Performance appraisal

There are four parts to the appraisal of an employee's performance. They are: preparation by both manager and employee; the appraisal discussion itself; the closing of the discussion; and the follow-up.

To prepare effectively for an employee appraisal interview, the supervisor must review first the requirements of the job, in order to be familiar with them, and then the previously discussed and agreed-on objectives, or goals, and standards, or behavior to reach those goals.

The employee's history is then reviewed, including the employee's job skills, training, experience, special qualifications, and past jobs and job performance.

Next, the supervisor evaluates job performance relative to expectations for the period under review, rating it between unacceptable and outstanding. The supervisor must be wary of differentiating between attitude and behavior. Behavior can be observed; attitude, which involves subjective judgments about an observed situation, cannot itself be observed, measured, or objectively discussed, yet it finds its way into appraisal discussions.

Some examples of attitude statements are:

How could they be rewritten into behavioral statements appropriate for discussion with the employee?

Behavioral variations in the employee's performance can be noted for discussion. It is important to provide specific examples of both positive and negative behavior. Discussion should be limited to important areas.

It is a good idea at this stage to prepare a preliminary determination about the employee's future career opportunities or limitations, as well as the major areas of concentration for setting objectives and standards for the next appraisal session.

The result of your evaluation will determine the employee's likely future, which in turn will determine the objective of the discussion.

For example, if the employee is rated outstanding, several options may be available. The employee may be a candidate for promotion, in which case the interview should consider the opportunities available. The employee's present job may be redefined and new responsibilities added to it. In this case, development plans must be made. A major difficulty arises with an employee evaluated as outstanding for whom no change in job duties is planned. In this situation, the discussion should end on ways to maintain the existing performance level.

For an employee rated satisfactory, it is unlikely promotion will be considered. New responsibilities may be added if it is felt that better performance will result. If no change in job duties is envisioned, the major result will be to maintain, and preferably improve, the employee's performance level.

When a worker is perceived as performing in an unsatisfactory manner, the supervisor has to determine whether the performance is correctable. If it is, then the interview should culminate with a corrective plan to which the employee will be committed; if not, then reassignment or, as a last resort, termination must be considered.

The point is that a manager must think all this through before the interview. At the same time, it is important that the manager is open to new information that may surface in the interview and change the previously thought- out options.

Once the employee gets advance notice of the meeting and an opportunity for self-evaluation, an interview site can be chosen that will help ensure a relaxed interview. A neutral office may be the best place for this. Finally, it is crucial that sufficient uninterrupted time be scheduled for the session.

Two other items sometimes give appraisers particular problems. One is the approach to take with the employee; the other is the tendency to fall into common traps affecting evaluators.

A supervisor can take one of several approaches to the interview. The traditional approach has been to take on the role of judge over the employee. A better approach is for the manager to act as coach. The differences between the two can be understood if the reader attempts a word association exercise.

On a blank piece of paper, the reader should write down all the words that come to mind when coach and judge are mentioned.

When the two lists are compared, it is generally found that the words associated with coach are more positive, development-oriented, supportive, and focused on the future, while those associated with judge are more negative, reactive, judgmental, and focused on the past. Which one would you prefer to have as a supervisor, a coach or a judge? Perhaps your employees, present or future, would prefer the same.

Certainly what happened in the past is an important consideration in planning for the future. An overemphasis on the past, however, creates a report card mentality and adds stress to an already stressful situation. This does not mean that poor past performance should be glossed over. It does mean that the primary focus should be on what management and employee can do to improve the latter's future performance. Acting as coach, the manager will help ensure that the employee is given the help and encouragement needed to perform to the agreed-on standards and achieve the company's objectives.

Most supervisors strive to be objective when evaluating their subordinates' performance. Even for the most diligent of people, however, it is easy to fall into one or more traps when it comes to performance appraisal. Mentioned below are some common errors in rating the performance of employees, a definition of each, and suggested strategies on how to avoid them.

The halo effect means letting one factor in the individual positively or negatively affect your opinion of other factors. For example: "This person is pleasant to the guests as they check in; therefore he/she must get along well with fellow employees."

