Written By: Dr. M. Amr Sadik
Edited & Published By: Mariham Magdy
I am not fond of applying new methodologies, trends or theories without digging deep and doing a thorough investigation and examination about them, to ensure if they can apply as is at workplace or modifications ought to be done to them first.
Years ago in one of the HR summits that I attended on Performance Management System, I proclaimed that 360-degree evaluation system is not adequate for the Arab countries!
My arguments was, that we are emotionally and religiously driven, as well as positive or negative work relationships can heavily affect the evaluation, then the results may be inappropriate and misleading.
Therefore, I was able to persuade my French CEO in a telecommunication company that it is futile to use this system and instead we will be developing our own system.
Performance appraisal is potentially a key tool for organizations to make the outmost of their human resources and the use of the appraisal is widespread. However, during my employment tenure with various organizations in several industries, here and there, for more than 30 years, I came across very few organizations that they conducted the Performance Appraisal System (PAS) appropriately and adequately.
There are some indisputable facts around the PAS:
- Generally, managers and employees do not really like performance management.
- Managers do not do it regularly.
- Paradoxically, many who did not like it or did not do it thought that it was a great idea in principle (but they still did not do it).
- No relation between the use of performance management and organizational success. Use of traditional performance management system did not guarantee success, and some organizations that did not have much of it at all seemed just fine.
Anyway, and regardless of all the systems that organizations adopt: Critical Incident, MBOs’, 360 degree, Essay, and/or Forced Ranking, the PAS is often perceived simply as a technique of Personnel Administration.
And when it is utilized for administrative purposes it becomes part of a managerial strategy, the implicit logic of which is that in order to get people to direct their efforts toward organizational objectives, management must tell them what to do, judge how well they have done, and reward or punish them accordingly.
So, what is the purpose of appraisal, and how is it used?
The key objective of appraisal is to provide employees with feedback on their performance provided by the direct manager, and thus there are three critical questions for quality of feedback:
- What and how observations on performance are made?
- Why and how they are discussed?
- What determines the level of performance in the job?
Based on the above, the process cannot be performed effectively, unless the direct manager has the interpersonal interviewing skills to provide such feedback to people being appraised. We call it ‘‘Bradford Approach’’, that places a high priority on appraisal skills development. This approach identifies the relations between involving, developing, rewarding and valuing people at work.
However, we can explicitly state that PAS has three major purposes:
Each and every performance system has its own advantage and disadvantage, and unfortunately, I can go on and on in critically reviewing those systems and anyone can argue that, but my point is that each organization has to develop its own system, regardless the contemporary performance appraisal systems available, as I have stated in my previous article “Triumph over Tragedy“.
The evaluation process is a detailed and precise one, and unless the organization has defined the usage of the system and how the inputs will be gathered and how the outcomes will be used, it will be useless to apply the system.
It was reported that a number of firms in USA suspended the forced distribution system, in the annual performance appraisal as they have realized that it damages the internal co-operation which is so vital to innovative businesses.
Many companies have budgeting processes which also follow annual cycles, and which of course involve one-on-one reviews and interviews. No respectable managing director or HR practitioner would have anything against such approach, because communication is rarely harmful—especially between managers and employees.
Too often, we see performance appraisals being introduced so that managers can finally speak more with their staff.
However, the question is not whether such talks are good; it is whether the system is suitable for achieving the relevant goals with the judgements and decisions stipulated within it.
Another vital point is that where there is a system, there is a system owner, an authority responsible for its design, setup and operation. This authority is almost and always the HR department.
Managers of course speak with their employees when there is no HR department expressly expecting this. These talks are sometimes conducted in a structured, professional manner, if this is what is desired and practiced by the respective managers.
Nevertheless, a standard, company-wide annual performance appraisal format, which follows set rules, requires someone to monitor this uniformity and the rules, and indeed set them. This implies that annual performance appraisals are inconceivable without HR: if there is no HR, there is no performance appraisal.
We can already agree that annual performance appraisals, at least in their classic form, require a strong HR element. Without this, a functional performance appraisal system is deemed completely impossible.
The traditional methods based on past notions of what fetches success, are still with us, despite the changes made. They are so deep-seated in all of us that we have difficulty in formulating alternative ways of seeing work and the workplace.
Good luck.