Pay and Play LO4974

GSCHERL (GSCHERL@fed.ism.ca)
Fri, 19 Jan 96 08:41:31 EST

Replying to LO4956 --

In her last posting on personell reviews, Roxanne said:

> 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.

In some contexts, this will work very well. In other contexts, like a
toxic work environment, or toxic workers, this won't work at all. It only
works after you've set up the team envionment and the teamwork concept is
well entrenched.

> 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 annual performance review was never intended to replace current
feedback to employees. It is the fault of managers and the organization
that the annual performance review became time to bring up all the year's
wrongs.

> 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.

I think the above is the major issue, not performance reviews. It's an
issue that goes back to managers. They allow others to assign blame to
others, and let them get away with it!

The current performance review I'm working with is probably the best I've
heard of. Combining goal setting by the employee, quarterly reviews
(initiated by either manager or employee), self evaluations, and peer
inputs, it probably is the best tool I've seen to force managers to start
taking an active role in performance management.

Don't shoot the tool (annual performance reviews), it's the flawed
implementation that is at the heart of your discussion.

--
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