Avoid this by looking for both strong and weak points in the individual, focusing only on job-related factors.

Recency means evaluating only recent performance. When evaluations are conducted formally only once a year, there is a tendency to forget about one until only a few days or weeks before the interview. Then the tendency is to concentrate on the employee's performance during those few days or weeks, to the exclusion of what went on before.

Avoid this by keeping an ongoing file of each employee's performance and reviewing that file in preparation for the evaluation.

Central tendency means checking all the middle or average boxes as an easy way out. This is an example of management by abdication and is symptomatic of managers who have little confidence in their own ability to make decisions.

Avoid this by eliminating a middle choice. On evaluation forms have categories such as excellent, above average, below average, and unacceptable that force a decision. Managers should also actively look for both strong and weak points, building on the employee's strengths while coaching the weaknesses.

Grouping means attributing poor performance to group characteristics, such as saying: "Everyone does it." Avoid this by focusing on the individual.

Holding a grudge means penalizing the employee for something that happened a long time before.

Avoid this by actively looking for any positives in such an employee's performance. Face up to the fact that you are harboring a grudge, discuss it with the employee, then get rid of it.

Prejudice is unjustified bias against a person, such as the feeling that women should not be managers because they cannot handle the stress of the job.

Avoid this by looking for strong performance areas and focusing on performance targets and job-related issues.

Favoritism means overlooking the poor performance of employees you personally like. 

Avoid this by looking at factors related to the job.

The sunflower effect means giving everyone high ratings in order to make yourself look good. The implied assumption is that if all your employees are performing well, then as their supervisor you also must be performing well.

Avoid this by focusing on the individual development of your employees rather than how they rate; concentrate on helping them become better than they already are. Perhaps higher performance targets need to be set.

Managers must begin the appraisal discussion by creating an open, friendly, and sincere atmosphere. This can be done by outlining the purpose of the meeting and putting the employee at ease.

While most people want to know where they stand and how they are doing, the main objective in any appraisal interview with an employee who is not performing as desired is to develop a plan to upgrade the performance. It would be difficult to cover all of the employee's strengths and weaknesses, and both wrong and threatening to focus solely on the employee's weaknesses. In preparing for the interview, the manager must identify only the major strengths and weaknesses of the employee, those that most directly affect job performance. The key must always be the job the employee does and how the employee can become more effective in performing that job.

How can you put the employee at ease? A certain amount of small talk and pleasantries may be appreciated, but this should be kept to a minimum. Both parties know why they are there. An extensive period of chitchat will only heighten the tension.

The session quickly moves to the evaluation. Two starting points are possible. One is to discuss first a specific job achievement. This will further put the employee at ease while emphasizing that the interview's purpose is to examine both positive and negative variations from stated objectives.

A second method is to allow the employee to review his or her own accomplishments for the period under review. In this situation, the employee can select where to begin and what he or she considers important. Some managers may fear this supposed lack of control, while others may think the employee will exaggerate any achievements. But most employees appear to be surprisingly hard on themselves, often more so than their supervisor. As long as the objectives and standards have been well defined, it is difficult to overstate the extent to which they have been met. A further bonus for this approach is that it allows the manager to compare what he or she thinks are important contributions to what the employee thinks. The employee may be focusing on areas of the job that are not important to the manager.

At some point, there will be differences of opinion as to what the manager and the employee each thinks the latter has accomplished. Such differences can be arbitrated by referring to the stated objectives. The important consideration is to determine what the variations are and why they occurred. This can effectively lead to a joint discussion of what can be done to improve performance.

It is easy for the manager to discuss the positive aspects of an employee's performance, even though managers tend not to give sufficient feedback on what employees did right. Major difficulties arise when it is necessary to talk about performance deficiencies. The problem may not be so much bringing up the problems; rather it is the way the problems are discussed. The key is to discuss the shortcomings in such a way that the performance will improve.

If employees feel the job situation is nonthreatening, they are more likely to bring up areas in which they need to improve. Given this opening, a supervisor can ask: "What can we do to correct this situation?"

