Pay and Play LO4956

Roxanne S. Abbas (75263.3305@compuserve.com)
18 Jan 96 08:26:09 EST

Replying to LO 4860 -

Rol,

I suspect you and I (and Virginia who joined the discussion yesterday) all
agree that an organizational review of employee's performance. My point
is that this where the _focus_ should be rather than on an annual
individual performance review. When the team meets to discuss its
progress toward a project goal or the status of the production schedule,
this is the best time and best context to commend those who met their
deadlines, etc. or review why others didn't accomplish their individual
assignments and decide what can be done to prevent this from happening
tomorrow. Was John given a role that is he is not adequately trained for?
Did Susan fall behind because of illness and fail to ask for help? Did
Colleen go above and beyond so that the order got shipped on time? I
believe that current feedback given in this context is so much more
valuable than stored feedback saved for the next schedule review, that we
should work at learning to give feedback well in present time and forget
about the annual employee performance review. This is also the best time
and place to address personal responsibility. The manager was
irresponsible in assigning John to a role he was untrained for. Susan was
irresponsible for not asking for help but she shouln't be blamed for her
illness. Colleen demonstrated exceptional responsibility.

Another major issue in this discussion is independence vs.
interdependence. I often hear employees say "You can only hold me
accountable for what I can control?" Like emptying your own waste basket,
perhaps? We Americans have a hard time accepting how dependent we are on
others to get anything very significant accomplished. We also seem to
have a great need to assign blame. We demonize our politicians (and their
spouses) instead of trying to make the country work better. It's easier
to criticize others than to fix the system. Let's put all individual
performance reviews (including Hilary's and Newt's) aside until we have
all of our major systems (including health care) working well for all our
people.

--
Roxanne Abbas
Abbas Compensation Strategies
Compuserve:75263,3305
Internet:"Roxanne S. Abbas"<75263.3305@compuserve.com>