between the appraisee and the appraiser – there is the “referee” division, in the organisation that sits back and orchestrates the exercise and that is the
The HR division whistles the beginning of the exercise by issuing information circulars, with all the proviso’s, the cons, the pros etc on the subject, they also emphasis that “bell curve” formula must remain sacrosanct. That is to say, only a “few” outstanding performers; a fat bulge of the “ordinary and acceptable performers” and a substantial of them (employees) that must fall into the category of either “average” or “need for improvement” category is an absolute necessity. As a supervisor, I personally desist the “bell-curve” impositions. The bell-curve theory fails to recognise the existence of small units within an organisation. In an excellent team of five employees, in a given department, that work in conjunction, that it is to say that “A” is excellent and so is “B” who gives excellent output too, then choosing “one” as excellent over the other is injustice. I feel the HR Division should work out with each manager / supervisor, the mechanism to handle such situations. Bell-curve implementation without feasibility to encompass such scenarios will be abhorred and disliked by staff. Rigidity is neither a solution nor an incentive! If you would convince others, seem open to conviction, yourself.
The discussion between the appraiser and appraisee must always remain within the norms of grace and decency. Hence, the obligation to maintain such decorum is more on the appraiser – for he is the judge.
The standards of justice or just behaviour are firm and static, these should not become moveable goal posts; no room to treat two alike set of responsibilities, differently. Anyone can get confuted and yet not convinced. The appraisee must bear in mind, even if provoked, that the purpose of performance evaluation discussion, should not be victory, but an exercise to have developed fresh and new paths towards progress. Alexander Pope had said, “A disputant no more cares for the truth than the sportsman for the hare”.
Most appraisal forms carry two sets of objectives. A portion that relates to the quantifiable results and the other that has subjective traits placed thereon for evaluation. The scores are never equally balanced between the two sets; in fact most institutions have 60 percent weightage for quantifiable results and the remaining for subjective traits, like, leadership skills, communication skills, inter-personal skills etc. (In fact, shockingly some have “honesty” also placed, therein – what? Yes, “honesty” that has to be ranked on a scale of one to ten. The ridiculousness of this can never be explained).
To attain, a pre-determined some (in fact most) managers tweak the objective and subjective rankings. This is done to accommodate swings in bell-curve or sometimes done to give better increments. In almost every organisation, the performance appraisal exercise is linked with corporate packages, increments and bonuses. It is this weakness in the system that takes away the nobility of the exercise of appraisals. Some year a person is given ‘outstanding’ rating and in the subsequent year, the same person is graded, ‘needs improvement’. This is deliberately done only to suit bell-curve requirements and the subsequent impact of increment amounts.
Speaking of dialogue between appraiser and appraisee, I am reminded of a true situation. Following the exercise and announcement of increments, one middle management executive, displeased with his bonus and increment, went to the cabin of his supervisor and with fear of reproach, in a muted tone, protested at the meagre amount of increment and coyishly demanded an answer to his plea, “Why, Sir? Why so low increment for me; I did this, did that…..” and he ranted. The supervisor was ruthlessly calm and after some silence in the room said, “it is low, because you are ganja (bald)”. The Appraisee’s jaws fell to the ground, but his presence of mind stayed with him, and gathering all the courage against the despot, uncouth, tyrant – supervisor, he sheepishly said, “But Sir, Mr ‘A is also ganja (bald) but he has received a better increment!” Never to be out-witted, the supervisor roared laughingly, “but he looks handsome as ganja (bald)! And you toad of a man look awful”. If any of my reader falls into that category of shining scalp, please have a hair–transplant done before your next performance appraisal meeting.
To my young readers, on the subject of performance appraisal, I would like to urge and remind them of, “In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of a defeat; but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress towards a victory. This is one great reason for the utmost toleration of variety of opinion,” (Alfred White Head – 1925).
The writer is a senior banker