If an employee does not recognize poor performance, the manager must bring it up. It helps to discuss the effect on the hotel or restaurant. How does what the employee is doing, or not doing, affect the performance of the property? It is important that the employee be given specific instances of behavior that was not as desired, for example: "You have been late five times in the past month."; or "Your sales forecast exceeded company tolerances in four out of twelve months last year."

The manager then can go on to review what is expected of the employee. The employee may not know what is expected of him or her; point out what the expectations are and get a commitment to meet those expectations.

If the employee is aware of what is expected but is still not performing, it is necessary to find out why. If the supervisor does most of the talking, the session will not be productive. It is important to get the employee to talk. In so doing, the employee is likely to come to realize what is wrong and, having been involved, is more likely to be committed to correcting the situation. Four approaches are useful in creating the desired nonthreatening atmosphere.

Be descriptive rather than judgmental. Say: "What caused you to lose your temper when dealing with the guest at the front desk?" rather than, "How could you do something so stupid?"

Be supportive rather than authoritarian. Say: "How do you suggest we reduce turnover in your department?" rather than, "You must reduce turnover in your department."

Emphasize equality rather than superiority.

Say: "This is how I learned to develop a forecast. Do you have any ideas of how it can be improved?" rather than, "This is how we forecast around here. Do it this way."

Be accepting rather than dogmatic. Say: "This is the best way I can see to improve things. Do you see any other possibilities?" rather than, "This is the best way."

Having moved through the introduction, strengths, and weaknesses or areas that need improvement, the manager then turns to the employee's plans for future improvements.

The employee should be encouraged to develop self-improvement plans before the manager offers any suggestions. The manager's role may very well be one of scaling down the employee's over ambitious objectives. If, however, the employee cannot come up with any ideas for improvement, or if the ideas mentioned are unacceptable to management, then direct involvement is required.

It is up to the manager to suggest a course of development that the employee can realistically attain. Develop objectives that will require the employee to stretch but that the employee feels are possible. The objectives should require actions by both the employee and the manager, acting as coach.

For example, assume that we have a front-office manager responsible for rooms forecasting. Among other things, the forecast serves as the basis for scheduling housekeepers. While excellent in other respects, reports are periodically late in reaching the head housekeeper, with the result that over-scheduling occurs.

The best goal for the front-office manager might be to complete all forecasts on time for the next month. This objective is specific, results-oriented, and realistic. The role of the supervisor in assisting the front-office manager reach this goal depends on the subordinate. One who is self-directed and has shown a willingness in the past to ask for help would appreciate an offer of help when needed. But if the employee has demonstrated an unwillingness to seek help when a problem arises (some employees see this as a sign of weakness) a more direct approach is called for. The supervisor must participate without being seen as taking over. The supervisor initially may have to approach the front-office manager to ask if any problems are foreseen in getting the forecast in on time, and if there are, what the supervisor can do to assist.

At this point, the employee may agree, or appear to agree, in order to end the interview. To ensure employee commitment, several strategies are in order. By asking: "What do you feel will be most difficult for you in getting your forecasts in on time?" the manager focuses on implementation of the plan. This question also allows the supervisor to gauge the employee's attitude while finding out where a potential problem may lie. If the feeling persists that the employee does not fully support the plan, ask: "What parts of the plan would you like to change?" This will involve the employee while verifying whether any problems exist in his or her mind. This plan can be reinforced by having the employee summarize the interview in writing. A brief report will show any differences in understanding, and putting the plan in writing will further commit the employee to it.

In closing the interview, the manager should summarize what has been discussed, enthusiastically endorse the employee's future efforts, give the employee a final opportunity to add any suggestions, and end on a friendly and positive note.

Now comes the coaching to ensure that the plan agreed to is adhered to. Some employees may need constant supervision after each forecast to ensure it is on time. Others work best with a less overt style of supervision. For the latter it is better to review the employee's work over the next few weeks but not take any action until a pattern of improvement or failure emerges. Whatever follow-up is deemed best, it is important to let the employee know what those plans are. This way everyone knows the rules of the game.