Monday, November 22, 2010

EDUCATING MANAGERS ON EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE APPRAISALS.

There is great belief that many managers and supervisors are not trained properly to conduct an effective job performance appraisal, and that many job performance appraisals designs are not delivering the outcomes organizations are expecting. Many times I have seen in my line of work individuals that have received a negative feedback on their job appraisal for a matter that was a) not brought up to their attention prior to the appraisal, and b) not part of the employees job requirement description.
HR and managers have a responsibility to the organization and to its employees. When an employee is hired by HR and the hiring manager, it is because that employee’s application was assessed and selected for the job. At that point a great responsibility falls on HR and mangers to ensure that the new employees assimilate, learn through job specific company training and orientation, and that they are informed on the expectation of the organization, and find ways where feedback can be provided so that employees can meet those expectation, and even excels.
 Henry Kibirige writes, in his articleHR malpractices that sap morale hurt productivity,” that “if a line manager only performs his or her operational duties and has not been groomed to become a people manager, who is to blame? HR has probably failed to institutionalizing a system which ensures that before appointing an employee as a line manager, he is given training on how to manage people.” Mr. Kibirige also expands his view on HR appraisal issues stating that “Failure to involve employees in their development seriously swaps their morale and leads to unplanned employee development. If no opportunity is given to an employee to project their development needs, it results in the training manager nominating employees to the wrong programs. Several firms even ignore line managers leading to failure to do proper gap analysis of skills and competencies. Wrong training is meanwhile extremely costly.” So not only are HR practices not providing the resources to managers to better assess and implement performance appraisals, but the impact of poor or unfair appraisals can be costly to any organization. It is very likely to hurt employee morale through poorly implemented performance appraisals, which in turn impacts employee performance, thus hurting an organization’s bottom line.
It is the responsibility of HR to groom and train mangers for the position of evaluating employees by providing him or her with the tools needed to conduct an effective performance appraisals. Managers should also be informed on the various performance appraisal errors that do exist so that they can become self-aware and conduct the appraisal as honestly as possible. HR should allow flexibility on appraisals so that it can be more specific for the job performance it seeks to evaluate.
Again, HR should not fail managers and employees when developing a well defined job description that both manger and employee can refer too. Failure to clarify on deliverables is another bad HR practice. Absence of a well-defined job-description leads to lack of accountability. If neither the employee nor his or her immediate supervisor is able to define the job-deliverables, the result is loss of focus and interest” (Kibirige, 2010).
There are challenges to the design and implementation of many performance appraisals. In the article “Due process in performance appraisal: a quasi-experiment in procedural justice” by M. Susan Taylor, Kay B. Tracy , Monika K. Renard , J. Kline Harrison , Stephen J. Carroll; they state that “there is evidence that appraisal systems are a practical challenge to the academics who often design them and to the managers and employees who must use them.” Many job performance appraisals do not take in to account many factors that influence performance, such as work settings, work conditions, “explanation of performance standards to employees, to discuss how and why such standards must be met, and to provide for regular and timely feedback on performance.”

HR boost production and company morale by ensuring that appraisals meet the standard and expectations of each department it seeks to assess. HR should ensure that job descriptions are clear and can be assessed taking in consideration other factors such as work environment, etc. They should ensure that managers understand the job description that is being assessed and again, factors that could affect job performance. HR should ensure that mangers are trained and held accountable for conducting proper appraisals. And lastly, HR should make accessible to employees all the tools needed so that employees can take charge on the performance they are being held accountable for, such as ways to provide feedback, training, monthly performance meetings, expectations for the job, etc.

References:
Kibirige, Henry (November 2010). “HR Malpractices That Sap Morale Hurt Productivity.” Daily Monitor. Retrieved from URL: http://www.monitor.co.ug/Magazines/Jobs%20&%20Career/-/689848/1054736/-/4otls3z/-/
Taylor, M. Susan, Tracy, Kay B., Renard, Monika K., Harrison, J. Kline, Carroll, Stephen J. (1995). “Due Process in Performance Appraisal: A Quasi-Experiment in Procedural Justice.” Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 40, 1995. Retrieved from URL: http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=C6E51BC01E51B8B3D85A66B27D4D63A2.inst3_2a?docId=5000363864