cover feature
MANY ORGANIZATIONS ARE ENCOURAGING
MANAGERS AND EMPLOYEES TO
CONNECT MORE OFTEN BETWEEN
OFFICIAL REVIEW PERIODS.
organizations – and the managers and employees
involved – will need to determine
for themselves.
“One of the challenges is to find what
that ‘sweet spot’ is,” said Claudette Knight,
VP of talent management at Meridian
Credit Union. “I don’t think doing a midyear
interview and end-year interview
is frequent enough, but also employees
should not feel bombarded by constant
feedback or almost relentless input into
how they’re performing – I think people
would find that overwhelming.”
There’s also the issue of what should be
covered during those check-in sessions.
“It can be typical, as a manager, to focus
solely on high-level updates, because
many companies are so busy,” said Knight.
“The challenge with this approach is that
it means the employee is getting shortchanged
on the real development aspects
of performance management, which are
often a source of employee engagement
and will actually drive better performance.
I think you need to be very intentional
as a manager to ensure that coaching
and asking thoughtful questions are core
components of your performance management
practice.”
Establishing smaller-scale goals, either
in place of or in addition to the
yearly goals, can pair well with the
frequent-meeting process. The smaller
goals give managers and employees motivation
to meet regularly, and keep the
process more agile and timely.
Another way to look at review
meetings is to consider the bigger organizational
picture and how the employee is
contributing.
“Mission and financials are what we’re
doing at work, if you boil it down,” said
Mark Cook, growth leadership consultant
with performance improvement company
O.C. Tanner. “Not the mission that’s on
the wall behind the receptionist, but the
real reason we drive to the parking lot and
come into the building every day. Find out
how the employee has contributed to this
in the past year.
“Financials is a little harder,” said Cook,
“but it’s why we’re doing what we do, so
why not have that conversation?”
He suggests employees should understand
the six levers that affect financial
performance (revenue, expenses, cash
flow in, cash flow out, assets and liabilities),
and then understand how what they
do impacts them.
“Ask if they’ve found a great asset in IT,
reduced the amount of money the company
has to borrow or found a cost savings
somewhere,” said Cook.
Questions like this can help employees
feel connected to the bigger picture.
“I don’t think anyone’s asking these types
of questions, but they should be,” he said.
At the other end of the spectrum, there’s
the more radical approach of scrapping
the year-end review altogether. At Gap,
for example, the company ditched the traditional
review process and replaced it
with monthly one-on-one conversations
as part of a new PM process called “Grow,
Perform, Succeed.” Part of the motivation
for the redesign was to take some of the
formality – and, therefore, the tension
and awkwardness – out of reviews and
encourage quality conversations in a less
threatening format.
RATINGS AND RANKINGS
A common trouble zone for many organizations
is the rating and ranking system,
where employees are assigned a score
based on how well their performance
stacked up against stated goals. While
it serves an important purpose in theory
– helping management spot the high-
performance employees and weed out the
underperformers – it can also introduce
some challenges.
“The success of most traditional performance
review processes is dependent
on the talent of the manager leading the
process,” said Tolovi Neto. “We also often
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HRPATODAY.CA ❚ MAY/JUNE 2016 ❚ 21